Born late enough to miss the end of WW2 hostilities, Brian Payne arrived in Melbourne as a Ten Pound Pom, conning a job with the BSA importers despite a lack…
Trees are tall. But they do not touch the sky. I offer this cod philosophy to help keep things in proportion. When you are up too close to something, it…
FRED FAVOURITE 1971 Honda SL70 My first bike was a 1971 Honda SL70 on which I taught myself to ride on at 13. My dad bought it for me and…
Who was Kawasaki’s first road-race winner in Australia? Ken Blake, Ron Toombs, Gregg Hansford? It was Richard Reid, in the Victorian 250 TT at Calder on 12 February, 1967. In…
An Outback thunderstorm slowly rolled towards me as I sat on the ancient timbers of a cattle yard at Coward Springs railway siding. The Oodnadatta track was about a kilometre…
The WorldSBK paddock had been hearing the names of Honda, Moriwaki and then finally Althea being linked for the past few months. So when the Milan show came around and…
Until the ISDT was rebranded as the International Six Day Enduro and Australia became affiliated with the Federation Internationale de Motorcyclisme (FIM), Aussie riders were obligated to compete under the…
Ted Collins: I’ve ended my first season in the premier class of Australian road racing as Rookie of the Year. What a roller-coaster rider it was. We started the ASBK…
One of my year-end pleasures is putting the mighty 320-page Motocourse tome to print. And one of the pleasures of editing it for the past 15 years or so is…
When Cru Halliday stepped off his YZF-R1 in the wet after the final MotoGP support race in 2017, there was a very real possibility it would be his last time…
Tavullia has been Rossi Town for a couple of decades. Pretty much every tree, light post and window flies a VR46 flag. The speed limit is 46km/h instead of 50,…
Troy Herfoss was a champion deposed in 2017, dethroned by Suzuki’s prodigal son Josh Waters. And by by the time the 2018 season began, another name was on everyone’s lips:…
