On the day he died, Allan Olsen was thought to be heading to Kiama, and it is there he has now returned.
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The keen cyclist, a familiar face to many who saw him riding along the Princes Highway, died on August 21 north of Gerringong, while out - as always - on his bike.
On Tuesday, January 2 - what would have been Allan's 68th birthday - his sister, Tina, her husband Peter Treloar, and their son Peter Olsen Treloar, partner Erin Kellie and son Khorey gathered at Black Beach to scatter his ashes.
Mr Treloar waded out into the water with Allan's ashes as family and others who came to remember him threw flowers into the waves that lapped the shore and the John Williamson song Flower on the Water played.
The day prior, Ms Olsen said, she was upset, but Tuesday was a brighter day.
"Today I'm happy that he's free, because Allan was a free spirit," she said.
Allan was particularly close to his brother-in-law, who said he was the kind of person who wouldn't have wanted any fuss.
Mr Treloar remembered him as someone who "just wanted to be free", a man who was steadfast in his refusal to live in a house or even a caravan.
Instead, Allan chose a life on the bike, riding up and down through Illawarra and Shoalhaven, as far south as Sussex Inlet and north into Sydney.
Mr Treloar remembered someone describing him as the 'Kiama Bends Bandit'.
"I used to say to him, 'I'd like to hang around with you for a week but I'd never keep up'... He'd laugh," he said.
The family was joined by a cyclist who rode from Gerringong to Kiama to pay his respects, and three members of the Gerringong Anglican Church who came to know Allan over the many years that he spent nights on the veranda of the church's cottage.
Margaret Mitchell recalled the last time she saw Allan, not long before he died, cooking himself breakfast on the new public barbecues at Werri Beach, which he thought were "rather good".
It was "terrible, cold day", she said, but Allan was dressed in his usual shorts and singlet, "completely immune".
She recalled him as a man with a keen interest in nature, and someone who never sought fame yet became well-known.
Margaret Coppock, also from the church, said Allan was someone who drifted in and out, and never made a fuss.
She said he was missed.
"He was part of our lives," she said.