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| 2006-12-29 |
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| Australian Motorcycle Tours | ||||
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My Life on Two (or Three) Wheels: My Motorbikes (and sidecars) from 1964 to the present. ... "from Beezer to CJ"
Before I get so old that I forget all about them, I want to record my motorcycling history. From riding my first BSA in 1964 to horsing around on a Chang Jiang just the other day, riding motorbikes has always been a very enjoyable part of my life.
This page will probably take many weeks or months or years to complete, and may not be done in Chronological order. So come back again later and see whether it has grown. It is currently in a kind of "scratch pad" state and I shall work on bits and pieces as I have time to recall all my memories. Some of the facts and figures may be a bit out until I can unearth some of my old diaries from years gone by. More photos will have to wait until I can get them from storage and scan them.
I am quite sure that several of the motorbikes listed below are listed in the wrong order. I am pretty sure that every incident described is listed with the correct bike, it's just that I cannot now remember which one came first. I shall have to put them into better order when I can get some more information.
If anyone has copies of the Australian "Two Wheels" magazine dating back to the 1972-1974 period and can look up the articles therein written by Phil Smith, please contact me at phil DOT drdisk AT gmail DOT com so that I can get some of these facts and figures more correct. I particularly need a copy of the article titled "Diary of an Enthusiast" written by me towards the end of 1972 or in the first half of 1973. (My memory is not as good as it was!)
A special "Thank you!" to my mother, Mrs Wenche Smith of Geelong, who dug around amongst the family photos and found the black and white prints and ancient polaroid photos which have been scanned and reproduced on this page. On all photographs in this page, click on the small Thumbnail print to get a larger photo. Some of the colour slides which she also found are now included after having been diditised.
Firstly, Important information for all motorcyclists:
Presentation by CMA Qld: Where the Rubber Hits the Road
From 1940s to 1960s: My Introduction to Motorcycling
June 1964: 1951 BSA C10 250cc Side Valve single
December 1964: 1964 Yamaha "Santa Barbara" YA6 125cc Rotary Valve single
1962 Yamaha MJ2 55cc Moped (step-through).
1966 Yamaha YDS3 "Catalina" 250cc Two-stroke parallel twin.
The 1946 Dusting Sidecar
Two Bikes owned by my Siblings: AJS-Triumph scrambler and 1963 Honda CA77 305cc Dream
Ballarat Rovers Motor Cycle Club
1966-1969: The Stunt-riding years.
1966: The ancient belt-drive DKW
All sections of this page below here will gradually be cut into chapters and installed as new links here.
November 2004: 1962 Chang Jiang M1M 750cc Side Valve twin with PLA Military Sidecar
Note while editing: this page and all pages from 2007-01-10 need pictures updating when internet access gets back to normal. Meanwhile pictures will hopefully load okay (if slowly) from old location.
1968: My First 1936 Harley-Davidson VLH 1340cc Side Valve V-twin
Both of my grandfathers had been Harley riders. While my mother was pregnant and
carrying me she rode pillion on a Harley until she became too big to do so any more.
The love of Harleys was therefore definitely imparted to me while I was still in
the womb ... you can't get it much earlier than that! As a kid I had loved to watch
the Harleys which thundered up and down every street on occasion. As I grew up, the
Harleys always had a special place for me. I would pull up anywhere to oggle one.
Somehow, while I was still in the Rovers, I heard about an 11-13 Harley (That meant
11 horsepower and 1300cc for those not familiar with Harley terminology) with a box
sidecar that was for sale at £40. Its owner told me that it had been painted red
when he originally got it,but that it had all sorts of profanities and rude words painted
all over it with white house paint. He said it had been labelled in several places
with the number "666" - the Mark of the Beast (refer to The
Bible, Revelation, Chapter 13, to find out what this referred to) so that he had brush
painted it all over with black house paint to cover up all the bad words. 
The picture at the right,
scanned out of a magazine, shows a restored 1937 model which was almost the same as mine.
The engine was a 45 degree V-twin with a capacity of 80 cubic inches or 1340cc. I
asked my friend Cec Scott to look at it and he agreed that the price was about
right. As I didn't have the forty quid, I borrowed it from Cec, and we kept the
Harley in his shed until I had saved the money to pay him back. Then we towed the
Harley out to Buninyong where I then lived. Gradually, between gaps in a very busy
life, I worked on it little by little to bring it towards a state where I might be able to
register it for use on the road. I mainly bought little things one at a time such as
a stop light switch and a taillight that could have a stop light fitted inside it and so
on. I would take it out for a ride on the back bush tracks every now and then to
make sure the engine stayed in good nick, but due to money constraints and time priority
constraints, that bike never actually ended up registered during the years I owned
it. At the end of 1968, I received a posting to become the Headmaster of the Dumbalk
North Primary School located in the Leongatha Inspectorate in South Gippsland, so when I
moved to Morwell to live with my folks, the Harley was placed on a trailer and taken down
there with me. Other Harleys joined the collection later on; see below.
1969: Triumph Trophy TR6 650cc OHV parallel twin
While the Harley was being transported to Morwell, I rode my Yamaha YDS3 and Dusting
sidecar outfit down there as well. But it was not to stay there for long. ...
Now a Headmaster makes a lot more money than a Student Teacher, and I felt it was about
time to upgrade my bike. I had seen films in which Triumphs seemed to be presented
as very desirable motorbikes. Steve McQueen in The Great Escape was mounted
on a 1961 Triumph Trophy TR6 650cc OHV parallel twin (don't ask me how it was miraculously
transported back in time to the Second World War!) and that seemed like the most desirable
model for me. So I contacted Pratt & Osborne Motors and ordered my bright red
brand new Triumph Trophy. When it was ready, they rang me up and I rode the faithful
old Yamaha outfit from Morwell to Geelong for the last time. I felt kind of sad to
be parting with the Yamaha after so many reliable miles during several very enjoyable
years. But I wanted the newest and the best, so why was I having these negative
thoughts!
At Pratt & Osborne, the Dusting sidecar was removed from the Yamaha and, after new
mountings had been manufactured, it was fitted to the Triumph. After driving around
Geelong and district a bit to give the outfit a bit of a shakedown and ensure that all
adjustments were just right it was time to head home to Morwell. I was driving it
very carefully during the running in period, but somewhere near Warragul on the way home
on its first ride, the engine suddenly failed! When I kicked it over there was just
no compression! Anyway, to cut a long story short, the engine was re-bored and
fitted with new pistons under warranty. After a week or two, it happened again and
another re-bore was done and new pistons were fitted under warranty. I was then
warned that if my bike kept chewing pistons and cylinders like this, it could be bored no
further and would have to be re-sleeved next time. After another couple of weeks of
riding, the engine failed again - it was utterly worn out! This time the
engine was re-sleeved back to standard size and was fitted with yet another set of
brand new pistons. I had just reached Morwell again when the phone rang ... Triumph
was recalling all 1969 TR6 Trophy motorcycles! All over the world, all of
that year's models were found to be worn out after a couple of thousand miles! The
problem had occurred in the Triumph factory where the incorrect carburettor had been
installed on the production line and all of the engines were running so incredibly lean
when the carby was set according to the manual, that they were wearing out in no time.
A new carburettor was fitted and the problem was solved, as far as I can recall now
the engine never needed another rebore for that reason again.
The picture at right shows the Triumph Trophy with Dusting
sidecar with my Grandfather, Helge Abrahmsen, and myself standing behind it. The
picture was taken sometime after the Dusting had been repainted to match the
triumph. Original canvas sidecar windscreen had been replaced by a new black vinyl
one. Ex-police fibreglass handlebar fairing had also been painted to match.
Early in its life I decided that the Dusting sidecar, although its 1946 black paint with
white pinstriping still looked brand new, ought to be painted to match the metallic red
and silver of the Triumph. I had also fitted a police-style handlebar fairing and
felt it would look good painted to match as well. I carefully drew up everything and
designed the colour scheme and pinstriping details that I wanted. First I had the
fairing and sidecar sprayed and then it was time to do the pinstriping.
Pinstriping the Dusting Sidecar. One week, shortly after the new paint job was completed, I rode to Melbourne where I met the then elderly Vic Bogner who originally used to pinstripe the new Dusting sidecars for Harry Dusting. I asked him to teach me how to do it and he painstakingly did so. To see my metallic red and silver Dusting with its beautiful gold pinstriping, just as I had planned it following the original Dusting pattern, was an unforgettable sight. I soon got the job of pinstriping other Dustings and a few other vintage vehicles ended up with Dusting style pinstriping during the ensuing years. The last Dusting I pinstriped was more than thirty years ago, but I would love to get my hands on one today just to check that I haven't lost any of that skill ... and maybe to teach some much younger person how Vic used to do it before I in turn get too old!
During the year I served as the Headmaster at Dumbalk North, the Triumph-Dusting outfit was my "principal" mode of transport (pun was not originally intended, but it's a good one so I'll leave it there and add quotation marks!). During the times of re-boring, re-sleeving and other work that it needed during its early days, I rode a plethora of borrowed bikes, sometimes for a fortnight or three weeks at a time. Some of these are long since forgotten, but some rate a special mention below.
