Joy of Music

Do you know when you start a story and half way through it someone says, “Oh, that reminds me of…”. Well, this is one of those tales.

I had started with a story about a charity event in 2003 I had been involved in organising. The event included works of art and their artists, entertainers and other personalities. It reminded me of the connection I had with one of those entertainers which went back to my youth. Before I knew it, I had slipped down a rabbit-hole to find 12-year old Mike and tell the tale. So, I’ll get back to the charity event a little later but first let me tell you about my early connection with popular music, hit parades, transistor radios, guitars and rock and roll.

There was always a piano in our house. Unlike the McCartney family however, where Paul’s dad was a pianist and the leader of a jazz band, or the Joel family where Bill’s dad was an accomplished classical musician, no one in our house could play a note.

This is not entirely true. My mother was a great fan of Winifred Atwell and had visions of one of us becoming a family entertainer with a repertoire of ragtime party pieces. Jean was persuaded to have piano lessons. The determined child persevered for about a year but struggled to advance much further than a painstaking version of Handel’s Largo. I hasten to point out that this is no reflection on Jean’s ability. Mum was looking for someone to lead the way with Roll out the Barrel and when that didn’t happen overnight, she thought of better things to do with the tuition fees.

That said, when it was my turn to learn a few of the basics of music theory it was nice to pick out a few notes on the keyboard while sitting on the piano stool with a cheap Ibanez guitar working on the melody to Red River Rock and Forty Miles of Bad Road. It’s not that much different in 2024, just a different guitar and piano and maybe an ever so slightly improved rendition.

As far back as I can remember there was always music in our house. My mother would sing along to Della Reese or the music of South Pacific. My Dad liked nothing better than scraping away on a güiro while standing on the little stage accompanying the house band in Hides Hotel Lounge Bar.

We had an HMV gramophone from which the sounds of Mantovani, Charlie Kunz, or something from Dad’s Big Band collection would regularly emanate. On good days, when Dad wasn’t just sitting in his cane chair, puffing on his pipe and reading his book, he would whisk her into his arms and gently foxtrot her around the room to the mellow sounds of Moonlight Serenade.  Some of that Glenn Miller stuff was pretty good, and there was a 78 of Pee Wee Hunt’s Twelfth Street Rag which I liked, but other than that, there was little to stimulate the appetite of a 13-year old.

Then along came rock. Bill Hailey first of course, then Elvis and all those early movers and shakers Chuck Berry, Crash Craddock and of course Johnny Cash.

After we had been in Cairns for about a year, my parents sponsored Mum’s younger sister, Doreen and her family to emigrate. Aunt Doreen was one of the most wonderful human beings I ever knew. In later years, during my visits to the UK as a young man, she was a second mother to me, and I have lasting affectionate memories of her. Aunt Doreen and Uncle Gordon arrived in Cairns with my two cousins, Geoff and Roger similar in ages to my brother and me. They were in Cairns for just two years before the heat and homesickness resulted in their return to England.

Geoff and Roger where highly gifted scholastically and would both go on to have successful academic careers, but it was Geoff’s combined passion for popular music and his obsession with music facts, that soon had us compiling and analysing each week’s Top Ten on local radio 4CA’s Hit Parade. We could not get enough of Green Door, That’ll Be the Day and the one that had me jumping and bouncing on the furniture, Jailhouse Rock.  

The reaction from my Dad to this of course, was always, “Bloody Rubbish!”. This from a man who would get the spoons out of the kitchen drawer at the drop of a maraca and bash away on his knees to such meaningful lyrics as “Aba, daba, daba, said the Monkey to the Chimp.” There was always music.

To earn some cash, Dad convinced me of the benefits of having a paper round. Each morning, six days a week I rose at 3.30 and cycled into the city to collect 100 copies of The Cairns Post literally hot off the press. Each one was folded over a wooden purpose-built frame which was fitted to the crossbar of my bicycle and distributed, sometimes randomly if I’m honest, to subscribers along my allocated route. I didn’t do it for long (no one did), but I earned enough to purchase a  “trannie” – a National Panasonic 6-Transistor radio. About the size of a small library book, it sat for years in its leather case on my bedroom table. Late at night and in the wee hours, quietly so as not to wake the rest of the house, it would churn out “4BC – Radio Beatle Beat!”, while I sat at my desk, stuffing No-Doz into my face, and cramming for looming tests in Engineering Chemistry and Elementary Heat Engines.

Cairns may not have been the beating heart of rock and roll, but when Rock Around the Clock played at the Tropical Theatre in the late 1950s, the image of wired teenagers jumping about and singing was not limited only to the Victory in Sydney’s Broadway. Included in that group were Mike and Garry, two excited 12-year olds who having had enough knot-tying for one night had raced from the Sea Scout Hall on the Esplanade across the road arriving just in time for the main feature.

Not long after this we had the opportunity to see local Australian talent when the stars from Sydney and Melbourne started touring the country. Although TV had arrived in Australia in 1956, the good people of Cairns waited another ten years before FNQ10 was launched so our access to popular music (or popular anything) was via the cinema, radio and The Australasian Post.

The first television set I ever saw was an impossible prize at a knock-‘em-down stall at the annual Cairns Show. Patrons stood distracted from all else and stared at the tiny hissing snow-filled screen, a thousand miles from anything approaching a signal.

Not for one second by the way, am I suggesting that Cairns was a cultural wilderness. Indeed, my mother’s appearance in the chorus of The Mikado put on by the Little Theatre Company must surely still be talked about today. But the prospect of big-name performers, Johnny O’Keefe, the Delltones and Col Joye visiting our city was a revolution for teenagers after years of saturation from Reg Lindsay, Buddy Williams and God bless-em, the Māori Troubadours (as entertaining as they all undeniably were).

