British ex-firefighter rides through Kalgoorlie-Boulder on worldwide cycling tour to support tragedy survivors

A London cyclist rode through Kalgoorlie-Boulder this week as part of a 40,000km bike ride across the world that will raise money for the community that survived the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy. Stephen Aslin is a recently retired firefighter who worked at the North Kensington fire station, and his colleagues were first responders to the 23-storey tower inferno in 2017 that killed 72 people. Mr Aslin was working a different watch when the fire broke out so didn’t respond to the fire, but he saw and felt its aftermath. “I went down there the next day, and I couldn’t believe it . . . it was terrible,” he said. “And my initial thoughts were . . . how the hell would you deal with this? “My friend I went to school with, Ernie Vital, died with his mum in the fire. “My work colleagues were really struggling with post-traumatic stress.” Mr Aslin later became head of the green watch at North Kensington fire station. “The guy who was in charge on the night of the fire was head of red watch at North Kensington, exactly the same rank as me,” he said. “I could have been that person.” When Mr Aslin retired in late 2024, he wanted to do something different that would make a difference in his community. He had some friends who had taken around-the-world trips, and he loved cycling on the velodrome. “I combined my love for cycling, my love for my community, and my job with the fire service,” he said. His trip needs to cover a distance of 40,000km — the circumference of the equator — to be considered an around-the-world trip, and 29,500km has to be cycled. Mr Aslin said he was hoping to raise £30,000 ($57,000). His Kalgoorlie-Boulder stop-off was about 17,600km into the journey that had already taken him through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, North Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia. Mr Aslin said he would usually spend four days riding before taking a rest day to plan his route for the next four days. He flew from Kuala Lumpur to Perth and was held up for a few days by cyclone Narelle before riding along the Golden Pipeline to Kalgoorlie-Boulder. “Before I arrived in Australia, I knew nothing about Kalgoorlie . . . I never knew about the gold mine,” he said. “This is what has been really lovely about this bike ride — I learnt so much along the way. “People were telling me to be careful and watch out, there’s a lot of crime in Kalgoorlie, and I would just laugh. “People forget that I’m from London — I know what crime is all about.” Mr Aslin began his world loop at Grenfell Tower in June last year on the eight-year anniversary of the fire. He will finish his ride in the same place, which inspired him to name his trip the Grenfell World Cycle Tower to Tower. From Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Mr Aslin will ride across the Nullarbor to Adelaide, then to Melbourne, Sydney, and up to the Gold Coast to Brisbane. From Brisbane he will fly to Christchurch, cycle the North and South islands of New Zealand, and take the longest flight of his trip from Auckland to California. Mr Aslin will ride across the United States and hopes to make it to New York City for the 25-year anniversary of the September 11 Twin Towers attack. He will then cycle through Morocco, Spain, France, Ireland, Wales, visit his youngest daughter who is studying at Oxford, and finish up his mammoth journey at Grenfell Tower in about December this year. Mr Aslin visits fire stations in each country he visits and stopped in to visit the Kalgoorlie-Boulder firefighters on Tuesday evening. “It doesn’t matter which country you’re in, they’re all the same,” he said. “I think it is this real understanding . . . we suffer the same risk. We put ourselves in the same danger.” Mr Aslin said the highlights of his journey so far were seeing the Taj Mahal in India and the Himalayas in Nepal. “But I will always say the best thing about the journey is the people I meet,” he said. “It’s amazing . . . people and their culture and what they do, how they go about stuff, and how they treat other people.” Mr Aslin’s bike was named the Justice Express by students at a school nearby the Grenfell Tower, who also decorated his bike with their drawings made into stickers. “When I was struggling through the deserts of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan . . . I just looked at the stickers and said, ‘come on, the kids are relying on me’,” Mr Aslin said. Donations to support Mr Aslin and the Grenfell Foundation can be made at tinyurl.com/mx72uwr9.