The Triumph was purring along contentedly at about 80 or 90 km/h along a flat, long, straight stretch of the back road to Boolara at about 04:00 or 04:30 early on a Monday morning in June 1969. I glanced over to the left at the sidecar mudguard light which was keeping me company. As I turned my attention back to the road ahead of me which was very well illuminated by the high beam of the Lucas headlight, there suddenly appeared to be a hump in the road ahead. There was certainly no hump there yesterday! Suddenly the hump was much closer than I had thought it had been. Next second I felt the outfit rise and fall, rise and fall. There had been two humps. On a previously flat road! And why had the humps apparently been moving from South to North at some considerable speed? I wondered about these strange "moving humps" as I left the flat and wound up through the mountains. An Earthquake had been felt in that area late on Saturday night. Could those humps have been some sort of wave caused by the eartquake? But why would they be seen and felt thirty hours later? My scientific mind was working overtime. Just as well I knew every inch of this road like the back of my hand. I rounded a sharp curve to the right and straightened up again to the sight of there being no road visible in my headlight! Before I could even think of braking, the outfit was airborne. Then crunch! The suspension bottommed out as she landed on a steeply sloping patch of the road. Then airborne again this time flying through the darkness with my headlight pointing up into the tops of the gum trees. Then crunch again as the suspension bottommed out a second time as the outfit landed heavily upon the road which now looked roughly like it should have looked. I braked the Triumph to an emergency stop, turned it 180 degrees and started to slowly proceed back towards my recent breathtaking roller-coaster ride. There I saw that a section of road had fallen below the level of the rest of the road and formed quite a steep ramp sloping upwards towards the South. As I looked at it I realised that the Lord had been looking after me: had I been riding in the opposite direction, towards the North, I would have written off the outfit as the front wheel and forks would have collapsed and the nose of the sidecar would have buried itself into the broken remains of the road on the north side of the slab of road which had fallen. I still couldn't figure out how a road that had been perfectly okay yesterday could have been so badly damaged by this morning. As I stood there wondering about this, there was a very deep and dreadful roaring sound which came from beneath my feet and the ground started to rock and shiver just as it had during Saturday night's earthquake. This was accompanied by flashes like lightning from the broken ground where the road had collapsed. To this day I am still not sure about this ... was my mind playing some sort of tricks on me to get me out of there, or did these flashes really happen? As rocks and stones started to tumble down the mountainside and land all around me, I leapt back on the Triumph, spun it around, and headed off flat-out down the hill to get clear of the mountain. Later that day, when scientists arrived to invesigate the earthquakes, I learned that there had indeed been two periods of aftershock activity recorded that morning and the first of these must have caused my "moving humps" which I saw near Boolara and the landslide which had taken the foundations out from underneath the road where I had had my roller coaster ride, and the second had caused the dreadful noise and rockfall which occurred while I was standing looking at the damage caused by the first one. I think this earthquake incident was probably the scariest thing that ever occurred to me in all my years of riding motorbikes and sidecars.
The enormous Double-Adult sidecar.
Some time after my year at Dumbalk North, I was teaching at Yallourn Primary School and the Triumph was still my main transport. Now I had from time to time read in British magazines about the existence of double-adult sidecars although I had never actually seen one. But I read a classified ad which told me that a Double-Adult sidecar was for sale in Glenroy, a Northern suburb of Melbourne. On the phone I learned that it was a body with no chassis and I would need my own chassis. So I decided it wouldn't do any harm to go and have a look and there it was, red and huge. I have forgotten what it was built from, whether it was particle-board or just a heavy wooden frame covered with plywood. Its shape was roughly a cuboid, about 2.5 metres long, about 70 or 80 centimetres wide and about 50 or 60 centimetres deep. Its nose was rounded in a semicircular shape and was sloped backwards slightly. The mudguard was a standard Dusting item but was mounted directly on the side of the body, since the body was much wider than a standard Dusting body. Underneath the floor, to mount it between the springs on the dusting chassis, it had raised platforms (actually just great big blocks of timber) about 40 cm by 15 cm by 10 cm and needed very long coach bolts to mount it to the chassis bars. I decided to purchase it and came back with my Triumph and just the chassis of the Dusting chair. It had one seat behind the other; both seats were enormous in size, and the back of the forward seat could be removed in case one wanted to sleep in the sidecar. We fitted the enormous sidecar and I rode back to Morwell. By the time I reached Dandenong I pulled out my screwdrivers and removed the large sidecar windscreen just to cut down on the wind resistance a bit. You would think I had learned my lesson with my "Yellow Coffin" a few years earlier, but my reasoning went something like: "this motor is much bigger and more powerful than the Yamaha YDS3, so it ought to be able to handle it." But by the time I arrived home in Morwell, I think I already knew that it was just too big and heavy. For the first week I owned it, I rode it about without once taking a passenger in it anywhere at all.
Six kids in the sidecar! ... Next weekend someone suggested that I take the kids for a ride around town since I had such an enormous sidecar. Thus it was that we lifted the front seat divider a little and moved the seat cushion rearwards halfway into the rear compartment. Then we rounded up most of my siblings. two kids were seated side by side on the front half of the front seat leaning against the front of the backrest, two kids were seated side by side normally in the back seat, and two more kids were seated facing backwards on the back half of the front seat leaning against the back of the front backrest. My sister got on the pillion seat behind me. Thus it was that I drove for a couple of laps of the main street of Morwell with a total of eight people on board my motorbike and sidecar and everyone of them correctly and legally seated, which was verified by the local constabulary who decided that this contraption was well worth having a close look at. We actually ended up with about four carloads of police and a couple of police motorcyclists checking us out that afternoon. They were all of the opinion that, although it was a perfectly legal transport for eight people, that I was likely to have a very short clutch life. One policeman's estimation was that the total outfit with eight people on board weighed somewhere between a half and three-quarters of a ton. I have done the mental calculation myself a few times since and I reckon he was right. You should have seen how many heads turned that day as we lapped the main drag!
The queen-size bed on the sidecar! ... Now it just so happened
that about a week or two before I bought the D/A sidecar, Mum and Dad had purchased a new
bed. The old bed was in the passage blocking up the house and we thought, "How
will we ever get a Queen Sized bed to the rubbish dump?" It wouldn't fit in the
car; it would cost money to rent a truck; what could we do with it? Dad and I looked
at the bed, then looked at the sidecar, then looked at each other ... could we do it?
Let's see how it looks if we just put it across the bike. The mattress was nice and
soft ... it wouldn't hurt the bike or the sidecar, would it? If it could carry eight
people around the town yesterday, surely it could carry a Queen-size bed today!
Later that day, there was seen heading out Latrobe Road towards the rubbish tip one
Triumph motorcycle and double-adult sidecar with a queen-sized bed ocky-strapped
upside-down across the sidecar and across the seat of the bike. Now, who do you
think should come along, but the local police! The policeman shouted to me as I
drove along, "Smithy, I don't know if that is legal; I don't even want to know if
that is legal; I am going to pretend that I never saw it; but for goodness sake
don't run into anything between here and the Tip!" To ride the machine with
this load, there was no seat available at all since the bed was over it, so I was riding
in a standing position straddling the front of the fuel tank with the fuel filler cap
poking me in the bottom and riding it as though it were a trials bike. My brother
was following on his motorbike, and when we reached the tip we carefully unloaded the bed
and chucked it on the rubbish pile and rode the two bikes back home. The huge
sidecar body was removed and stored and I think we never used it again. The faithful
old fish-box or the genuine Dusting were sufficient after that.
If I remember correctly that double-adult sidecar was eventually sold or given to someone who was going to put it on either a Harley or an Indian.
The Tornado at Tom's Bridge. Click the link to read about storm chasing on the Triumph outfit.
The Best Prepared Motorcycle and Sidecar at the Southern Cross Rally. Since 1966, I had developed the habit of getting to every motorbike rally that I could possibly get to. I cannot remember for certain which year it was, but one year I decided it was time to attempt to win the trophy for "The Best Prepared Motor Cycle and Sidecar" which was awarded every year at the Southern Cross Rally near Adeliade. I removed the "Fish Box" and fitted the beautifully painted Dusting body onto the chassis. I polished the Triumph and the Dusting before leaving home and put plenty of polishing and cleaning gear in the sidecar with my camping gear. On the way to the rally, at one point in Western Victoria, I noticed that the next three vehicles in front of me were sidecars and that the first two vehicles in my rear-view mirror were also sidecars. I think that was the only time I ever saw six motorbikes and sidecars in a row on the road without any of them having planned to ride together. From the time I arrived at the Mount Barker Showgrounds in the Adelaide Hills, I got busy cleaning and polishing until every part of that outfit shone better than if it had just left the factory. At the judging, my hard work was repaid when I was able to take home the trophy.
