A Life of Pride. Alan G Pride
hold of the skirt, the wind caught it and it blew straight into the chain, where it was doused in oil and shredded to bits! That was the end of our affair, I don’t think she even stopped to say good-bye. Oh well, so many girls, so little time!
My next bike was a £15 BSA Y13, a very rare bike today, and I know why. I reckon they all got junked, because this was a pig to ride. A 750 cc V-twin overhead valve, single carburettor and terrible oil leaks; it looked nice, long and low with a shiny green and chrome finish, but I only kept it a couple of months. I spent a bit of time polishing it up and sealing the leaks, doubling my money when I sold it.
After that came the all-time worst bike I’ve ever owned: a 1924 Royal Enfield with one of the last hand-change or one of the first foot-change gearboxes. I never went out on it without it breaking down. On one occasion, I was about 50 k’s north of Broken Hill on the Tibooburra road. I’d gone through Steven’s Creek and had a lime spider at the pub there, then onto the corrugated gravel road before Yanco Glen - when the Enfield stopped. I tried all the usual things to no avail; looked to the points, took out the spark plugs and so on. It wouldn’t start. So I just had to sit there by the empty road, wondering how long it would be before anyone came past. The silence out there in the desert is something you can’t appreciate, until you’ve been stranded in it. I thought of a young motorcyclist who'd disappeared after going out for a ride alone; months later, his shattered skeleton was discovered next to the wreck of his bike...
Eventually, though, a log truck came along and stopped. Since the greenbelt had been planted around Broken Hill, no one was allowed to cut down trees close to town, so woodcutters went further out. A full load of logs filled the back of the truck and I wondered if there was even room for my bike. The owner of the truck was a bloke called Kelly Staker and beside him was his young assistant, Laurie Heath, who would later become a good friend of mine.
So Kelly and Laurie climbed onto the top of this huge pile of wood and threw down a rope, so we could hoist the bike atop the logs.
We tied the bike down on its side, with petrol and oil leaking everywhere, and all three crammed into the cabin made for two. On the way back to Broken Hill, we talked about the wood-cutting business and for a while I toyed with the idea of getting a truck and going into the business. This would not have pleased my parents – they wanted a better career for me.
I think I sold the bike to Pro for £20, no more than I’d paid for it.
Next came an Ariel Square 4, a 1936 model with a 600 cc overhead cam and distinctive forward-pointing carburettor. It had nice silver panels and a chrome tank. Nowadays it's a rare and expensive bike: I paid £60 back then. It ran well and didn’t suffer from the Ariel’s common problem of overheating, because of their pre-war iron engine cylinders. I kept it for months, riding to Adelaide and back several times.
Once I went out alone on a weekend ride to Oodla Wirra, intending to stay overnight in the pub there and head back home on Sunday. I was a few k’s from Mingary, a tiny town with an old railway fettlers’ camp, a store and a service station. It was a very hot summer day, in the midst of a rabbit plague. The bunnies had bred up during wet weather, then as the scrub dried out they were on the move, looking for food. Suddenly the bike’s front tyre went flat. I put it up on the stand; tools out, tyre off – a torn tube! I had no spare and there was no other traffic on the road. So I stuffed the tyre tightly with dry grass, which would keep it in shape as I rode towards town. The grass soon crushed down to powder and the tyre started to smoke. Twice I had to stop, let it cool and restuff it, before finally getting into Mingary. The service station was just a tin shed with some 44-gallon drums of petrol outside, tarpaulins keeping the boiling sun off them. A big bloke in a blue dust-coat came out and asked, “Whadda you want?”
I explained about the wrecked front tube, now obviously leaking shredded grass. It just so happened he had a replacement, had had it around for years. He chucked it towards me, followed by a hand-pump to inflate it and didn’t offer to help as I wrestled it on. Only then did he tell me that he wanted £3 and I could take it off again if I didn’t like it. That was a huge rip-off, but I had no choice and he knew it. I paid – more than an apprentice’s weekly wage – and rode off fuming.
With all this delay, I was now heading into the evening and the rabbits were out in force. I couldn’t avoid them as they streamed across the road. So many went under the wheels that I almost fell off the bike: it was like sliding around on roller- skates! Then they started to jam up between the bike’s front forks and the wheel spokes, their heads banging against the bike as they raced everywhere. Dead ones were strewn all over the road from car and truck impacts and I couldn’t avoid adding to them. That’s what the rabbits were like then, before myxo and Kalesi virus were introduced to thin them out. I got to Oodla Wirra in one piece anyway, and spent the night there for less than that replacement tube had cost me.
Several months later, I decided to sell the Ariel. None of my friends were in the market for a bike just then, so I advertised it in the Barrier Daily Truth for £80 – 20 more than I’d paid, having done some work on it. A bloke called Jack Griffiths rang asking about it, and when he turned up, who should it be but the blue dust-coat who’d sold me that tube! He looked the bike over grimly for a while.
“You want it?” I asked at last.
“Yes, I’ll give you £80.” He started to count the money out of his wallet.
“No,” I said. “For you, that’s £83. Full stop.”
He glared at me. He hadn’t forgotten the tube rip-off either, so he knew full well what I meant, but it was pay up or go all the way back to Mingary without the bike. So he shoved £83 at me and I had my sweet revenge.
The next bike was a 1936 Panther, 600 cc with girder forks and overhead valve. The fault with this one was its coupled brakes (like Moto Guzzis’ have now), meaning one lever for front and back brakes – not a good idea.
I was coming back from a ride to Mt. Gipps, about 60 k’s north of Broken Hill, when I made the mistake of squeezing the brake lever hard on a gravelly bend. The brakes locked up and the bike jack-knifed, hurling me onto the road. I wasn’t badly hurt, but I got painful gravel-rash on the knees and decided to sell the Panther as quickly as possible.
I’d paid £90 for it, some of that borrowed from a bloke called Jack Wyatt, who worked with my father. Dad had long since guessed about the bikes and wasn’t happy. Somehow he found out about the loan too, and harassed poor Jack. So, longing for ever newer and better bikes – more than I could afford on my ‘prentice’s wage – I took out a loan from a finance company, persuading my hapless mother to act as guarantor.
This was a bad idea, but I was too young and self-centred to let it stop me. My mother had no income (Dad kept her short of even grocery money, as I’ve said,) but she doted on me and signed the papers without telling him. And the results were eventually worse for her than for me. The bike I craved this time was a BSA B33, my first new one and almost my last. I rode it for about a year, to Adelaide and Wilcannia, on Menindee Lakes camping trips, to the Mildura boarding-house, and to work.
One morning I was heading to the mine, running late and speeding to make up for it. So I raced up to the top of South Hill. There, at the T-intersection from the South Mine, was a lady in a brand new Hillman Minx, pulling out straight in front of me! The bike smashed right into the car’s side, I sailed over the top of it and in those days of no crash helmets, my scalp was ripped open. I was taken to the mine and laid on a bench to wait for an ambulance, blood everywhere. Quite a few stitches were needed – I have a scar to this day.
Well, of course the proverbial ‘hit the fan’ at home. The driver of the Minx was a lady called Mrs Lennox. The name sounded familiar and I realised that her husband owned the main bus company in town. He hired a solicitor to pursue the case and try to find out who was at fault. I knew I was, but luckily I’d left no skid marks on the road before the impact, so the police weren’t able to work out how fast I’d been going. But the BSA was a write-off, with its forks driven back right into the engine. I still had to keep paying it off and my father was furious.
“You’ll end up driving the SHIT-CART and nothing else, the way you’re going!”