24 :OLD BIKE AUSTRALASIA
When I was just starting out in racing,
Charlie Edwards was already a legend, but also
somewhat of an enigma. Here was this bloke from
the bush who made his own carburettors and tuned
his engines to fever pitch, then rode them like he
was immortal, totally oblivious to the potential for
injury from crashing, which he did fairly often.
It’s one thing to be a fast and committed racer, but
more often than not, talent behind the handlebars is
not enough. In Charlie Edwards’ case, probing for the
competitive advantage in the workshop was also
paramount; constant experimentation produced
successes as well as occasional failures, but his bikes
were always fast – very fast.
Charlie was born in Sandringham, Melbourne, in
1937, the son of a precision engineer, and with his
elder brother Bill, attended Wesley College. It was
while at college, aged just 12, that he built his first
engine – a 12cc model aircraft motor. The lessons he
learnt in constructing that engine were to serve him
well. “My first taste of competition was actually not
motorcycles,” he recalls, “it was in a rowing eight at
Wesley and I was the cox because I was so skinny.
When they won, which they did too many times,
they used to throw me into the Yarra which was
full of broken bottles and rubbish.”
After his secondary education, Charlie found work
in the industry he has always loved, aircraft. “I started
an apprenticeship at Major Aircraft at Moorabbin
Airport and that was going to be my career, but he
went broke so I took a job immediately as an
apprentice with Stevenson & Jones (SJ Motorcycles) at
Dandenong. I was always dead keen on planes, and I
got my private pilot’s licence at 16, flying Tiger Moths,
Chipmunks and Cessnas. I had to ride my pushbike
there because I wasn’t old enough for a driving
licence.” Working around motorcycles soon aroused
his interest in that sport, but there were two small
problems; his age, and his parents’ opposition. “You
didn’t have to produce your birth certificate to get a
road licence – I think it was 18 you had to be – and
I must have gone there at 17 because I needed a
motorcycle licence to get a competition licence. So I
fibbed about my age but then I hurt myself and there
was hell to pay when my father found out. He
banned me from racing, but I became great mates
with Ken Rumble, and when he didn’t have access to
the Eric Walsh Bantam he rode my Bantam – he got
an Australian title on it while I was still 17. People
didn’t recognise my bike from Eric Walsh’s because
we both used what we called a “powderhorn”
exhaust which was just a short open megaphone.
I got to know Eric Walsh as he would come to SJ
Motorcycles to pick up rebores for Finlay Bros. I was
young and I annoyed him asking questions of how he
got his Bantam going so well. He never helped me in
the early days. He was quite rude in a strange way
and unfortunately he caused me to become very
secretive during my tuning days.”
Once Charlie was able to race legally on his
Bantam he took to the grass tracks in the Warragul
area and to scrambling. The biggest annual
scramble was the Mud Battle at Korweinguboora,
near Daylesford, and keeping the water out of the
electrics was a key to success. “A lot of bikes would
hit the cold water and stop because the motor
contracted and drew water into the electrics. Most
of the bikes were on points, but because I was sokeen on model aircraft I designed the Bantam to
have a glow plug, not a spark plug. People never
realised why I had a 2 volt battery beside the bike
to start it, and as soon as it started I took it off and
it worked on a platinum coil, the same as a model
aircraft motor. You can adjust the advance by the
thickness of the platinum wire. I had wire drawn out
in Melbourne in all different thicknesses and I just
wound it into a normal spark plug. As soon as it
heats up you remove the 2 volts and the
compression and the methanol keeps it going, and
so I never snuffed it in the creek and nobody knew.
It wasn’t that I was secretive but it was aCHARLIE EDWARDS
LEFT Charlie in his role as
Cox for the Wesley College
Eighth Crew, 1951.
RIGHT Charlie during his
stint at Amberley Air Force
base in Queensland.Charlie with Bill Morehouse and the
Hagon/Bultaco – the first two-stroke
Hagon chassis to be built.