Six sidecars in a row: After leaving Horsham on the way to the Southern Cross Rally, just as I was approaching Pimpinio, I noticed another motorcycle and sidecar way off in the distance ahead of me. Not wishing to over-stress the Triumph I did not change speed, but rather hoped that I might meet the rider further along the road. By the time I reached Wail, he was out of sight so I more or less forgot about him. While approaching Dimboola, however, I saw him way off in the distance again. Unfortunately I had to stop for fuel at Dimboola, but was soon back out on the road again. Between Gerang Gerung and Kiata, I again came within sight of not one, but two sidecar outfits up in front! I couldn't resist! I opened the throttle just a tad higher, hoping to catch them up. By the time we passed through Nhill, I could see not two, but three sidecar outfits up front! Then I glanced in the rear-view mirror and there was another sidecar outfit behind me. Well before reaching Kaniva, I could see two outfits behind me and I had caught up with the three outfits in front. That made six sidecar outfits all in a straight line following each other along the same portion of road; my Triumph was number four. Now there were at that time, if I recall correctly, fewer than 600 sidecars registered in the entire State of Victoria. What the odds would be against six of those outfits becoming the six consecutive vehicles travelling along a lonely country road, when not one of us had planned to be travelling together, I cannot even hazard a guess. We all pulled up and stopped near Kaniva and had a bit of a chin-wag. All riders were headed to the Southern Cross Rally, and all decided that it was almost spooky to find six sidecars all travelling together in a line like that. After a short chin-wag, we all mounted our outfits again and headed off towards the South Australian border. As we were all choosing to travel at our own most comfortable pace, we never met again like that until we were all at the rally. I saw different members of the group again at various points along the way, but we never again formed up into a six-in-line formation. A strange incident to be remembering in such detail after all these years, but it was certainly an unforgettable incident of my motorcycling carrer.
Piston broke at Horsham! On the way home from the Southern Cross Rally, somewhere near Horsham, there was an explosive Bang from the engine and the bike went into an instant skid with the back wheel locked up. I pulled the clutch and rolled to a silent halt. Who should be coming along the road at that very moment but Alwyn Sobey my friend of many years from my Ballarat Rovers Motor Cycle Club days who, although we were not riding together, nor had we planned to be in the same part of the country at the same time, just happened to be right behind me on his BMW Steib outfit. He pulled up and got out a tow rope and towed me all the way to Ballarat. There we put the bike in for repairs while I stayed at Sobe's place. It turned out that the cap had broken off the left piston at the top ring land and that as the piston went down in the cylinder, the broken top flipped onto its side, so that as the piston rose on its next revolution it hit the piston cap and stopped dead, bending the connecting rod and the crankshaft. If I remember correctly, I borrowed somebody else's bike for a week and came back to Ballarat a week later to pick up my outfit with its newly-rebuilt engine. I seem to remember that it was only a short time after that, that the Triumph developed further engine trouble. I had to admit that my dad was right ... that the Trumpy was keeping me poor because it just wasn't a good enough bike to pull a sidecar all the time. I started to think I wanted a trouble-free Japanese bike again.
Negotiating for the Suzuki-Watsonian outfit ... Now at the Southern Cross Rally I had seen a very impressive 196cc Suzuki two-stroke twin fitted with a Watsonian Bambini sidecar. It was a demonstration model owned by one of the motorbike shops in downtown Adelaide. It seemed to be beautifully balanced, definitely looked appealing, and being a simple two-stroke, it should be a much more reliable sidecar bike than the Triumph. I commenced negotiations by letter and phone with the shop in Adelaide. Yes, the bike was for sale. Yes, I could get a good discount because it had been used as a demo model. No, they definitely would not accept a Triumph outfit or solo as a trade in. They would accept any Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, or Yamaha solo bike as a trade in. I didn't have one of those... But the Triumph was going to have to go. The Dusting was removed and fitted to a Harley.
1969: The borrowed 1957 Yamaha YD1 250cc with the single speed gearing
Now I promised above, to talk about the most memorable of the temporary borrowed bikes that I used while the Triumph was in being repaired. On one of these occasions Noel Einsiedel loaned me a 250cc Yamaha twin of mid fifties vintage. Its engine number commenced with "D1-" which means it was manufactured in 1957. It had leading link front forks with some sort of Harley-like undamped springing system hidden behind pressed steel shrouds. On Yamaha bikes of that era, the change to telescopic forks had not yet arrived. It had a 1930's-style pressed steel chassis to which everything else was bolted. The gearbox was cast in one piece with the crankcase, so it was "modern" in some aspects, but very "vintage" in others. Noel warned me that the bike had a dicey gear change and if the gears broke, don't worry about it "You'll figure out how to ride it anyway!" Well, the gear selectors did fail, and the gear-change shaft broke right off at the engine casing, so I threw the gear lever and broken piece of shaft into the pannier bag, pulled off the side of the gearbox and manipulated the gears into Third Gear, and put it all back together again. Either just before or just after the gear change failure, the kick starter also broke and was also placed in the pannier so it could be taken back to Noel. Thus it was that I found myself the rider of a single-speed bump-start Yamaha. The badge on the tank read "Yamaha ... since 1887" wrapped around a symbol of three crossed tuning forks. As I bump started it, it felt more like riding an 1880's model than a 1950's model! This bike had a quadrant-mounted ignition advance-retard lever mounted on the left handlebar. That lever was essential during the following weeks as I travelled the steep and winding mountain roads with only a single-speed gearbox. There was nowhere I couldn't take that bike even though I only had third gear. By correctly adjusting the ignition timing on the fly I was able to operate that two-stroke at what must have been the lowest engine speed I think I ever heard a two-stroke engine operating at. As its compression ratio would have been only about 5:1, it was a very flexible if not very powerful engine.
1970?: The second 1936 Harley-Davidson 1300cc Side Valve V-twin
Now as the owner of a Harley that was gradually getting worked on occasionally, it became generally known around the district that I was interested in Harley motorbikes. One day somebody told me that there were rumours that somewhere up around Thorpdale-Gormandale area, a Harley had been hidden in a farmer's shed so that it would not be commandeered for use by the army during the Second World War. I tracked down those rumours over the months until I had figured out what farm the bike was supposed to be on. The bloke who owned the farm at that time had been told about the bike when he had bought the farm, but since the blokes that hid the bike had both been killed in the War, nobody now knew where they had hidden the bike. I asked for and received his permission to look around and my practiced surveyor's eye noticed what nobody else had seen ... there was a wall in between two sheds that faced in opposite directions and both sides of the wall had the planks nailed on that side ... that is, there was no "front" and "back" side to this wall, both sides were the "front" side. As I looked at the sheds on both sides I realised that the wall must have been about 50 to 60 centimetres thick. I asked permission to remove the planking from the wall, and voila! there stood the Harley, all nicely greased and oiled and with the handlebars removed so that the hiding space could be much narrower. I paid the farmer for it, fixed the handlebars in the correct position, cleaned it up, pumped oil into the crankcase using the tank-mounted hand-operated oil pump, pumped up the tyres and put my trail-bike 6-volt battery in place of the huge Harley battery. Checked the spark plugs ... good spark! Put a cupful or two of petrol in the tank and cranked the motor to draw in petrol. Turned on the ignition switch and kicked the motor slowly over to get everything lined up right for the good kick. It never needed the second kick! The motor sprang to life on the first preparatory kick.
I rode it from Gormandale directly to the police station where it passed inspection and was registered that very same day. The registration number was GG-008. I rode it to Bairnsdale to visit my folks. Not a problem. It was an almost brand-new bike even though it was more than three decades old. I fitted the Dusting sidecar to it and it gave me many, many trouble-free miles. It was my second bike for many years.
Now 1936 Harleys were blessed with two twist-grip controls. The one on the right hand handlebar worked the throttle just like any other bike. The one on the left hand handlebar worked the ignition advance and retard system. If you got the engine revved up and rolling along pretty well, closed the throttle and immediately retarded the ignition, the result was an incredible string of backfires through the exhaust system. I don't know how good it was for the engine, but I sure loved the noise it made! The Coach Road hill above the town of Yallourn was on the short-cut between Newborough and Yallourn. It was a steep hill and just seemed to be begging me to do the closed throttle and retarded ignition trick. One night I did it and the police were called by worried residents to investigate a supposed shooting match going on between gangs somewhere in the bush up the Coach Road Hill. I read in the paper that the police couldn't find a trace of these supposed gang members. Next week, while riding back from Newborough, I just couldn't resist the temptation, so I did it again. Again the police were called out. As I realised that policemen no longer seemed to be as forgiving as they had been in "the old days", I decided not to push my luck by doing it any more.
The Gippsland Historical Automobile Club was founded in
1968 and was open to membership for any people owning or interested in Veteran, Vintage,
or Classic motor vehicles. A Veteran vehicle was any motor vehicle manufactured
prior to 1919, a Vintage vehicle was any motor vehicle manufactured from 1919 to 1930, and
a Classic vehicle was any motor vehicle manufactured from 1931 until 25 years before the
current date. There was much discussion about whether there ought to be a cut-off
date for Classic vehicles at the end of 1942. The GHAC was a very new organisation
only a few months old when I joined it in the 1960's although I was not a foundation
member. My 1936 Harley-Davidson motorcycles qualified me to be a member, and I
thoroughly enjoyed the fellowship and camaraderie as we all helped each other with our
elderly vehicles.
The Morwell Motorcycle Club was primarily interested in racing: scrambles (motocrosse), flat-track, speedway, grass-track, road racing. I joined in about 1969 and took part in various events until about 1973. More below to be added later.
