"Not a bright idea"

A New Zealander photographed riding a motorcycle along Melbourne's Eastern Freeway with a barbecue strapped to his body has admitted it wasn't a bright idea. And the man known only as "Stuart" is also having second thoughts about an earlier incident when he carried a two-seater couch on his motorbike.

"I do think it was dangerous," he told the Herald Sun newspaper yesterday. "I don't think I'll carry anything but a pillion passenger from now on."

Stuart, 27, who didn't want his real name revealed, was ridiculed when the newspaper published a photo yesterday of his barbecue escapade. An astonished motorist had snapped him while he was transporting the barbecue on the Eastern Freeway on Sunday evening.

Police were not impressed and have started an investigation. Stuart, who migrated from New Zealand in August, said he picked up the barbecue left on a nature strip for a hard rubbish collection.

A Buddhist, he had been returning home from a temple. "It was the challenge (of transporting the barbecue) more than the thing itself."

But work colleagues and housemates teased him after recognising him in the photo. "I wouldn't do it again, it was too embarrassing," he said.

Stuart said he recently ferried a couch on his bike. "People say it can't be done, but I proved them wrong," he said.