So here we are on a Friday afternoon, Garry and I (the same Garry with whom I went AWOL from Gannet Patrol and knots for Lisa Gaye’s jiving and Haley’s Comets) outside the Hibernian Hall staring at the big poster publicising tonight’s performance of Col Joye and the Joy Boys – tickets seven shillings and sixpence.

We are looking through the half open door watching people moving a piano, when a tall red haired young man in jeans and tee shirt catches sight of us, stops what he is doing and heads towards us. We get ready to skedaddle when he says, “Hi fellas, would you like to earn a couple of tickets for tonight. Just come and help us shift some chairs.”

Who wouldn’t want to come and see Col Joye perform. There are a pile of folding chairs propped against walls and lying on the floor, and for the next couple of hours Garry and I and the red-haired guy convert the empty hall into a seating area for about 300 people.

As we go about our work the young man is friendly and chatty asking us what school we go to, how we like living in Cairns, and what music we enjoy. He is Kevin Jacobsen, pianist and manager of the Joy Boys and Col’s older brother.

There will be two shows tonight, the first at 6 o’clock and a later one at 9. Garry goes home with his ticket and comes to the concert with a family member. I turn up on my own, and ask if I can sit back stage, instead of in the audience and Kevin agrees saying, “Just make sure you keep out of the way”.

This is the most exciting night of my life. The band members are all welcoming and clearly enjoying their celebrity, none more so than Col. To his multitude of fans and to the readers of Teenagers’ Weekly he may be a 22-year old heart throb, but to me that night Col Joye is like an older brother. So I sit in the wings beside the stage, cradling his white Strat while a few metres aways he sings, Oh Yeah, Uh Huh on his Col Joye Special acoustic archtop. There is nowhere else in the world I want to be.

So that was my “that reminds me” moment. The next time I saw Col was 45 years later. He had generously volunteered to act as guest of honour at a Stroke of Art charity dinner at NSW Parliament House. He wasn’t singing to a crowd of screaming teenagers in a country town, or an arena in Sydney. He stood in front of a group of well-heeled business men and women, strumming along on his ukulele to Bye Bye Baby and very soon they were all singing along with him. He was still that same friendly, engaging entertainer enjoying making music, putting a smile on our faces and asking us to dig deep into our pockets to support the cause. The Stroke of Art dinner was held annually over several years. Col was always there, donating his time and sharing with us the joy of his music.

And just in case you are wondering whether he remembered that 13-year old part-time roadie.  

No. Of course he didn’t.

Triumph over Adversity

Welcome to the second chapter of this nostalgic visit to my youth. If you have not done so already, may I recommend that you read the first chapter (Triumph and Tribulation) by clicking on the link, after which, I hope you will come back here and read on...

----------------------------------

After the glamour of a Tiger 110, my new mode of transport is all about functionality. In its earlier life this dull grey sedan was a former taxi. It has faded red plastic upholstery, and the only splash of chrome is the grab rail across the back of the front seat (also known as the orthodontist’s delight). All the same, I become fond of it and through 1964 and 1965 it serves me well.

However, I’m not quite ready to give up on motorcycles. It is a trip to Ayr later that year that leads to the final tale in this brace of stories about 19-year-old Mike and it is one which I hope provides the logic behind my choice of title for this chapter.

Two previous attempts to ride a motorcycle to Townsville having both ended in disaster, I set out by car one Friday afternoon to meet up with a few motorcycling friends, and spend the weekend drinking beer, enjoying some dirt track racing and generally hooning about on borrowed machines. In the interest of full disclosure, I will mention that an added incentive for me is the prospect of catching up again with a girl I had met on an earlier visit, and for whom I have been long carrying if not a torch, at least a warm spark.

Insofar as I am neither involved in any motoring accident, nor arrested, the trip is pleasantly uneventful. Travelling by car also provides the added bonus of a back seat to sleep on, obviating the need to look for someone’s couch to crash on or worse, to contend with sleeping under the stars. This is particularly significant, given that it turns into a rather wet weekend resulting in the racing fizzling out by the Saturday afternoon. For those interested in my romantic pursuits, I do briefly see the lady in question. However any warm glow she may have nurtured from previous visits has petered out, and all that transpires is a brief hello before she disappears on the pillion of a Rocket Gold Star, whose owner clearly has much more to offer.

I decide to head for home, but responding once again to an irrational whim, I decide that instead of driving the slow and boring five or six hours north along the Bruce Highway, I will take the western route and travel via Hughenden, a four or five hours journey from Ayr depending on road conditions. There, I hope to overnight with my old motorcycling mate, Daryl, who having left his Speed Twin in Cairns is currently working as an auto-electrician in that town. To add to my sense of adventure, I think it will be a great plan to travel from Hughenden to Cairns along the Kennedy Highway, another seven or eight hours along largely unsealed gravel roads – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I leave Ayr early on Sunday morning and after a couple of hours driving west along the Flinders Highway I am in the former gold mining town of Charters Towers in time for bacon and eggs at one of the milk bars on the main street. Charters Towers is now, and was then, a pleasing town with its own rich history.

At its height in the 1880s and 90s, it was the largest city in Queensland after Brisbane with its own stock exchange, a hundred pubs and a population of 30,000. The town has about a quarter of that number of people now and I assume a few less pubs. Determined to make Hughenden in time for a few beers with Daryl, I continue on my way.