1970? The Suzuki T200 196cc 2stroke twin with Watsonian Bambini sidecar.
The photo at the right is
not my bike, but to all intents and purposes it looks the same.
I rode my Triumph in solo trim (that is, without a sidecar) to Geelong and traded it in
on a second-hand single cylinder Japanese bike. I think it was a Kawasaki, Suzuki or
Honda of about 125cc. I can't remember: it's sole purpose was to transport me to
Adelaide where it was to be traded in on the Suzuki-Watsonian outfit which I mentioned
above. I remember the long slow ride to Adelaide the most memorable part of which
was looking in my rear-view mirror and seeing that there was a comet behind me. I
stopped the bike and stood there by the roadside in the pre-dawn early morning and stared
at the beautiful sight of a bright comet in the Eastern sky standing on its head which
pointed towards the sun which was still well below the horizon.
In Adelaide I arrived at the dealer's premises before he actually opened for the day, but
he soon arrived, and we exchanged bikes and money and did all the necessary paperwork and
I headed back towards Victoria that same day.
Re-wiring the sidecar: The wiring of the sidecar looked kind of ugly when I got it home: wires were kind of festooned everywhere and fixed in some places with a motley assortment of metal and plastic clips, in other places with yellow plastic tape. My inventor's mind became very active. I looked over the design of the sidecar and decided that I could design the perfect wiring loom. After a few careful measurements I went to Coles and purchased an ordinary household three pin 240 volts AC extension cord and promptly cut it in half. I removed the sidecar from the bike, poked some fencing wire through the sidecar mounting chassis under the bike and then pulled half of the household extension cord through the chassis so that the female socket end was flush with where the sidecar would be mounted back on, but inside its main tube. I removed the body from the sidecar and pulled the other half of the extension lead all the way through the sidecar chassis until the end of the cord came out of the topmost tube of the sidecar's suspension mounting where it would be absolutely hidden from sight inside the sidecar mudguard. At this stage the male three-pin plug of the cord was flush with the mounting point where the sidecar would mount to the bike but completely inside its main tube. I stripped a lot of parts off the bike and ran the extension cord up the inside the frame fastening it in the same clamps as the original Suzuki wiring loom. Where it passed the battery case I made a tiny incision in the outer rubber covering of the cord and pulled out a loop of the green earth wire from inside the cord. I bared a little of the cable, soldered on a round terminal and fastened it to the main earth mounting point beside the battery. The rest of the cord was fastened totally out of sight following the clamps holding the Suzuki wiring loom to the tail-light mounting area where all of the existing wiring was joined with male and female brass connectors under the cover near the taillight. I soldered one male and one female connector to the end of each wire of the cord and inserted them between the connectors to the taillight and the left turning indicator of the bike. I left the left turning indicator disconnected. Thus the whole of the wiring on the bike was invisible. When I fitted the sidecar back to the bike I simply pushed the three-pin plug into the three-pin socket and both were immediately swallowed up inside the tubular mounting hardware. On the sidecar, I removed the upholstery and did a very neat wiring job from the front and rear turning indicators and the running light and the tail light all hidden from sight behind the upholstery and passing through a tiny hole in the body to the inside of the sidecar mudguard. Inside the mudguard, I soldered brass connectors so that the body could easily be removed from the sidecar if required at a later date. At rallies I was asked dozens of times, "How does your sidecar lighting work? ... there is no wiring for it!" I lost count of the number of times that I had to describe my invention. It was always so thrilling after I looked at all the other beautiful sidecar outfits at various bike rallies with their beauty marred by the legally required but very ugly wiring harness to then look back at the Suzuki which had not a wire in sight.
My first Sidecar Bingle: One day I was riding through one of
Melbourne's Eastern suburbs on the Suzuki-Watsonian with my sister Julie in the sidecar.
We were searching for a street which should have come up soon on the right hand
side. Street signs were often missing, or bent or rusty and were therefore often
difficult or impossible to read. What I should have done was pull over to the side
of the road, identify a side street, get the Melways directory from Julie and count the
number of streets to the one we were looking for. But it is always easy to be wise
after the event. While trying to make out a street name on a rusty sign, I was
distracted from watching the road ahead. I looked back at the road and there, right
in front of me, was a stationary car that had pulled into the centre of the road ready to
make a right hand turn. I applied both brakes hard, but a sidecar outfit has a much
longer stopping distance than a solo bike and I quickly realised that I wasn't going to
make it. In retrospect I realise that I should have not braked at all, but wrenched
the handlebars hard left and then hard right and I would probably have missed the car
altogether. But as it was, while I lost most of my speed, finally I hit the rear of
the car with sufficient speed to send me straight up over the handlebars and I landed on
the roadway beside the car. As I did the "Commando Roll" I had been taught
while training for the Ballarat Rovers Stunt Team years earlier, I was uninjured; not even
a scratch. My Sister, Julie was also almost uninjured, having slid right down into
the nose of the sidecar feet first. If I remember it correctly, she had been wearing open
sandals and received a small scratch on one toe. It was a small enough injury to be
"fixed" by wrapping her hanky around it. The sidecar had dived in under
the rear of the car and both the nose and the windscreen mounting were fractured.
The front fork tubes were okay but had twisted slightly in the triple clamps so that the
handlebars pointed one way while the front wheel of the bike pointed another.
I straightened the forks and rode the bike the few blocks to our destination. Then I
rode it back to Morwell where the faithful old white fish box was fitted to the sidecar
chassis and the Watsonian sidecar body and fairing took up residence on my bed. It
was only on my bed in the day time though! I went to the library and borrowed books
on repairing of fibreglass. I learned that it was really called FRP (fibreglass
reinforced Plastic) and that I needed to purchase resin and hardener and fibreglass
matting and that repairing my sidecar should be a very easy matter. About a week
later both my sidecar body and the windscreen fairing were back in perfect shape and ready
to go to the paint shop. A few days after that, they were fitted back in place
beside the Suzuki.
The Speed Test: Near home, they were building a new freeway. The road was completed but not yet opened. It was a dead straight downhill run of several kilometres. There was a tail wind blowing. There was enough room to get a little motorbike and sidecar around the barricades and up onto the freeway. It was irresistable. Next day I had taped a stopwatch to the handlebars. After a careful look around for any sign of police cars, I sneaked around the barricades and up onto the freeway. I tucked my head down as low as it would go and lay down with my belly on the tank. I wrapped it on and got that little 196cc engine going like it had never gone before. I watched the speedo ... 80, 90, 100, ... it just kept going. Then I noticed that the rev counter was reading "Made in Japan" so I thought I ought to slow down a little! I cannot now remember the measured speed I did, but it was written up in Two Wheels magazine in late 1972 or early 1973, if anyone still has a copy.
I rode that little outfit a great many miles, but I had a tendency to thrash the guts out of it. It was never run without the sidecar and it would spin up to high speeds, so as I was riding long distances I tended to run it at high speeds. I used to ride the Harley outfit quite a lot during those years as well, but I kind of wanted to keep the Harley for later, so the poor little Suzuki was mercilessly thrashed. It was a very light bike and I was a very heavy man, so its suspension wasn't really good enough for the job - especially when I carried passengers in the sidecar. The bike was designed as a short trip around town commuter bike, not to do interstate trips hauling a sidecar. The seat was designed to just get you from home to work, and by the time I had been travelling for five or six hours at a stretch, my bottom was very sore. My father had taught me that it was always more interesting to get off the beaten track instead of sticking to the main highways. However the soft suspension on the little Suzuki would often bottom out while riding on rough gravel roads.
I developed more and more of an interest in trail riding, but I didn't have a trail bike. Lots of the fellows I met around town came back from their trail rides with glowing reports of all the wonderful scenery thay had travelled through. School teachers are not made of money and I really couldn't afford to keep three bikes registered and on the road, so if I wanted a trail bike then the Suzuki would have to go. I bought a second hand DT1 250cc 2-stroke single trail bike, registration number CT-519, and sold the Suzuki outfit for more than I had paid for it new, as it now had "rare bike" value being the only motorcycle of its type in Australia, as well as being fitted with the extremely rare Watsonian Bambini sidecar.
1971?: The Yamaha DT1 250cc 2stroke single with Tilbrook Tom-Thumb sidecar.
The
photograph on the right shows a later model Yamaha 250cc single trail bike which was
fairly similar to mine, but the one in the photograph belonged to somebody else.
Mine had a right side hand gear change beside the fuel tank and had a wider and flatter
luggage rack. My colour scheme was also quite different.
I took the Yamaha on a couple of trail rides, but it had something missing. I was certain that trail riding would be much more fun with a sidecar. A Tilbrook Tom Thumb was found and was fitted to the bike with the help of my friend Gary Dunn who had a whole workshop in his back shed at Churchill. The colour photo at right shows a front view of my outfit not long after someone had backed into it in a parking lot and put a ding in the nose of the sidecar.
The frosty bridge. One weekend on a very frosty morning about seven bikes were headed out from Moe to go for a trail ride. I had the sidecar on the DT1 so when I saw that the wooden-plank bridge had a thick coating of bright white frost I just kept right on going without even thinking of slowing down. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw all the solo bikes sliding in all directions. Not a one of them managed to stay upright! Fortunately, trail bikes are well-built and the riders wore thick protective clothing, so neither motorbikes nor riders were injured at all. This little incident reminded me again that the motorbike and sidecar is one of the safest vehicles on the road, especially when the road surface gets bad.
