About Dave's Place

Welcome

davidcohen.com.au

This Site

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DC circa 2019

These pages are a collection of original articles and photo sets I've submitted to the Automotive press or posted online over the last 20 years.

Professional works have appeared in:

• Heavy Duty Magazine

• Kiwi Rider Magazine

• Hog Magazine

• Torque Magazine

• NZ Herald

• The Business Times

• Twin Eagle Magazine

• Rip It Up

• Motorbike Writer and numerous other web sites.


Posts

Embedded in the posts are You Tube videos or a Flickr slide show. Mouse over the images to show navigation. Older posts have downloadable medium resolution individual images.

The texts are unedited draft documents, so apologies for the typos and errors in advance.


Services

If you live in South-East Queensland and you'd like your bike photographed or have a photography or video project in mind - drop me a line:
mail@davidcohen.com.au

For a full rundown of design services available check out ultragraphics.com.au


How to use site features

Flickr Slide Shows

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You Tube Playlist

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The Extended Story

How I became a long-time Motorcycle Magazine contributor.

Whose fault?

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On the cover of KR Aug, 2011

My Grandfather gave me my first minibike when I was three years old.

It was powered by a 125cc, two-stroke Victa lawnmower engine mounted in a rigid frame and ran on on 8 inch wheels.

My favoured course ran down the side of our Southeast Sydney home and up the driveway to the back yard, “Until there was no grass left around the clothesline,” was the terse recollection of my mother (rather than any definite memories of mine).

I do clearly remember the bike though. The most vivid recollection is of burning myself on the exhaust and that the frame was a bit rusty.

But that’s how and when I got the riding bug. And it sure stuck.

Later in life my mum always looked at me clad head to toe in leather, carrying a crash helmet and lamented ‘It’s all your Grandfather’s fault!’

He was the Senior Engineer at the Port Kembla Iron and Steel Works. A great self-made man, an acomplished bicycle racer in his youth and the old photo albums under the house have him as an Aerial motorcycle enthusiast too.

He had the engineering apprentices at the Steelworks build a chassis from scratch and so it was I had my first ride.

I have much clearer recollections of when I was around 8 years old, and how happy I was when he bought me a proper production model minibike.

picminibike A Deckson 125

It was a rigid frame Deckson with a Kirby Tecumseh 125cc 4-stroke engine, centrifugal clutch, drum rear brake, a shielded exhaust - and no rust.

I rode it non-stop, well … every time I could get petrol for it at least, and I took it everywhere I could get away with riding it. And sometimes didn't get away with it I got a caution more than once.

So it was that all the way through school I was all about motorcycles. For Technical Drawing assignments in high school, I’d render motorcycles. From a very young age I subscribed to bike magazines and read every page and dreamed of the days I could afford the Cossacks and Urals regularly advertised on the back pages. (If only I knew!)

Early in my teens I traded the Minibike for a run-down Honda CL90. I fixed it up and used to bomb around the local sailing club car park or go off road. Again, when I could afford petrol

motorcycle The Mighty CL90 - NOT a step-though!

Then half-way through high school I got a part time job working weekends at the Sun-Herald newspaper offices as a Copy Boy.

I lied about my age to get the gig and it was a formative event. It gave me a taste working in a publishing house. And I loved it.

I worked regular double shifts and occasional triple shifts, so by the time I was old enough to get my car and bike licences, I had saved enough money to pay cash for a cool Holden Station Wagon and a beat up, road going Honda CB450. (With a little bit of help from my folks.)

motorcycle This blew more smoke than a 2-stroke

I either drove or rode to my senior year of High School - and to work at the newspaper every Weekend. I took the long way home most afternoons.

Or sometimes I’d just abscond from senior school and go riding instead.

The ratty CB450 was traded on a Yamaha SR500 Single with drop bars and a bikini fairing when I got my first full time job.

About a year later I traded the SR500 for a way-hotted up 120hp Yamaha XS1100 - at nineteen.

motorcycle This was a fast bike in its day

And I only crashed it once!

The late 70’s and early 80’s in Sydney were special times – music, bands, venues, and summers of high-quality partying - we took all of it in on motorcycles, pretty much every night of the week. The biggest, fastest motorcycles we could afford. Some of the boys had Z1000s. Some had early GSXs and MACH III Kawasakis.

By then it was all about the lifestyle and riding every weekend – and so it has remained.

Career-wise

Over the years after school, I had careers in several fields and happened to be working in a commercial design office when the first Desktop computers appeared in the workplace, and I became a first generation digital graphic artist and designer.

Not long after that I went into business for myself and have been Freelancing for around 30 years since. It was self-employed flexibility that contributed to getting into magazine work too.

I’ve owned at least one motorcycle pretty much all the time too. There were a few years when our kids were little that I went without two wheels, but not for very long. I have usually conducted my business on a bike.