I am about 50 miles west of Charters Towers, the bitumen having long since been replaced with unsealed gravel, when I strike trouble. One minute, the car is running as smoothly as can be expected on a corrugated road, and then it isn’t. The engine simply dies. As the engine stops, I slowly come to a halt on the side of the road.

Although I had filled up before leaving Ayr, my first thought is that I have run out of petrol. I have plenty of fuel, however. Perhaps it’s the fuel pump. I try a few times to start the car, but although the battery is clearly healthy and turns over the engine, there is no response, not even a sputter and if I keep this up, I will have a flat battery to add to my woes.

I get out of the car and lift the bonnet. I’m a fourth year apprentice fitter and turner, I should know all about these things. I start asking myself some questions about the internal combustion engine.

What makes the engine go?

A small explosion in the cylinder caused by the sparkplug igniting the petrol.

What makes the spark?

The power comes from the distributor which contains a rotary device (known as the rotor) that sends power to the sparkplugs. As the rotor turns it closes a set of contacts points, which causes electricity to travel through the lead to the sparkplug.

What makes the rotor turn?

The rotor is attached to a small shaft connected to a gear known as the timing gear. The timing gear is connected to the engine’s crankshaft. As the timing gear turns, the rotor also turns thus generating the electrical spark.

So engine turns, timing gear turns, rotor turns, spark is generated, sparkplug flashes, fuel in combustion chamber of engine (the cylinder) ignites and causes engine to keep turning – simple.

OK – let’s see if the rotor is turning and sending a spark through the contact points.

I remove the distributor cap and place it to one side so I can see the rotor. I reach in with one hand craning my neck around the open bonnet, watched closely as I try to start the engine.  The engine turns over. The rotor doesn’t move. Uh oh! 

No rotor turning means nothing is turning the shaft which connects it to the timing gear. I have solved my problem – the timing gear is not turning. 

Actually, I have not solved the problem at all. All I have done is found out what the problem is. It appears that the timing gear is no longer turning. I have no idea what to do next.

Just before the car had broken down, I had driven past a small collection of houses and a tiny school. It is probably a mile back down the road. Maybe I can get to a phone and call someone. I am a long way from home, there is almost no passing traffic, and it is getting close to the hottest part of the day. No calling Dad for this one, Mikey boy.

More in hope than anticipation, I head back on foot along the road.

Next to the tiny school is a small roadside store which I learn also serves as the local post office. The screen door gives a little “ting” as I walk in, and a middle aged woman comes to the counter from a room out the back. She seems to be the only person around and when I explain my situation, she offers me the use of the phone and hands me a small directory of the local region.   

I know that Darryl works at the Holden dealership in Hughenden, so I call the only one I see in the book and ask whether he works there. Yes he does, but he is away until later in the afternoon. I explain my predicament and I am soon talking to the proprietor of the establishment, Daryl’s boss.

“Well,” he says, “it’s no easy job. Have you got a pulley puller?”

No I do not have a pulley puller and yes, I do know what a pulley puller is.

“Well, you’re going to have to change that timing gear, and since you are at least three hours or more from here and we can’t come to you, you’ll have to fix it yourself.”  “See if you can get to Hughenden, we’ll sell you a new timing gear and lend you a pulley puller, you can return it via Daryl.”

How hard can it be?

The first challenge is getting to Hughenden. It was by now early afternoon, and it seems that my only choice is to hitch. The lady behind the counter tells me that I might get lucky, although not many people will stop for a hitchhiker. The other option she says is to try catch the train when it comes through later that evening. If I’m fortunate, I might be able to get on the Inlander, the airconditioned passenger train that travels once or twice a week between Townsville and Mt Isa. It comes through at about 5 o’clock.   

I thank her and decide to try to hitch a ride. I head back to my stranded vehicle and leaving the bonnet up so that passing motorists can see my distress, I stand beside it and wait for a good Samaritan. During the next hour, one car comes along in my direction, I stick my thumb out and wave beseechingly – he doesn’t stop. Neither do any of the other few cars and trucks which continue past me as if I were invisible. So much for Queensland country hospitality. I blame those Victorians and New South Welshmen who come here and murder our innocent motorists.

By four o’clock I’ve had enough. I lock up the car, head back to Homestead and make my way to the small siding which sits alongside the small single track railway line which runs parallel to the main highway.

After waiting for about an hour on a small wooden platform no bigger than a landing stage, along comes the big blue diesel electric pulling eight shiny blue and white passenger carriages. On the front of the locomotive are the words INLANDER in big black letters. As she gets closer, I wave my hands over my head. She slows down and as she comes alongside a friendly face leans out the window of the cab, looks down at me and says with a grin, “You must be the bloke Marge called about. Jump into the first carriage, there’s plenty of room.”

The train slowly moves along until the first passenger carriage is alongside the platform and stops. I look back at the driver, give him a wave and climb aboard. The train gives a couple of toots and we’re moving again. I’ve hitched a ride on a train!

Luxury! There are no more than a handful of passengers in the carriage, all looking a lot more respectable than I am feeling, but it definitely beats waiting forever for a car ride. I’m lucky to have chosen a day to break down when the train comes through. Any other day, I would have been in trouble. I find a seat, settle back, breathe in the air-conditioned smell of Queensland Government Railways and relax.