Mount Saint Gwinear. I'm not sure of the spelling of this mountain, but it was covered in snow during the winter when a group of us decided that we would try to reach the summit on our motorbikes. As we climbed the snow became deeper and deeper and I think all of the guys riding solo bikes fell off. I kept on plodding along with the sidecar until, quite suddenly, a massive snowball developed underneath the sidecar and lifted it. The outfit rolled over to the right and I fell off into a deep snowdrift. The throttle twistgrip was evidently jammed wide open as the motor was screaming. I turned off the ignition and the motor just kept screaming ... the spark plug and its coating of the products of combustion was so hot that it was acting as a glow plug - similar to those used in model aeroplane engines. I quickly threw the bike back onto its wheels and gripped the brakes to stall the engine. We made very slow progress as the snow became deeper and deeper. The vehicle furthest up the road was a four-wheel drive that had been abandoned totally bogged. The snow was up to its windows. I was able to get the Yamaha only two or three metres further than the four wheel drive before I decided it was no use going on. It was just too much work digging out mountains of snow. The biggest problem was the weight of the bike which caused the tyres to sink down deep into the snow. It was a day on which I wished the outfit had ultra-wide wheels. A year or two later I figured out how to solve this problem - see below. As the bike sank into the snow the floor of the sidecar would rest on the surface of the snow and the outfit would simply tip over. I think I rolled the outfit over more than a dozen times that morning before deciding that the only way to the summit would be to walk. A group of guys manhandled one of the solo bikes until it was a few metres further up the mountain than my sidecar just so I couldn't say that the sidecar could go where the solos couldn't. We all had a lot of fun sliding down the mountain on superphosphate bags for an hour or two; then we dug out our bikes and headed back down towards civilisation.
Crossing the billabong on a log. My family moved away from Morwell to Bairnsdale and I used to ride the outfit down there to visit them whenever there were no trail rides on. One day my brother Mick and I had the outfit down on the flats beside the Mitchell River doing some bush-bashing. We came across a grassy area bisected by a very long and narrow billabong. At one point there was a log across the billabong and it was obvious from the tracks through the grass that people were in the habit of using it as a bridge to cross the billabong and thus take a shortcut. I looked at it, walked back and forth across it and then announced to my brother that I was going to ride the motorbike and sidecar accross it. I pulled back a bit and built up a suitable amount of speed, swung sharply left to lift the sidecar high in the air and then, riding on two wheels at about a 45 degree angle I aimed the bike at the log. I drove across the billabong on the log in perfect safety. We decided this was worth recording, so Mick got the camera ready and I went back and did it again. When I was on the log about half-way across the billabong I lifted my left hand from the handlebar and gave a cheery wave. The resulting photo showed the outfit halfway across the billabong, sidecar high in the air, and me waving away as though I did this every day of the week. That photo eventually ended up in one of the motorcycle magazines of those days ... perhaps it was the "Green Horror" (Australian Motorcycle News) or maybe Two Wheels magazine. Unfortunately I do not have a copy of it any more.
1971: 1925 Harley Davidson 1200cc
F-Head V-Twin
I did not own this bike, but assisted its owner Gary Dunn in its restoration. I got to ride it a number of times while Gary was waiting to get his motorbike licence so that he could ride it. In the photo at right the Harley had been restored but its sidecar was not yet fitted. Other bikes in the picture are a red Honda 90cc and my Yamaha DT1 250cc single before its sidecar had been fitted. The blue Harley was certainly a head-turner wherever it went. While the engine was running, the pushrods would be reciprocating up and down beside the cylinders and you could watch the rockers rocking and see the valve springs compressing as the inlet valves were operating. It took me back to the dozens of similar Harleys that made virtually all household deliveries when I was a kid. The term "F-Head" means that the inlet valve for each cylinder was placed exactly above the exhaust valve and both valves were offset to the side of the cylinder. So the exhaust valve was a "side-valve" and the inlet valve was more or less an "overhead valve". The engine ran very efficiently and well, but maintenance was much more time-consuming than on the side-valve engines that later replaced them. Before riding the Harley, at least once a week, it was necessary to use a grease gun to grease the nipples on the valve rocker arms. In fact there were grease nipples all over the bike that had to be regularly attended to. The brakes on this bike were of special interest. There was no braking on the front wheel or the sidecar wheel at all. On the back wheel there was a narow drum about 25mm wide which had two brakes working on it. There were two brake pedals, one under the toe of your right boot near the front of the right footboard and a second one to be operated by your right heel at the rear of the right footboard. The front footbrake operated an external contracting brake band which was around the outside of the drum, while the other rear brake pedal operated an internally expanding set of brake shoes which were inside the drum. Actually, I cannot remember which pedal operated which brake, but one certainly worked on each. The clutch was operated by the left foot and the gear shift was operated by the left hand. Thus this bike had very clean looking handlebars with no levers on them at all. The right hand twist grip operated the throttle and was the only control on the right handlebar. The left hand twist grip operated the ignition timing which was advanced or retarded manually by twisting the twist-grip as required. The other control on the left handlebar was the horn button which operated a significantly loud and commanding horn which was fitted below the headlight on the front forks. If I recall correctly, I think we added a suitably aged looking headlamp dipper switch to the right handlebar and did the required re-wiring to fit a dual-filament bulb inside the original headlamp as I am pretty sure there was not any provision for dipping the headlamp when we bought the bike. The "tank" was actually three separate tanks with three separate filling caps. The left front cap filled the oil tank. Lubrication was a total loss affair with a gear-operated external oil pump fitted to the right hand side of the engine - it is clearly visible in the photo. The hand-operated oil pump on the top of the tank was for use under heavy going if the engine overheated, or when putting the engine back into service after a long period of inactivity. The second filler cap on the left side of the tank filled a small "reserve" petrol tank. The main petrol tank was filled through the filler on the right.
1972: Moto Guzzi 850cc OHV V-twin
For many years, the fast wearing of the final drive chain had been a real nuisance for
me on all of the sidecar bikes I rode. I often longed for a shaft drive but BMWs
were too expensive for a bloke like me who kept spending his money on all sorts of
different motorbikes on a very regular basis. Several times I looked at the Russian
M-series bikes ... shaft drive boxer twins of varoius capacities which were advertised as
"One dollar per cc", thus a 500cc version was $500 and a 650cc version was $650
and so on. The trouble was that no matter who I asked, I always got the same
response: "They will break down all the time and you will never get parts for
them." So I didn't purchase one, although I rode several of them on test rides
at different times over the years.
Meanwhile, the Italian company Moto Guzzi commenced marketing its bikes in Victoiria and
shiny brochures became available at the local motorbike shop. I looked through the
brochures and I liked what I saw. In particular, I liked the promised 850cc touring
bike which hadn't yet arrived in Australia and ordered one off the brochure. I paid
my deposit and waited and waited and waited and waited. I was told, "Your bike
will arrive in March ... in May ... in July ... in September ..." Eventually I
received my shiny red brand new Moto Guzzi 850 just before Christmas 1972. It was
fitted with the white Craven Dolomite panniers I had ordered and with a very large white
handlebar fairing and windscreen. My father dubbed it "the two-wheeled
car." A transverse V-twin, it had a great gearbox and shaft drive, not to
mention the luxury of an electric starter. Most of the time I was so far within its
performance range that it was almost just idling along.
The photos of my Guzzi at the right are taken from old colour
polaroid prints and the colours have darkened and become spotted during the last
thirty-odd years.
I had every intention of fitting a sidecar to it, but I wanted the sidecar to be a new one. At that time there were two sidecar manufacturers that I was aware of: Baja Sidecars who were North of Albury if I recall correctly, and Twin-G Sidecars who were somewhere in a suburb East of Melbourne. I think Murphy sidecars were also being made in Sydney's Western Suburbs, but I didn't like the shape of them. I considered both the Baja and the Twin-G and decided on the Twin-G because of its better aerodynamic design. The Baja was a wedge shape with a tall cut-off vertical rear wall; I decided that its shape would create a great deal more drag than the more streamlined-looking Twin-G. There was a problem ... if I ordered a Twin-G, it would be several months before I worked my way gradually up the waiting list and eventually got my ordered machine. The guy hand made them one at a time and had a severe backlog of orders. For a while I decided to enjoy riding it solo and did not immediately order my Twin-G.
The Moto Guzzi was an ideal touring machine: very comfortable, plenty of power,
very wide power range, lots of room for luggage (especially with the Craven carrier and
panniers), and it just had the feeling that you could ride on it for ever and thoroughly
enjoy it. I went to a couple of Rallies and on a few other camping trips with
it. I remember going to a rally held in the Warrumbungle Ranges National Park where
the road in was an extremely rough clay road with boulders all over it and erosion ruts a
foot (30 cm) deep. I thought to myself that this road would really suit my Yamaha
trail bike better. But the big heavy Guzzi took it all in its stride and I never fell off,
even though I did not have a sidecar. Many other touring bikes were seen lying on
their sides on the road where their owners had been bucked off by the horrific road
conditions.