In Print

motorcycle The '95 Thunderbird'

It was a specific bike that led me to a career print.

My 1995 Triumph Thunderbird 900 played a significant part in the how and why too.

The chapter started in 2001, when the Co-pilot was hired to an Executive position in Auckland, New Zealand.

We were living near Newcastle NSW and her relocation package allowed us to take the T’bird with us across the Tasman.

I thought seriously about selling it, but it was very well sorted - and it turned out to be very fortuitous that I didn’t. Instead I crated it up and shipped it on to NZ ahead of us.

The Triumph specialists at Auckland Motorcycles and Powersports (AMPS) loved the bike from the moment they un-crated it. After all, it was fitted with all the fruit: Ohlins shock, a Race Tech front end and had been ‘breathed on’ by a brilliant tuner named Rusty.

motorcycle On the road with the RATS

Through that bike I was to fall-in with AMPS and their Triumph RAT group, big time.

Not long after I became known to them, the shop hired my combination of graphic design experience and motorcycle nous to build their first-ever web site, produce their press advertising and do their stock photography on my then-brand-new digital camera. I'd been a shutterbug since I was a kid, and was an early adopter of digital - no film!

Like most of my lucky breaks, it was just a matter of being in the right place, right time - with a fortunate skill set and in large part to the generosity of the owner, Mr Ray Pratt.

I also made a ton of friends and riding buddies very quickly. The Kiwis are a welcoming lot.

We rode all over the motorcycling magnificence that is NZ in the ensuing years and had many all-weekend parties in far-flung locations that were simply awesome.

One of the directors of Auckland Motorcycles was also the Triumph NZ importer.Mr Ian Bechhuas. I owe him a debt of gratitude too.

He’d seen the work I’d been doing for the bike shop - and the photography.

Not long after I was contracted to do marketing support and advertising production for a long list of his brands - Aprillia to Vespa, Guzzi and of course my preferred brand, Triumph was in their stable.

I was hanging out at the warehouse – getting design work and garnering web site updates - and doing plenty general sifting about and tyre kicking (as you would).

From there they started getting me to shake-down and run-in their various Demonstrator and press bikes before they were sent to the magazines or dealer fleets. I became the roustabout and bike wrangler.

That was every bit as good as it sounds. Every now and then the Auckland Powersports crew would get me to shake down a new bike too. Paradiso!

The Breakthrough

motorcycle 130 Pony Trophy

My break from ad-man into the magazine editorial sections came sort-of unexpectedly.

As it transpired I was delivering a disc containing Triumph advertisements to the offices of Kiwi Motorcycle Rider Magazine.

Through that work I was also well known to the KR crew by then and, as we often did, a bunch of us were talking 'bikes and bull' on their back porch when Editor Ross Mackay asked me, “Can you write too, Big Dave? Have you got something you can put together for us?”

“I do.” I relpied. And it began.

I was actually writing quite a lot back then as an early adopter of Social Media.

But it was called USENET and arrived via email.

Then I was prolific on early versions of Yahoo forums. That was followed by thousands of posts on ADV rider, Kiwi Biker and a heap of other newsgroups. Way before Facebook.

As it happened I had an extensively photographed and well documented two-week tour of the South Island - on a Triumph Trophy 1200 already in the can. A commensurate fee was negotiated and that’s basically how it started.

It was also the start of an enduring friendship with ‘The Ed’ and ‘Vege’, the Publisher, that has lasted to this day.

The Wiki says, “In journalism, a Stringer is a freelance journalist, photographer, or videographer who contributes reports, photos, or videos to a news organization on an ongoing basis but is paid individually for each piece of published or broadcast work.”

Between 2002 and 2011 I was a Stringer for KR. Bike tester, touring writer, photographer, videographer and general hanger-on.

I estimate I rode or tested more than 300 bikes in that time, an example of just about every large capacity motorcycle available. Thay came thick and fast.

Published

motorcycle One of the best fun bikes ever

The gigs were incredible. From wringing a brand new Yamaha V-Max’s neck on a closed drag strip to riding Adventure bikes to the top end of Australia.

I covered numerous Burt Munro Challenge events in Invercargill and did a dozen laps of the South Island on a variety of exotic touring machines.

I also had articles and features published in the Triumph RAT Magazine and later on in Harley’s HOG Magazine.

My own fleet of bikes had grown to include the T’bird, the well hotted up Trophy 1200 (with a Daytona Motor) and a Buell XB12X.

I rode a lot. I mean A LOT. All roads, all weathers, and I’m sure there are better gigs in motorcycle-dom, but I suspect there are not many than a lead writer for a bike mag in New Zealand.

Home Time

motorcycle Cover shot

After 11 years in NZ (we were originally only going for 18 months) the Co-pilot got a job offer in Brisbane, Queensland that called us (her) home to Aus and closer to family.

And that was another marker in the journey. I had a new magazine gig before we landed in the Su