About three hours later we pull up alongside the long concrete platform that is Hughenden Railway Station. I give the train driver a cheery wave and head on out through the station building and into the street. It’s starting to get cool, the way inland towns suddenly do bumping around 30 deg C most of the day, and swiftly dropping to the mid-teens not long after the very short twilight ends and night sets in. I call Darryl from the public phone outside the station, and he says he’ll meet me at the Royal Hotel. He is living in a boarding house where there won’t be room for an overnight visitor, so he suggests I try to find a room at the pub.

They do have a room and within a half hour, I’ve checked into the pub, paid my five pounds for a night’s accommodation and I’m enjoying a few cold beers with Darryl while we reminisce about the previous pleasures of being Triumph owners.

After more beers and a few games of pool with the locals, we arrange to meet at his workplace in the morning, and I’m tucked up in bed and asleep by 11 PM – it must be the outback air.

The next morning, as good as his word, Darryl’s boss, Graham is there at the garage with a new timing gear and a pulley-puller, a heavy steel three-armed tool which hopefully will solve all my problems. I have decided against any further adventure this weekend and when the job is done, I will head back home via Townsville and the coast road and will not be returning to Hughenden. I will send the tool back via post. Graham gives me a brief lesson on what need to be done to replace the broken gear after which Darryl gives me a lift to the cemetery which, like all good outback towns is on the main road on the outskirts just about at the point where the bitumen would end, if there were any. He wishes me better luck on hitching a ride back to Homestead, we say our farewells and I’m on my own again, feeling less optimistic than I probably sound and look.

After an hour or more standing on the side of the road, I’m beginning to feel that it’s going to be a long day. I start walking thinking that the further out of town I am, the more sympathetic passing motorists are likely to be. My discontent is not improved by the fact that at 10 or 12 kg, this pulley-puller is not getting any lighter.

Vehicle traffic is light and much of it is either heavy trucks or locals who are clearly not going as far as I am.

After I’ve walked a mile or so, I see a late model Holden station sedan coming towards me. This looks promising. I put down my bag with the gear and puller, stick out my thumb and putting on my most supplicatory face look straight into the eyes of the driver as he comes towards me. The vehicle has Victorian number plates and is driven by a white haired man who stares straight ahead going out of his way to ignore me. Sitting next to him is an elderly lady, who I assume is his wife. She looks towards me and gives me a sympathetic smile as they drive past. Is it my imagination or is the car slowing? If it does, it’s not for long and they continue on their way toward the east and away from me – so much for highway courtesy.

This all happens of course, much more quickly than it takes me to write this down, and I am soon once again alone on the highway. I pick up my burden and continue along the road.

I’m beginning to trudge a little now, and the sun is starting to feel distinctly unpleasant. After another half hour or so of this, I see ahead of me a couple of shady trees and as I get closer I can see that there is a car parked under the tree. It’s the Holden wagon with the Victorian plates, and the couple are sitting outside under the tree drinking from a Thermos flask. It must be a Victorian custom.

As I get closer I can see they are getting ready to leave. I increase my pace, and as soon as I think they will be able to hear me, I call to them, “Hello, can you help me?”

They wait for me to get closer, and I can see that they are looking a little uncomfortable. Do they think I have a weapon in my carry bag?

“I’m sorry,” I say, “my car is broken down, about three hours down the road, and I desperately need a ride so I can fix the car and get back home to Cairns.”

The man looks me up and down as says, “we don’t stop for hitchhikers, especially out here, we’ve heard a lot of stories.”

“But you don’t look very dangerous. We were going to stop when we first saw you and talked ourselves out of it. What’s in the bag?”

I show him the timing gear and the pulley puller, and he tells me to jump in the back. They’re heading to Townsville, so at last I’m in luck.

It turns out that they are really a nice couple. Brian and Barbara, recently retired, and taking some time to visit Australia. I’m even offered some of the coffee from the Thermos and I must say it goes down splendidly.

When we arrive at Homestead, the sun is directly overhead, and we are the best of friends.

So now the time has come to get on with the job of replacing the timing gear.

What I really needed was not a pulley-puller, it was a time machine. All I would then have to do is skip forward 50 or 60 years, borrow a mobile phone, search for “how to replace a timing gear in a 1957 FE Holden”, take a few notes, hop back to 1964 and fix it. Obviously that thought occurs to me in 2024, not 1964. In 1964 not even Dick Tracy had access to the internet, and it would be another nine years before the births of Larry Page and Sergey Brin and another 20 years after that before they would meet and become co-founders of a search engine called Google.

However, Graham had given me a few notes about what to do. He had earlier asked me whether I have any tools of my own.

Do I have tools of my own?

I am a fourth year apprentice fitter and turner with a Dad who has been a motor mechanic since he was knee high to a torque wrench and whose own car carries enough tools to guarantee that no one needs the RACQ when he is around. So yes, I do have a few tools of my own. I don’t have a pulley-puller in the car (I’ll bet Dad has), but I do have a toolbox containing screwdrivers, spanners, a hammer and yes, even a set of feeler gauges.

This is not going to be an easy job.

The first thing I have to do is remove the grill and the radiator so that I can get to the front of the engine. I begin by disconnecting all the hoses around the radiator. Next I remove the twenty or so small self-tapping screws under the bonnet which hold the front fenders to the main body of the car. They are not all in great condition, and a couple of them break off as I try to turn them, but that’s a problem for another day. Eventually I have removed them all. I have to get the grill out and there are a number of brackets and screws that attach the grill to the fenders and the radiator frame, so I get to work removing them. It’s no easy job either, and there are bruised knuckles and cursing involved before I have the front fenders prised apart and the grill lying on the ground giving me access to the radiator.

