AUSTRALIAN ROAD RIDERAUSTRALIAN ROAD RIDER | 103 | 103TIME TRAVEL
Just out of Cairns is a workshop that takes
you back to motorcycling in its heyday
d Order
■ A blast form the past!British; Triumphs, BSAs, Ariels and lesser-
known cycles are sca ered about in
various stages of repair, from bare bones
to the nearly-theres.
Standing calmly in the middle of this
controlled chaos is Gary Duffi cie, who,
with wife Kaye, built the business 18
years ago in this tiny outpost (population
more or less 500 — plus cows), following
in his British motorcycle mechanic
father’s footsteps.
“Guess it’s in the blood,” he shrugs.
Doing an inventory of this place
would give any self-respecting obsessive-
compulsive bean counter nightmares,
or just cause a simple dead faint. There
are frames, engines, bits and pieces
everywhere. And Gary knows exactly
where they all are — and the provenanceof each and every one.
There are some truly rare and
remarkable motorcycles housed here.
Gary is especially proud of his oldest
restoration, a 1903 CCMC (Canadian
Cycle Motor Cycles), found in the a ic
of a shed in Mt Isa. Erm. And how the
hell did it get there? Well, it was shipped
into Townsville and the owner picked it
up and rode it to the Isa. Think you’re
an iron-bum? This old beast is more
closely related to a pushbike than a
motorcycle and the roads in 1903 weren’t
exactly freeways. On arrival, the owner
apparently had had enough and retired it
to the shed. Gary has a magnifi cent photo
of it — which, if you look closely, shows
that it did, in fact, end up with a bicycle
wheel in front when he fi nished with it.Nothing else fi ed.
The walls are lined with similar photos,
movie posters (Steve McQueen makes a
few appearances), trophies, fi rst prizes
from restoration shows. That so many of
the bikes are...unusual...should come as
no surprise, Gary explains — almost all of
them were custom-built.
“Australia had about 280 motorcycle
manufacturers early in the last century- but what they did was they sold the
various parts,” relates Gary. “Motors,
transmissions, seats, wheels, forks,
everything — real custom motorcycles.
You bought them as you needed, then put
them together yourself.” What sounds
like transplant surgery gone wrong
resulted in many bikes that just wouldn’t
die. Hollywood, take note — this could be
the beginning of a great horror movie.
And those that have almost passed
on go to Gary. In a hamlet of 500 people,
a business like this does not thrive on
local trade. But it does from bike owners
throughout Australia and ex-pats overseas,
with many ordering parts from Gary to fi x
up their precious time-travellers.
“Very few people do this work anymore
so it accumulates. Things just start coming
to you — bikes people buy that need fi xing
up. You start making connections and for
me, anything old will do,” he says. So much
so that there’s now a Model T Ford (or
“Very few people do this work anymore so
it accumulates. Things just start coming to
you — bikes people buy that need fixing up.
You start making connections and for me,
anything old will do”■ A real Rocket III!ARR112_102-104_Tarzali.indd 103ARR112_102-104_Tarzali.indd 103 2/3/2015 9:52:13 AM2/3/2015 9:52:13 AM