It started when I was three years old and my Grandfather gave me my first mini-bike.
Later in life, my old mum, rest her soul, would spot me walking in with a crash helmet under one arm and a leather jacket over the other. Shaking her head, she’d announce to anyone within earshot, “It’s all his Grandfather’s fault!”
Apparently, from that day when he introduced me to the throttle, my ‘go’ was honking a 125cc two-stroke in a rigid frame around our Southern Sydney back yard - until it was out of fuel.
The course ran along the side of the house and back up the driveway, “until there was no grass left around the clothesline.”
These are the recollections of my mother, rather than definite memories of my own. I can clearly remember the bike, but the most vivid recollection is of burning myself on the exhaust pipe, and that the frame was a bit rusty.
Anyway, that’s where I got the riding bug. One that I have never been close to getting over. Here's a timeline of how it unfolded.
Click on the images to enlarge.
Custom Victa Minibike
My grandfather, Henry, was the Senior Engineer at the Port Kembla Steelworks. A great man. He had the apprentices at the Steelworks build a chassis from scratch as an assignment. They fitted a Victa engine, and another die was cast.
The Grand Prix Minibike
I have much clearer memories of how excited I was when he later bought me a proper production minibike. I was about eight years old. It was a Grand Prix rigid fitted with an Australian-made Kirby Tecumseh 4-stroke engine, centrifugal clutch, rear drum brake, a shielded exhaust and, unlike my first machine, not a speck of rust.
I rode it at every opportunity. If I could scrounge enough petrol to fill the tank, I was off. I rode it anywhere I could get away with riding it — and quite a few places where I probably shouldn't have.
Honda CL90
Teenage years and I traded the Minibike for a Honda CL90 (and an air rifle).
I used to bomb around the sailing club car park or go off road on it - all through junior school years. It wasn’t a step thorough mind you!
It was a proper motorcycle!
Honda CB450
An important marker on my timeline occurred halfway through high school. I got a part-time job working weekends at the Sun-Herald newspaper offices as a Copy Boy.
That story is here
I had saved enough for a cool Holden Station Wagon and a very tired Honda CB450.
The Honda blew more blue smoke than Ward Alderman’s RD350 two-stroke, but it got me to and from the last part of high school.
Yamaha SR500
Once I started working full time, I bought a brand-new Yamaha SR500 single and spent some formative years learning the ropes of touring, riding with mates and the two-wheeled lifestyle was fully embraced. I learned a lot from this bike. At the time I desperately wanted a Harley XLCR café racer (still do) but it was beyond my 17-year-old storeman’s means, so I café’d the Yammy with drop bars and a bikini fairing. And the customising die was cast.
Yamaha XS1100G
I was working in an office directly across the road from Cycle City in Hurstville and saw this XS1100 parked out front. For Sale. It was well hotted up by the previous owner and it scared the daylights out of me the first time I whapped the throttle.
My first 'Superbike' - and I was hooked.
Triumph Bonneville
When I followed my girl to Perth, I sold the Yam and caught the bus. 72 hours on a Greyhound and a few days after moving in with my future spouse, I headed downtown and came home with a classic Triumph Bonnie — which at the time I knew absolutely nothing about – other than it sang to my heart at first sight. The Officer and a Gentleman machine. We had some great adventures in the Perth nightlife aboard it. But alas: Lucas electrics.
Yamaha XS1100RH
It was the Triumph’s gremlins that made us trade it on a brand new XS1100RH once we had decided to leave Western Australia.
We packed it up and rode two-up from Perth to Hobart and beyond. I bought a fuel tank from a G model and had it painted in Midnight Special for touring range before we left the west. We rode it around Tassie for a few years and when we decided to move north I sold it to my brother-in-law.
Suzuki GS850G
We had a few years without a bike while we started a family and had toddlers. Then one day, not long after I started freelancing as a graphic artist and designer I was walking past the bike shop in Main Street, Cessnock, NSW where I spotted the Suzuki going for not much more than the cash I had in my pocket at the time. (Read that more as an indication of the purchase price rather than any great sums carried about my person.) We had some proper touring adventures on it too.
Triumph Thunderbird
One day while I was complaining about riding the old Suzuki the girl said, “OK — if you can find a Triumph Thunderbird for a good price I’ll buy it for you.” We both liked Thunderbirds.
It took me about fifteen minutes to find a low-km 1995 model. Over the ensuing years we fitted premium suspension and a number of bolt-on performance mods.
This bike played a part in my media career too.
That story is here
Triumph Trophy
After we had been living in New Zealand for a while, we needed a better touring bike, so we bought the Trophy second-hand and set about building ‘The Battlestar’. We grafted in a hot Daytona 1200 motor and fixed the suspension. It was a big, fast bike and we rode it all over the Shaky Isles.
Buell XB12X Ulysses
Living in Auckland, I was occasionally helping out at Auckland Motorcycles when they asked me to run-in their new demo Buell Adventure bike. As we were wheelieing up our street, Janet poked me in the ribs and said, ‘We have GOT to get one of these!’ I ordered one when I returned the demo.
It was the perfect bike for the time and place. I fell in with the Buell crowd and even have photos of this bike with a chapter in the official Buell history hardback.
Kawasaki KLR650
We arrived back in Aus and landed in Brisbane without a bike. So, I bought a new KLR650. I’d tested one for Kiwi Rider Magazine and really liked it. I was doing well in magazine world and had a heap of test bikes in the garage, so I set about building the bike for the zombie apocalypse.
No road furniture could hold it.
Triumph Tiger 1050
The KLR wasn't great for 2-up work, so it was traded on a 2009 Triumph Tiger 1050 with low kays and even lower price. I tested the very same bike for Kiwi Rider a few years earlier and said in the article that “I would own one day”. It is a greatly underestimated, way-ahead-of-its-time motorcycle. It serves to this day.