That’s the next thing that has to come out. I doubt it has been moved since the car was manufactured and some of those bolts really do not want to move. If only there was a product available that would free them. (actually there was – WD40 was invented in 1953, but I wasn’t to know that; and while there was nothing wrong with good old Degreasol, that wasn’t one of the items in my toolkit).

Eventually, more brute force and bruised knuckles won out and the radiator was soon there on the ground, leaning against the grill.

Now the cooling fan assembly is accessible, and I can remove the fan belt and the fan with relative ease. The only item stopping me now from getting to that timing cover is the grooved flywheel on the end of the crankshaft which connects to the fan and the fuel pump. This is known as the harmonic balancer, and this is where I need the pulley puller which I been carrying with me from Hughenden – now where did I put it?

More to the point, where is the bag that I have been carrying all this time containing the pulley puller and the new timing gear?

Is it in the car? No. 

Is it in the boot? No.

Then it hits me like a punch in the mouth. I must have left it in the back of Brian’s car. In which case, at this very moment it is half-way to Townsville.

I have never felt so quite without hope. Here, stuck on an outback road, surrounded by pieces of my car, I have no clue what to do next. I simply want to sit here and cry. I feel utterly alone. I’m low on cash, miles from home and have a feeling in the pit of my stomach which is part fear of the unknown and part hunger, since apart from half a cup of Barbara’s coffee, I have had nothing since a hurried slice of toast in Hughenden a lifetime ago.

I sit with my back against the front wheel, staring out at this miserable road feeling desolate. Finally, I get to my feet. There is no way I am going back to Hughenden but what else can I do? I can’t leave the car here on the side of the road and go home. I stick the radiator and the grill in the boot together with my tools, put the bonnet down, lock the car and start walking back along the road to the Homestead store about a mile down the road.

I’m about halfway along when I see a car coming towards me in the opposite direction. As it gets closer, I see that it’s a late model Holden Station Sedan with Victorian plates. Surely, no.

 Yes! It’s Brian and Barbara. He pulls up alongside me.

“We thought you might be wanting this,” he says, as he hands out of the open window a small shopping bag containing a treasure worth more than anything else on the planet.

“We stopped for a sandwich in Charters Towers and Barb saw it when we got back to the car. Good job, eh? Don’t know what we would have done if we’d got all the way to Townsville!”

Neither do I, but I don’t care – this time I want to cry tears of joy. Maybe I do, just a little bit.

I jump in their car, and within a few minutes, I am back, looking at my car with renewed enthusiasm. This time Brian asks me do I want any help, but I tell him he’s already done more than enough. I profusely thank them again, and they are soon back on their way east with a new story to tell their family about a Queensland hitchhiker.

I would like to be able to say that it is all plain sailing from here, but it is not. That harmonic balancer does ultimately come off, but not without a struggle. There is no way in the world that I would have accomplished this without the puller. It is tricky and stubborn, but it eventually begins to move and is at last there on the ground along with the other parts. Now I just have to undo the screws and bolts that hold the timing cover in place. This is more awkward than I expect. These bolts have not moved for a long while and they are determined to make my life difficult. To make it worse, no two of them seem the same size or length and I’m going to have to be very careful not to mix them up.

Finally I am able to remove the cover, and there it is. It’s about six inches in diameter. The outside rim of the gear is a fibre material, and I can clearly see that most of the gears are stripped. The replacement gear I have is made of steel, so I am most unlikely to have this issue again although Graham said it will be noisier (not something that I am ever likely to care about). There is more tinkering to do, but with care, I am able to free it from the shaft and soon the offending gear wheel is in my hands.

Now is the time for reassembly. One thing that Graham insisted upon was making sure I put everything back in its right place and this is very important with the timing gear.

“Make sure the timing marks on the gears line up and also on the rotor inside the distributor”.

There is a mark on the gears as I line them up and it seems to go together nicely.

I don’t have any new gaskets, so I am most careful as I replace the timing cover, and I make sure that I put the bolts back exactly the way they came out.  

I don’t need to go step by step through the reassembly process, but after another hour of struggling with grills, radiators and fenders, I actually have the car looking like a real one again. Of course, I lost most of my cooling water when I removed the radiator, so I’m going to have to replace that pretty quickly.

I make sure that the little line on the rotor lines up with the mark on the outside, I put back the distributor cap and snap the clips into place and, I think I’m just about ready to give it a whirl.

The moment has arrived. Will she start?

You have been very patient, dear Reader so I am not going to drag this out any further. After a few hesitating sputters, my beautiful Holden engine roars to life and I immediately have a smile on my face which could only have been matched by the girl of my dreams not riding off on the back of some other dude’s Rocket Gold Star.

I carefully lower the bonnet of the car, place my tools, the borrowed puller and the stripped timing gear (proof of my achievement) into the boot of the car, slowly turn around and at a snail’s pace so as not to overheat the engine, I drive back to Homestead.

I top up the radiator with water (no leaks!), check the oil level, thank Marge for her help yesterday (was it only yesterday?) and as soon as I can, I am back on the road to Townsville and Cairns, but not before I have packaged up the puller, written a brief thank you note to Graham and Darryl and arranged for it to be delivered back to Hughenden.

There has been enough adventure this weekend, but I feel pretty good about myself.

Footnote:

There are going to be a few people much more knowledgeable and accomplished than me who will tell me that I went about it all the wrong way and I’m sure I did. For example, this all happened over 50 years ago, and I can’t be sure whether I removed the grill first, or the radiator! However, the fact that I recall the incident all these years later, is evidence of the impact the event had on me at the time. It taught me that when you are in strife, and there is no one else to do the job for you, no matter what it is, then the keys to success are surely persistence, focus and resourcefulness.

