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In the past decade, there have been several efforts in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia to increase the opportunities and improve the experiences of women cyclists in recreational and racing contexts. However, cycling in Victoria and Australia more broadly continues to be a male dominated sport. This study incorporates a digital ethnography of two Melbourne-based women's cycling Facebook groups including 11 interviews with stakeholders over the period of 2017–2018 to analyse how women and girls are harnessing social media to create counter sports spaces to enhance women's cycling. The paper explores the emergence of the "virtual clubhouse" which operates as a digitally networked counterpublic, providing a space for women and gender diverse cyclists to connect, coproduce and engage in knowledge sharing practices, and build a more inclusive culture for cycling that challenges dominant, mainstream narratives of women's sport. The "virtual clubhouse" addresses a gap in the physical bicycle landscape in which cycling and cycling knowledge (including bicycle maintenance) is largely mediated by men and cycling clubs are configured as masculine spaces within Australia. This research adds further depth into a specific localised network of women cyclists to consider how physical and online sports cultures and communities are intertwined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between ethnicity and the use of ‘party drugs’ (e.g., methamphetamine and ecstasy) has received little attention in Australia. This paper focuses on ethnicity and party drug use within the context of dance parties and clubs in Melbourne, Australia's second largest city. The young people who participated in our research, many of whom are long-time dance party attendees, or ‘old skool ravers’, frequently made claims to the possession of subcultural capital by labelling as ‘muzzas’ those they perceived to be outsiders to the dance scene. Muzzas are defined as heavily muscled young men, commonly of Southern European or Middle Eastern background, who use cocaine and steroids, have ‘no class’ and dance in an overly aggressive way. Although the old skool ravers were often from similar ethnic backgrounds to muzzas, they rarely drew on ethnicity in forming their own identities. They did, however, explicitly invoke ethnicity in the distinctions they created between themselves and muzzas. Their claims to subcultural capital are based on notions of nostalgia and an authentic involvement in the dance scene, and on their perceived distance from a mainstream culture consisting of ‘normal people’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]