I remember travelling from Mount Beauty to Harrietville via the Tawonga Gap with a full
load of camping gear on board and scraping the centre stand of the bike on every single
curve of that magificent road. For anyone who loves a winding ride on a solo bike, I
can really recommend that road as one of the best motorbike roads ever.
I remember the first day I rode it at more than 100 mph. It was on a beautiful
straight stretch of the Princes Highway between Bairnsdale and Stratford, and, since the
engine was now fully run in, I decided to open it up. It effortlessly wound up past
the magical 160 km/h mark to about 170 km/h where I decided that I really ought to roll
off the throttle a bit in case those gentlemen with the blue uniforms decided to stretch
amphometer tapes accross the road. Sure enough, just as I got down to the legal
speed limit, there were the two black tapes across the road. I kind of grinned to
myself as I thought, "You guys just don't know what I was doing a mile or so back
along the highway."
The farm bike competition. One weekend there was an advertised
farm bike competition being held. I am not sure of the venue, but I think it might
have been at Gelantipy. I rode up there for the day intending to be a spectator and
enjoy the competition. As I waited for things to start, it turned out that very few
farm bikes had actually arrived for the competition. One of the organisers
approached me and asked me to join the competition on my Moto Guzzi 850cc V-twin.
Now Agricultural motor cycles are light, small machines specifically designed for the kind
of skills that were needed for this competition. My Guzzi on the other hand was a
heavyweight long-distance touring bike with not much ground clearance, a huge pair of
fibre-glass Craven Dolomite panniers, an enormous handlebar-mounted touring fairing and
windscreen, and so on ... a far cry from a farm bike! I was encouraged to enter so I
shrugged my shoulders and thought it would be fun trying, but not thinking I had a
chance of completing the course.
The first event involved riding up to a closed gate, unfastening and opening the gate,
riding through the gateway, closing the gate behind you and correctly fastening it and
then riding to the finish line without putting a foot to the ground for balance.
Several competitors went througfh the course on Ag-bikes first and they all put their foot
on the ground at least once and lost points. My turn came up and I went through on
the Guzzi, did everything faultlessly and didn't put a foot to the ground once. I
won that round easily!
The next event involved about six or seven 44-gallon drums which were placed on their side
on the ground, fastened in place by stakes. A ramp of wood was placed against the
first drum and the idea was that you had to ride over the whole line of drums and off the
other end, where there was no ramp, without falling off your bike or putting the foot to
the ground for balance. This time I was asked to go first, so I put the Guzzi into
gear, straight up the ramp and bounced happily along the line of drums without the
slightest problem. As I approached the end of the line of drums I lifted the front
wheel in the air and did a neat jump off the last drum and rode to the finish line.
Again a faultless performance. One or two of the farm bikes also managed a faultless
crossing of the drums, but most had to use their feet for balance, and a couple of
competitors fell off their bikes.
I took part in all the other events that day and turned in a faultless performance for the
whole day. I won the slow race (where a motorcycle has to be ridden as slowly as
possible without putting one's foot on the ground with the last bike to the finish line
being the winner) by miles ... I was about a quarter of the way along the course when all
of the other bikes had already crossed the finish line. As everyone was getting sick
of waiting for me when I had obviously won so well, I mono-wheeled the last half of the
course just for fun. The reporter from the paper interviewed me and asked me where I
as a non-farming touring-bike rider had learned the skills to be able to successfully herd
sheep, ride over see-saws, and all of those other interesting things. When I
explained that I had been a Stunt Rider for several years and that my stunt riding had
mainly been done on heavy Harley-Davidson machines, he kind of understood how I had been
able to pull it off. That week, there was a great photo of my touring-equipped Moto
Guzzi on the front page of the Bairnsdale Advertiser along with a story about the
farm bike competition.
21st March 1973: The night that changed my life.
When one is a qualified teacher, it is necessary throughout your teaching career to
continually update your qualifications. To do this you attend courses of lectures
held after school hours at various venues around the district. In March 1973 I
happened to be attending a series of lectures held at the Grey Street Primary School in
Traralgon. On the 21st of March, at the end of the lecture, I placed my books in
the left pannier of my Moto Guzzi 850 and started to travel towards home along Church
Street. I stopped at Kay Street to look for traffic coming from the right; there
was nothing coming, so I crossed the first carriageway of Kay Street and glanced briefly
to the left before crossing the second carriageway; I noticed the lights of a car
approaching but it was still quite some distance away and was required by law to give way
to all traffic on its right, which included me. As I crossed the second carriageway,
still in first gear, I suddenly noticed that the car to my left was very much closer than
I had supposed and that it was in fact travelling at an extremely high speed ... and I was
already right in front of it!
There was a tremendous bang and I found myself airborne, and I was thinking so quickly
while in the air that I was already aware that my left leg was broken, so I hooked my
right foot under it to try to prevent further damage before I hit the road a little over
85 feet from the point of impact. Apparently, when a motor car collides with a
motorcycle from exactly side on, the tyres attempt to stick to the road so that the body
of the motorcyle perorms an incredibly fast acceleration in a direction away from the car
that has just hit it. This acceleration acts as a verty powerful catapult which
sends the rider up into the air and rapidly away from the scene of impact at a
considerably faster speed than the speed of the car. Thus, I landed on the road well
clear of both vehicles.
I was well aware that my left leg was broken, and therefore I did not attempt to get up
but waited there on the roadway for the arrival of an ambulance. Now there isn't
exactly much you can occupy your time with while you are in such a position so I looked
around me and sized up the situation. I could see my bike lying on its side
and that all the contents of my pannier boxes were strewn everywhere, and I could see that
the weight of my motorbike had pushed in the front of the car so that its engine had been
moved back into the passenger compartment. As I considered the extent of the damage,
especially to the car, I marvelled that I hadn't been killed in the collision.
As I considerd this, I looked around me and noticed that there were churches located on
three of the four corners of the intersection; the fourth corner had a petrol station.
And as I looked around at the churches, the thought was planted in my mind:
"God was looking after you." Now at that prticular time I was working hard
at pretending that I didn't believe in God: I was trying to be an atheist. The
problem was, that this train of thought wouldn't go away. Now this God I was trying
not to believe in was speaking in the first person: "Phil, I was looking after you
tonight!"
He was very persistent and wouldn't stop: "I was looking after you ... My hand
is upon you ... I will never leave you nor forsake you ... I am looking after you."
No matter how much I tried to convince myself that I didn't believe in God, He
still continued to speak to me, until the ambulance arrived.
I was taken to the Central Gippsland Hospital in Traralgon, which became my "home
away from home" during the next several months.
I had to sign various forms during the admission process, including forms for permission
to use anaesthetics etc., but there was one form which, when I looked at it, I immediately
heard the same voice which had spoken to me earlier in the night while I had been waiting
for the ambulance; it said, "Do NOT give them permission to amputate that leg."
So I did not sign the amputation form. Over the next several months I was in
and out of hospital a number of times, had many minor operations, and by mid-September I
was back in for bone grafts and skin grafts. I was still attempting to try to
be an atheist, but every time I tought back to the night of the collision, that same voice
would come back as if to haunt me: "I am looking after you." Now I have
always been an avid reader, and in hospital there was not much to read, but there was a
Gideons Bible always there on my bedside table. I started to read it.
Sometimes when I would be in pain, I would look up the table in the front which told me
which references to read if I was in pain. As soon as I would read those scriptures,
the pain would mysteriously vanish. As I read the Gospels, especially the Sermon on the
Mount, I found myself thinking, "Wouldn't the world be a fantastic place if everybody
in it observed these principles in their lives." The little voice which was
becoming more and more familiar would immediately come back with, "Why don't you
start with yourself?"
In September a grader driver whose name I have forgotten was brought into hospital after
an accident and was placed in the bed opposite mine. He talked about Jesus as though
Jesus was his best mate. He gave a tract to me which was titled: This was Your Life. I
read it through several times and looked up all of the scripture references and read them
in context. I soon reached the point where I had decided that now I knew how to be
saved, that one of these days, sometime between now and when I died, I really ought to
give my life to Jesus Christ so that I would have eternal life. But first there were
too many sinful things which I had never tried out that I would like to have a go at
first.
Perhaps the 10th September 1973 might have been the loneliest day of my life. Here I
was, stuck in hospital with my leg up on a Braun's frame, eighty miles away from my
nearest relative, it was my 27th birthday and nobody was going to come and visit me.
The doctors had placed me on a strict 1000 calories per day diet, so I couldn't
even have a cake to celebrate on my own. I suppose I was a bit depressed. I
guess that was really the most down day of my life.
However, Sister Petrovich had evidently observed in my records that it was my birthday, as
she added a candle to one of the tasteless blobs of stuff that was part of my diet and
brought in a whole bunch of other nurses to sing "Happy Birthday" to me.
My feelings lifted upwards, just a little bit. And three days later, wow!
There is a fuller version of this part of the story on http://www.drdisk.com.hk/PhilSmith/about.htm
for those interested, but to cut a long story short, at about 10 minutes past 12 midday on
13th September 1973, I listened at last to that still small voice and
asked Jesus Christ to come into my life and to be my Saviour. I have not been the
same since. That's why I say that the 21st March 1973 was the starting point of the
biggest change in my life.