To this day, I believe this was a turning point for that 19-year-old youth.

 

Triumph and Tribulation

 

I need to mention that this chapter comes with a warning. There will be pain.

Contrary to the belief held by some (not many to be honest), that I have led my life as the apotheosis of good sense and wisdom, the next few pages will surely demonstrate the folly of this viewpoint. When the following events took place, I still had some years to go before my cognitive functions had matured sufficiently to manage my decision-making processes. Sublimely oblivious to an under-developed prefrontal cortex, like most of my peers, I cheerfully responded to whichever of my many impulses came first. That I am indeed here to tell this tale, is the result only of good fortune and not because I feared to tread the path of fools.

In my defence, I had not cornered the market on stupidity. I had one friend, whose main goal in life was to hit 50 miles per hour in his Dad’s Zephyr whenever he turned into the narrow dirt track that led past the Council Depot a hundred yards to our back gate. On arriving he would screech to a stop in a cloud of smoke and dust and announce himself (quite needlessly) by long blasts on the car horn. This simultaneously had the effect of sullying the washing on the clothes line, petrifying the family spaniel and irritating the hell out of my father.

Before getting too far into this story, it needs to be said that there will always be two discrete groups of people – those who love them, and those who don’t. This is true for all things - from sailing and golf to do-it-yourself carpentry and quilting, but since this episode is about my enduring love of motorcycles, I have no need to explore this topic further.

There have been many evocative words written about this thrill and joy and it would be a foolish person indeed who tried to match the words of Robert Persig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) or Che Guevera (The Motorcycle Diaries). I urge anyone who wants to understand the lifelong attraction of sitting astride a quarter of a ton of machinery moving at a hundred feet per second to read at least one of these books.

Compared to the Bantam, the Norton was a real motorcycle. She was deceptively easy to manoeuvre, and she was quick. The 500cc Model 7 Dominator had been built specially for Australia and had been around for about 10 years. Her looks had already been superseded by the more streamlined later model with the featherbed frame and the sleek flat-bottomed petrol tank but as far as I was concerned, this was everything I had ever wanted.

She had a big, shiny petrol tank with “Norton” emblazoned on both sides in bright red and black, slimline mudguards and wide cone-like mufflers which stood out like a pair of chrome vuvuzelas. Her throaty and distinctive roar was unmistakable from a couple of streets away.

She wasn’t up to the power and speed of the 650cc monsters ridden by some of the really cool guys in town – particularly the Triumphs and the BSAs, and the king of the road, the Dominator 650SS, but this machine totally expanded my horizon. On the Bantam, I had rarely travelled further afield than the city limits – now the world was my oyster.

Motorcycling in the tropics was quite different in the 1960s than it is in 2020s.  In the first place, protective gear including a helmet, was considered optional, and leather jackets if worn at all were fashion accessories rather than a defence against the elements (or the bitumen).

There was a small group of us who regularly hung out together including Daryl, Ross and Paddy. We were not quite at the level of cool of the dudes who rode the Big Valves and the Bonnies, we were just a group of guys who liked riding 20 or 30 miles to find a pub or a beach, hang about for a while and then ride back again.

Daryl had a 500cc Speed Twin, Paddy a 650 Thunderbird and Ross a huge low compression Royal Enfield Meteor that could have climbed a wall in second gear but was always a bit slow out of the blocks.

There is nothing to compare with riding in this part of the world, breeze in your face, wearing only shorts and tee-shirt with sneakers or thongs on the feet. When riding in wet weather, you have to turn your head sideways and look through one eye so as to minimise the effect of the rain and at dusk, it is always a challenge to keep the insects from smashing into your face.

It was the height of irrationality, but I was eighteen and immortal – until one day I wasn’t.

It wasn’t that we weren’t used to the odd gravel rash. I had nasty scare coming down the windy Kuranda Range road one wet Sunday afternoon, when the bike slipped out from under me on a downhill corner and I had the joy of watching my machine sliding sideways down the bitumen ahead of me, while I followed behind on my arse, shredding my shorts, and taking several layers of skin off my elbows. Did I learn from this incident?

No I did not.

A few days later on our way back from Ellis Beach, I was travelling behind Paddy, when his front wheel punctured. His bike instantly went into a wild zigzag, Paddy pitched into the air, shot over the handlebars, hit the ground at about 30 mph, rolled several times, arms flailing and came to rest in a ditch. He grunted a few times, got up out of the ditch, picked up his bike and swore profusely. Did I learn from this incident?

No I did not.

I became a fan of dirt track racing. I had watched a bit of speedway with my Dad in earlier years but couldn’t really get excited about that version of motor cycle racing. The dirt track on the other hand, known locally as “miniature TT” involved finding a block of vacant bushland, grading a track, ideally with a few humps and water hazards, and charging around on smaller 250cc and 350cc bikes. I had a go at it myself a few times but lacked the courage and the talent to ever be a serious competitor.

One of the most supported venues in North Queensland was at Brandon, a small town outside of Ayr and today home of the Ayr Motorcycle Club. There were numerous riders from Cairns heading south for one of the major events held over Easter in 1963 including Ray (Pancho) Fapani, who worked at McGregor Motors and was the widely envied owner of a very fast BSA 650 Big Valve. Pancho would go on to become a well-known North Queensland motor-cycling identity who specialised in motorcycle sidecar racing. Pancho always referred to me as Womipilli, which was not an Indigenous name meaning “cool guy who rides a mean machine” but his Spoonerism for Pommy Willy. I seriously thought of having the word sewn on to my leather jacket.

