Australian Motorcyclist — January 2018

Welcome to Australia’s best kept secret. Gilberton Outback

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peace and tranquillity.

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unaccountably kept it as a souvenir
for many years), but I never saw it.
It must be said that Les Rudd was a
very generous man.
Just before Easter in 1957 I endured
a head-on with a 1948 Oldsmobile
car, which had suddenly stopped on
my exit line from a favourite left-
hander while I was enthusiastically
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The sidecar wheel was about a meter
into the air, but the device was
entirely under control, and I would
have missed the car by a whisker
had he kept going as he should have,
instead of braking in panic.
I panel-beat his near-side front
mudguard with my right knee ( the
only part of me still on the bike, the
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thumbs on the handlebars, almost in
the sidecar itself) with the result that
the knee was busted and took some
time to recover. Every Friday night for
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which we were living, and handed over

a week’s wages each time. It was a

great, and much appreciated gesture,

for which I was profuse in my thanks

for, as far as I knew, he didn’t have

to do that.

Once, towards the end of our

association, he had to go away for a

few days, he said, for he had developed

a strange twitch and an even stranger

itch, no surprise as the trade was on

its way out in a Big Way as it neared

the beginning of the sixties, and we

weren’t doing too well. Neither was

anybody else in the motorcycle trade

anywhere on earth, be assured!

He was gone for a solid week, but

rang several times every day to see

if we were still there, that the place

had not burnt to the ground, that we

had not been burgled, and that the

occasional motorcycle had been sold:

they had, for I had sold four of them

during his absence. The workshop was

also going full-blast.

I suggested he settle himself down

a bit, but I simply couldn’t stop him

regularly contacting us during that

short period; neither could his wife, I

was later to learn.

Even though Honda had recently

arrived in Australia (that happened

in April, 1958) and went on to save

the industry world-wide, it had not

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which was shortly to follow as other

Japanese motorcycles arrived in

ever-increasing numbers, so it all

went quietly pear-shaped before it

slowly came good again.

There were just three of us in the

store at the time; Les Rudd, the great,

self-taught mechanic/engineer Ernie

dal Santo and myself, so we hung on

for another eighteen months or so, but

he was almost in tears as he suggested

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my services. He then surprised by

paying me a fairly handsome ‘bonus’

to help me on my way.

Every day was an unalloyed joy

at Ryde Motorcycles, it really was,

and it remains one of the highlights

of my long, long career in the

motorcycle trade. D