Modifying Bikes to Ride While Crippled: During the months
that I was on crutches, in between my visits to hospital for more and more operations, I
regularly rode two bikes: my Yamaha 250cc DT1 with Tilbrook Sidecar and my 1936 Harley
Davidson with Dusting sidecar. The first of these to be modified was the
Yamaha. The DT1 was made with the gear shifter shaft extending through BOTH sides of
the gearbox with a kind of plastic cap pressed on over the right hand end of the
shaft. Normally, of course, the Yamaha, like any Japanese bike, had its gear change
lever on the left side end of this shaft and it was operated by the rider's left foot.
Now I found myself with my left leg encased in plaster and no possibility at all of
operating the gear change with my foot. I got a second-hand gear lever, cut the
pedal off it, and welded on a length of straight chrome-plated pipe. I neatly fitted
a rubber bicycle handlebar grip over the end of the pipe and fastened it to the right hand
end of the gear shifter shaft. People would really take a second look when they
would see me changing gears with a lever beside the right-hand side of my tank.
Modifying the Harley for riding without a left leg was also a fairly simple matter.
The Harley's left foot control was the clutch, the gear change being managed by the left
hand using a lever which operated in a gate on the left side of the fuel tank. Now
this bike had been built in the days before spring returns had been fitted to throttles,
clutches and the like, so these levers always stayed in exactly the position in which you
placed them. To modify the foot clutch, I made a long handle out of a piece of steel
strapping recovered from the frame of a wrecked pram. Another short length of the
strapping was used to triangulate the fitting of the hand lever to the normal foot clutch
lever which was done with three small bolts and nuts. Thus to change gears on the
Harley, I would use my left hand to pull the clutch lever fully back towards me to
disengage the clutch, let go the clutch lever and use my left hand to change gears, and
then use my left hand again to push the clutch lever forward and away from me until the
clutch was again engaged. I remember taking my Harley to the Police Station in
Yallourn to have the modifications approved. The policeman said to me, "Hey
Smithy, we know you well enough to know you wouldn't even bring it here unless it was
perfectly safe to ride. ... We don't need to inspect that bike to give you a safety
certificate." Having written out the certificate, he said, "Oh what the
heck! There's nothing much going on around here ... I have always wanted a ride in a
sidecar ... let's go out for a ride!" So he hopped into the sidecar and I
started the Harley and we rode around the various streets of Yallourn, the policeman's
grin being so wide his ears nearly fell in!
Meanwhile the Moto Guzzi on which I had been riding on the night that began to change my life was sitting in a corner of the workshop behind Noel Einsiedel's shop. It was apparently extremely difficult in those days to get spare parts for it. Month after month after month it just sat there. Eventually Noel bought it from me, so I don't know whether or not it was ever repaired.
Miracle on the road to Morwell
One Sunday at evening service at St Luke's Methodist Church in Morwell a visiting
preacher spoke on Hebrews 13:8 "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for
ever." and made the claim that there was no miracle recorded in the Bible anywhere
between Genesis 1:1 and Revelation 22:20 that God could not do again today if the occasion
called for it.
Next day I read Acts 8:39-40, "And when they were come up out of the water, the
Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his
way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached
in all the cities, till he came to Cæsarea."
I thought to myself that miraculous transportation from one physical location to another
was one miracle I had never ever heard of happening in the twentieth century, so I prayed
about it and asked the Lord to lead me to a book in which I could read about such a modern
day miracle. I did not for even one moment suspect that he would make me the subject
of that book.
Now at that time, my daily transport was a single cylinder 250cc Yamaha motorbike and
sidecar which was painted in a bright day-glo orange-red colour (which,
according to the Taubman’s paint company, was officially known as "Boeing
Red") and was so eye-catching that everybody in my country district knew that
machine and knew who rode it. It was capable of just 35 mph (60 km/h) or perhaps 40
mph (70 km/h) if I had a tail wind. Having a very small fuel tank that held only
about a gallon (3 or 4 litres), it was necessary to stop every forty miles (70 km) or so
for petrol. At that same time I was a member of Christ's Crusaders Motorcycle Club
and had become well known for attempting to preach the gospel to other motorbike riders
such as the members of Hell's Angels and Satan's Cavalry. At that time also I was a
Lay Pastor in the St Luke's Methodist parish at Morwell.
The following Sunday I was not scheduled to do any preaching in the parish, but I was
scheduled to lead the opening worship at the 7pm (19:00) evening service. I decided
to visit my parents who lived in Bairnsdale, about 80 miles (130 km) away. I had
figured that if I left my parents' home soon after lunch on the Sunday, I would have
plenty of time to make the 2½ or 3 hour journey back to Morwell, have some dinner, go to
the pre-service prayer meeting and then lead the opening worship. "No
worries!" I thought to myself.
About 3pm (15:00), I pulled on my motorbike outer clothing and went out to the front of my
parents' house where my bike was parked at the side of the road on Main Street. I
checked my tyres, brakes, lights, oil level, and petrol and, satisfied that all was in
order for a safe trip to Morwell, I kick-started the motor. I had already pulled in
the clutch and, just as I was about to push the hand gear-shift lever to the right of the
petrol tank forward to engage first gear, seven or eight Harleys and Triumph motorbikes
arrived and pulled up all around me. I was receiving a surprise visit from several
members of Satan's Cavalry. I stopped the motor and started talking right there on
the street. They had lots of questions for me: "If the God you preach is a God
of love, how could He let all those innocent people die in the train crash last
week?" "If God is really all powerful, how come he didn't stop that gang
from raping the pastor's daughter in Melbourne last month?" and so on.
I patiently answered their questions as well as I could, yet was also aware that time was
ticking away. "I don't need dinner when I get to Morwell," I reasoned with
myself; and a little later, "If I don't make the prayer meeting, it will be all
right, I can pray while I am riding along the road." All this time, I had never
seen these outlaw bikers, who would normally make themselves scarce pretty soon after we
started preaching to them, so interested in asking and listening intently to the answers
to so many questions. "I am really getting through to these guys at last,"
I thought to myself.
Eventually, the questions ran out, and one of the guys announced, "Let's all go to
the pub for an hour or two."
I excused myself and said I needed to get back to Morwell and started on my way. I
looked at my watch as I pulled on my gloves ... it was 17:45 (5:45pm). I had only an
hour and a quarter to do a trip that would normally take at least two and a half hours!
As I drove up the road, I prayed that Richard or Pepe would realise that I wasn't at the
pre-service prayer time and step in and lead worship. I was soon cruising along the
highway at about 35 mph and felt strangely peaceful about missing the evening church
service. When I was about seven or eight miles out of town I was on a nice straight
stretch of road with State Forests on both sides and was thinking to myself how beautiful
all the trees appeared in the evening sunlight. Suddenly, almost without being aware
of it, I realised that I was approaching the railway crossing to the East of Traralgon.
I thought to myself, "I've been day-dreaming while I was riding."
"I can't remember any details of any of the towns I went through along the
way." " I can't remember passing through Stratford." "Did
I cross the Avon River Bridge?" "Did I travel via Sale or via
Maffra?" "I have no recollection of passing through Rosedale."
"How come it's still daylight ... it ought to be quite dark by now."
"I cannot even remember filling up with petrol."
I felt down to the petrol tap, it was in the "Normal" position; I had not yet
switched to reserve. I thought to myself, "I must have miss-read my watch when
I was about to leave Bairnsdale." I sang and prayed as I drove through
Traralgon, up the hill past the Hospital, and along the Prince's Highway to Morwell.
As I approached the traffic lights, I made the right turn into the St Luke's Church
car-park. I had missed the pre-service prayer time, but was just in time to walk
straight in and start the service, still wearing all my motorbike gear. I put my
helmet and gloves in the lectern and started leading worship. As I led worship, I
noticed that a guy from Satan's Cavalry was in the service, not one of the guys I had
talked to in Bairnsdale, but a different fellow.
After the service, he asked me, "How did you get here?"
I responded, "What do you mean, how did I get here ... by motorbike of course."
He continued, "Our guys planned to foul up your day and make you real mad by missing
church tonight; they planned to hold you up in Bairnsdale."
I ran to my bike and got out my petrol book (I was in the habit of writing down in a Shell
Driver's Log Book, every petrol stop I made: the date and time, odometer reading, the
amount of petrol I purchased and how much it cost were all faithfully recorded.) The
last entry in my petrol book showed that I had filled it up at Bairnsdale and I compared
the odometer reading I had recorded with that on my motorbike now: I had travelled
only something like twenty miles instead of eighty!
It was only then that I suddenly realised that I had not miss-read my watch at Bairnsdale
after all. The Lord had worked a miracle of the transportation kind. He had
somehow moved my motorbike and sidecar and me from somewhere West of Bairnsdale to
somewhere East of Traralgon in just a moment. Even saved me a tank full of petrol!