There will be a large contingent from Cairns heading there for the weekend. A few mates head off early on bikes or in cars for the six-hour journey south. I make a last minute decision to join them as soon as I finish work that Friday night. I put the saddle bags on the Norton, throw in a change of clothes and a toothbrush and I am on my way just before sunset.

I am travelling alone and, in a rare flash of good judgement have donned leather jacket and gloves, helmet and goggles.

I am less than an hour out of Cairns when it happens. For the first 15 or 20 miles, the road runs parallel to the main north-south railway line. At the small township of Aloomba, one of those “this is a nice place, wasn’t it” destinations, the road takes a sharp S turn, crosses the line and continues to parallel the railway track, but this time on the opposite side.

It may be because I am wearing goggles and less able to judge my speed, or the condition of the road or, (and this is the most likely reason), because I am an inexperienced 18-year old who should not be allowed out alone after dark, but when the road takes a sudden turn to the left to cross the railway track, I do not.

I can see it coming, but unhappily I am about 3 or 4 seconds too late. I try desperately to slow down to take the turn but run out of highway and continue instead across the shoulder of the road, leap a small ditch, and carry on into a fence which alas, is a good deal sturdier than me or my machine. The Norton comes to a halt, while I on the other hand, continue my forward motion – over the handlebars, over the fence, performing a faultless half somersault before coming to rest head down, and backside in the air, against what is possibly the only tree within cooee of my landing zone. Very slowly, my body slides sideways as gravity reasserts itself. I am in a small foetal heap at the base of the tree. I can hear the bike’s engine slowly trying to turn over, then it quits with nothing left to show that a disturbance has taken place other than the steady beam of a headlight, now pointing upwards into the branches of the eucalypt beneath which I lie. Everything is still and intensely quiet for what seems like an eternity but is probably no more than a few seconds. Then I let out a loud and long roar. I try to move and nothing happens. I have an agonising pain in my lower back, and it feels as though I am pinned beneath a huge pile of giant boulders.

I lay there for ten minutes wishing I could sleep, but the pain is too intense. Very slowly, I begin to move and with effort raise myself into a sitting position. Painfully, I rise to my feet. Gratefully, I’m not paralysed but the pain in my back is awful. I take a few steps towards where my bike is laying on its side. It is wrecked. As I struggle to pick it up, the headlight falls off and the light goes out throwing my world into darkness.

I see a pair of headlights coming toward me, I raise my hand hoping that he slows down for the bend. The car slows and pulls over to the side of the road. It’s a black FJ Holden and as it comes to a stop, I recognise it as being driven by Finchy, one of the guys who regularly hangs around McGregor Motors.

It turns out that Finchy and his two passengers who I also recognise from our McGregor Motors Saturday morning get togethers, are also on their way to Brandon for the weekend.

“Bloody hell, Will” he says, “you won’t be riding that for a while. Do you want a lift?”

For a bloke who ten minutes earlier thought he was never going to walk again, I found this offer very generous, and ludicrously, I accepted it.

The Norton was wheeled somewhere safe and out of sight. I climbed into the back of Finchy’s car, and we were on our way.

By way of First Aid, we stopped twenty minutes down the road at Babinda where there was a QATB ambulance station. The local ambulance officer on duty took a quick look and said he was pretty sure that I would live. He thought I should reconsider the plan to spend the next five hours in a car and recommended I go home, get some rest and an X-Ray as soon as possible. Did I follow this advice?  

No I did not!

I continued down to Brandon with Finchy and his mates. I watched a lot of races and drank a lot of beer. The pain troubled me all that weekend and for several weeks following, making me realise that perhaps I wasn’t so immortal after all.  

Later, after an x-ray I was to learn that I had cracked two lumbar vertebrae. It healed of course, but I would be troubled with lower back pain for the rest of my life.

If you were to think that I would now reconsider my love affair with motorcycles, you would be mistaken. 

What was left of the Norton was recovered from its hiding place in Aloomba. I had considered repairing it, but the frame and the forks were badly damaged, and its future lay in its scrap value. McGregor Motors had recently acquired a 1961 Triumph Tiger 110 and after some negotiations with the wonderful Bill McGregor, he accepted the wrecked Norton as a trade-in, and I became the owner of the most beautiful and elegant motorcycle I was ever going to own.

 If I thought that the Norton was the answer to my prayers, I soon came to realise that it was nothing compared to this gorgeous piece of machinery. I personalised it a little by chroming the front nacelle and replacing the wrap around front mudguard with a Bonneville slimline type. I changed the slightly tarnished exhaust system for newly chromed Siamese pipes and finally in elegant calligraphy on the front number plate I had the word “Savage” in homage to the classic Shadows instrumental. It was little wonder that I was always broke.

I had some magnificent times on that Trumpy – it even smelled good (sorry, I can’t even begin to explain that).

There are a couple of events that took place during this period which I have agonised over whether or not to share. I could simply relate them as they happened, or I could let them slide into the past – and no one will ever know.

In different ways, both stories involve activities which are unlikely to enhance my CV – but perhaps the time for losing sleep about that is behind me.

To be honest there were more than just these two instances of anti-social behaviour, but it is not my place to tarnish the good names of others. Their reputations are safe with me. I will stick to stories which serve only to darken my own character.

The first story began one summer evening with a small group of riders and pillion passengers on four or five bikes enjoying the pleasure of a Saturday afternoon ride to Port Douglas beach. This was followed by a few hours in the bar of the Yorkeys Knob pub around a dart board playing a noisy game of killer. Later that evening, someone mentioned a craving for watermelon. Before long we were all talking about how nice it would be on such a warm evening to be down on the beach with a couple of cold beers sitting around eating watermelon.

One of the intellectuals in our group mentioned a watermelon farm he knew of a few miles away along the Lake Placid road. At this time of night no one would know if we were to sneak up to the farm, help ourselves to a couple of juicy specimens, and head back to the beach.

Do you see what I mean about managing first impulses?

Within a few minutes we were on our way. We parked the bikes about a hundred yards or so from the entrance to the farm, walked along the edge of the road, and one at a time carefully climbed over the barbed wire fence which circled the farm.  After a while we were scattered in various parts of the field each of us hoping not to step on a snake as we searched in the dark for a ripe and succulent gourd.

I really have not the slightest idea what possessed us to think that a half dozen motor cycles could sneak up anywhere in the dead of night on a country road. The farmer probably heard us arriving from five miles away. The first and very explicit sign that our presence had been detected was the sudden glare of a search light and the sound of a very loud gun.

“Get the f**k out of my field, you little bastards!” was the roar, followed by another shotgun blast.

All thoughts of pleasant evenings on the beach were abandoned. The teenage poachers took to their heels and fled like hares for the fence. This time there was nothing careful about how we clambered over the fence. A few pieces of skin and clothing, were much less to fear than an arse full of 12-gauge buckshot.

Pillion passengers did not stop to ask whether the rider had held his licence for 12 months. As soon as a bike engine started, a passenger jumped on and within moments we were all racing down Lake Placid Road as though our lives depended on it – which at that moment, it did.

Later, when we were able to reassemble and assess the damage, we found no serious injuries. Someone had lost a shoe, we all had scratches from the barbed wire, but no one had been hit. To this day, I’d like to think that the owner was firing into the air – but I’m not sure. The thing is, I don’t even actually like watermelon.

The second incident took place on a date which is memorable for more reasons than my own.

It was late November 1963 and like many other Friday evenings, a small group of us were sitting on stools by the louvred windows in the Public Bar of the Impy Hotel on the corner of Abbott and Shields Streets watching the passing parade of young ladies as they strolled around the Block. Someone came up with the idea of going to Townsville for the weekend to see what was happening on the Strand.

There goes that prefrontal cortex again.

Who cared that it was a good five to six hours away by road, through Innisfail, Tully and Ingham. It sounded like a good idea.

Griffo, whose Dad owned and operated a used car yard in town, was the proud owner of a recent model Ford Falcon and offered to drive anyone who was up for the trip. Mindful of my earlier effort on the Norton, I wasn’t as keen to ride the Triumph all the way, so it was agreed that we would meet at Griffo’s place, on the south side of the city near White Rock in an hour. This gave me time to go home, pick up some extra cash, a change of clothes and of course, a toothbrush.

I headed home and did exactly that. It took a little longer than I expected. For some reason, completely unintelligible to the mind of an 18-year old genius, my parents thought it less of a great idea than I did. Determined as I was to ignore advice from my naive parents, I headed into the night, not wanting to keep Griffo and the others waiting.

As I sped along Mulgrave Road, I saw a pair of fast approaching headlights in my rear view mirrors. I glanced over my shoulder and could see the unmistakeable grill of a Ford Falcon. I grinned, dropped into third gear and left them in my wake. About a mile or so down the road, with the Falcon nowhere to be seen, I pulled up just near the Drive-In theatre, parked the bike on the centre stand, felt for a cigarette and waited for Griffo to catch up.

It wasn’t Griffo. The Falcon came up alongside of me, and this time I saw what I had missed last time. A pair of loud speakers on the front of the car, and a light on the roof. It was the police. The car skidded to a stop, and both policemen got out. “You’re under arrest son, get in the car”.

At that was the end of my weekend Townsville trip. In fact it was soon to be the end of my motorcycling days.

I was escorted to the Cairns Watch House at the back of the Cairns Police Station on the Esplanade. The same place where I had received my licence only two years earlier.

The night was long and uncomfortable. The next morning, a young constable let me out at six o’clock and informed me that I would be in court later that day, and if I wished I could call someone to bail me out. “

By the way,” he said, conversationally, "President Kennedy has been shot.”

The call to my father was not easy. He didn’t say much, he didn’t need to. He came down to the Police Station, paid my bail and took me home to get cleaned up for my visit to the Magistrate’s Court later that day.

My court appearance was brief. The magistrate, Mr Gardiner was not the sort of person who looked remotely interested in listening to mitigating statements from me. He’d had enough of these young fellows on bikes.

“I’m going to make an example of you.”

Forty pounds might not seem like a lot today, but in 1963 it was more than a month’s wages – almost the equivalent of $2,000 in 2025.

It was back to the Malvern Star for the next few months.

As I was leaving the court room, my Dad alongside me, Senior Police Constable Zupp put his hand on my shoulder and said,

“Son, I have just one piece of advice for you – get rid of that bike because we are always going to be watching you. Cross a double line, park a couple of feet too close to the corner, forget to indicate as you make a turn, whatever it is, we’ll be on your tail, and you’ll be back here again.”

The notice which appeared in The Cairns Post the following Monday, said it all.

Did I learn anything from this? 

Well, yes, this time I did!

And did Senior Constable Zupp give me good advice or was it police intimidation?

Well, I was definitely intimidated, but yes, it was good advice and within six months, I said goodbye to The Savage and became the proud owner of a 1957 FE Holden. 

Stay tuned...