I have no explanation of how it was done. Mileage-wise, one could say I had
loaded my bike onto a trailer and carried it from one place to the other. But that
is not what happened. That week I was stopped several times by members of Satan's
Cavalry, "How did you get to church on Sunday?" When I told them that the
Lord had worked a miracle, they just said I was nuts. A lot of people said I was
nuts, but I can only report what happened to me. You just have to take it or leave
it.
1973-1980 Christ's Crusaders Motorcycle Club
In the section above titled "The night that changed my life" I mentioned how,
while I was in the Hospital in Traralgon, that I had come to a full belief in the Lord
Jesus Christ. The nursing sister in charge of the Orthopædic ward for one shift of
most days was Sister Petrovich. She seemed to be the only one who really understood
why I was going around the ward madly trying to tell everybody about Jesus. A day or
so after my life changing experience, she asked me whether she could ask her husband and
his friends to come and visit me in hospital. Now hospital can be a pretty boring
place when your nearest relatives live eighty miles away, so I responded, "Sure, why
not!"
It was Saturday, I think, when Pepe Petrovich and a half dozen other fellows all dressed
in their motorbike gear came in to see me. We talked for a while and I began to be
very excited about the vision that Pepe had for bringing the gospel to guys on motorbikes.
The group was called "Christ's Crusaders" and they wore outlaw-style
patches on their jackets. They met every Thursday night in a "den" behind
the hall of St Luke's Methodist Church in Morwell. Although their meeting place was
at St Luke's, I was hastily assured that not all of the members of the club were from St
Luke's church. Gordon belonged to the Church of Christ, and someone else was from another
church as well.
I made up my mind during that very first visit, that one day, when I was out of hospital,
I would join Christ's Crusaders.
The first Thursday I was out of hospital, I rode around to where all the motorbikes were
parked at the rear of St Luke's, parked my bike, and hobbled along on my crutches to
"The Den".
I thoroughly enjoyed my first meeting and rarely missed one thereafter. At the
meetings we would sing, pray for each other, and share testimonies about the wonderful
things Jesus was doing in each of our lives. Somebody would bring some teaching from
the Bible and many times there would be prophecies or gifts of speaking in tongues
followed by Interpretation. We witnessed healings and heard testimonies about many
wonderful miracles that the Lord had worked as the members prayed. These were really
exciting days.
Every now and again we would welcome a new member. Some of these guys had been
members of Satan's Cavalry that had come to know Christ. Others were just ordinary
everyday Joe Blow motorbike riders whom we met around town and started talking to and who
then decided to acknowledge that Jesus was their Lord.
The club existed to enjoy riding their motorbikes and enjoy serving the Lord at the same
time.
We used to plan to travel together to some of the annual motorcycle rallies held in
various states and we also arranged to conduct worship services on the Sunday mornings at
those rallies.
Many weekends, we would also be asked to conduct church services or youth fellowship
meetings in churches throughout Gippsland.
After I had been attending for some months the existing "Patch Wearers" had a
meeting at which they decided to make me a Patch Wearer and I was issued with my patch.
After a year or so, Pepe Petrovich who was the leader of Christ's Crusaders, felt that the
time had come to devote more time to looking after his growing family and decided to step
down. The club went away for a weekend retreat and decided that I was to become the
new leader. I held this position until I was married in February 1976 and moved away
from Morwell, at which time I handed on the leadership to Joe Tettman.
Christ's Crusaders "raid" Satan's Cavalry. The Harley "shotgun"
One of the really fun times we had with Christ's Crusaders, was the night we decided to
"raid" the Satan's Cavalry meeting which was being held at their "secret
hideout." It came about like this. Years earlier, my family had rented a
farmhouse on River Road at Tyers as our family home from one Mr George Baillie. Our
family had moved away from there in 1965. One day I met George Baillie while he was
delivering eggs and decided to stop for a talk. He mentioned that he was now renting
his house to "some of your mates." It turned out that he meant by this
that a motorcycle club had rented the house in order to hold their meetings there.
The club turned out to be Satan's Cavalry. Completely oblivious to the fact that the
club's meeting place was supposed to be a closely guarded secret, George went on to
explain exactly which days each week that they met there and at which times.
Knowing that Satan's Cavalry kept their meeting place a secret, I went to my next Christ's
Crusaders meeting armed with this knowledge. We quickly arranged to meet together
and go out to visit Satan's Cavalry at their meeting place in order to try to preach the
gospel to them there. We made careful preparations concerning who would watch the
gate and so on. I was to lead the ride and I was to do it on my Harley so that there
would be a great deal of noise as we arrived.
The night came and away we rode, turning off our lights a mile or two short of the meeting
place so that there would be no give-away of approaching motorcycle headlights. We
rode as silently as possible so that they would not hear the sound of approaching
motorbikes. At the entrance gate out at the road one of the guys opened the gate and
we all filed fairly silently in. I led the way as we started down the long gravel
track towards the house. I revved up my Harley and retarded the ignition so that it
made a long series of tremendously loud backfires and we all switched on our lights and
charged noisily down the last 100 metres or so to the house.
All of the Satan's Cavalty members hearing the loud backfires came running out with their
guns, but as soon as they saw my sidecar, they knew who it was and allowed us to pull up
safely.
The leader approached me and said, "How the hell did you find our place? ... Which
one of our members ratted to you? We will kill him! ... And what are you doing here
anyway, Smithy?"
I replied, "We've come here to preach the gospel to you. ... and none of your
guys ratted about your hideout, the Lord told me where you were meeting, because He wants
me to come and talk to you guys."
He turned around to all his followers and ordered, "Okay, everybody back
inside!" Turning to me he invited, "Seing as how you're already here, you
had all better come in as well."
When everyone was inside, he called me out to the front of the meeting and announced,
"Pope Phil here reckons he's come here to preach to us. We don't often have
preaching at our meetings, but tonight we will. Okay, Smithy, ... Preach!".
So I gave a solid ten-minute version of the gospel right there in the secret hideout of
Satan's Cavalry! At the end of my presentation, I felt it wasn't appropriate to ask
people to come out to an altar call, but simply said that each one of them that has felt
that they want to ask Jesus Christ to enter their hearts should approach any Christ's
Crusaders club member after the meeting and we would help them to take their first steps
towards becoming a Christian. We then all had supper together sitting around the
roaring log fire. We all promised not to reveal to anybody where Satan's Cavalry
held their meetings, and as far as I know, nobody ever did. I think it is fairly
safe to assume now that thirty years after that night, if Satan's Cavalry are still riding
in Gippsland, that they will have changed their meeting place.
Nobody approached us that night. But during the following weeks several members of
Satan's Cavalry approached our members wanting to give their lives over to Jesus and to
become members of Christ's Crusaders.
While on the topic of Satan's Cavalry, I must point out that at that time their club
miss-spelled the word "Cavalry" as "Cavalary" so that the patches
their members wore on their back bore the name: "Satan's Cavalary." They
did not take kindly to beng told that their club name was miss-spelled, so that was one
matter we all learned never to bring up with them.
When I was married on 8th February 1976, Satan's Cavalry arrived and formed a motorcycle
guard of honour in front of the church. I had no idea that they were going to do it,
but it really touched me that they wanted to do it.
Now back to discussing my series of Yamaha trail bikes with sidecars:
I rode that DT1 outfit around for a while, but it was definitely slow on a long trip. Now the Yamaha RT1 used the same frame as the DT1, but had a 360cc motor instead of the 250cc of the DT1. I began to watch the papers for a second-hand RT1 to come up for sale. It turned up soon enough.
197?: The Yamaha RT1 360cc 2stroke single with Tilbrook Tom Thumb sidecar and sometimes with motocross sidecar.
I bought the RT1 near Warragul and moved the sidecar from the DT1 to the RT1 at the place where I bought it. I also swapped the tanks and the sidecovers since the sidecar had been painted a bright red to exactly match the DT1. I also swapped the hand gear change from the right side of the tank on the DT1 to the left side of the tank on the RT1. Thus it was that I became the owner of a machine that was labelled all over as having a 250cc motor whereas in reality, it had a 360cc motor. Now if someone had given me $100 for every time somebody asked me "How the hell do you get that 250 to pull a sidecar at that speed?" I would have been rich enough to have retired years ago! I once even had the speed verified by the police!
The speed test. One morning at approximately 04:00 am I was heading out Dandenong Road on my way to Morwell. Now this part of Dandenong Road had three or four lanes in each direction and fairly decent service roads on both sides. And all of these acres of roadway were absolutely empty. I had been wondering for a while what speed my new outfit could go. There was a tail wind. Now I knew perfectly well that the speed limit on this freeway-style stretch of road was 35 miles per hour. But there was absolutely nobody about, so what the heck ... wrap it on and giver her a real fistfull! I noticed the speedometer passing 75mph and still climbing. I was thoroughly enjoying it! Suddenly, I noticed two rubber cords accross the road ... an amphometer! In those days the amphometer was the preferred device used by the gentlemen of the constabulary to raise donations to the state governments coffers from drivers who were not taking sufficient time to get to the places to which they were going. Now one of these said gentlemen appeared like a mirage from behind a clump of bushes and energetically signalled that he was extremely interested in having a conversation with me at that very moment. So what could I do? I closed the throttle, applied both brakes crossed about three lanes and pulled up right beside him. He shone his tor