Mildura – Racing in the red
“Like a leg of lamb” was one description of the shape of the 3.8 mile (6.1 km) public road circuit just outside the centre of Mildura. “Mighty fast” was another. In the local aboriginal Latje […]
Year: 2020
Peggy Hyde: Rebel with a cause
Unfazed by reputations, officialdom, or rules, Peggy Hyde showed that gender is no limiting factor in motorcycle racing. Talk to Peggy Hyde today and it is immediately evident that little has changed in her approach […]
Harley-Davidson VR1000: Star spangled bungle
Like the black sheep of the family, the VR1000 superbike project is something that Harley prefers not to talk about. Hovering on the brink of corporate collapse, it seemed the once-proud marque of Ducati was […]
Len Atlee: Quite a career
Towards the end of the 1960s, a group of callow youths from the south of Sydney, though somewhat intimidated by the stories they’d heard, decided to take the plunge and ride their shiny new Japanese […]
British brawn: 1971 Rickman Interceptor
At a time when the world was shifting to triples and fours, a marriage of convenience produced an iconic British big twin. Launching a parallel twin sports bike in 1971, powered by an engine with […]
The Guzzi invasion
The publicity generated by reigning world champion Geoff Duke’s ‘Down Under’ tour in 1954/55 did not go unnoticed overseas. Duke made noises about a repeat performance for the summer season of 1955/56 but when this […]
Yamaha DT1: Trail blazer
In the Great List of outstanding motorcycles, there is but a handful worthy of the title of Ground Breaking. In the late 1960s, it seemed the world motorcycle industry, European, American and Japanese, was entirely […]
1984 Yamaha RZ500: Short-lived sensation
“Hanging on the wall in my garage, I had this photo of Richard Scott on the RZ500 in the 1984 Castrol Six Hour Race. I looked at it every day for years and then I thought, I’ll have to find one […]
Eric Debenham: Bathurst Easter legend
Even above the hubbub of the combined racket coming from the pits and the racetrack, it was never difficult to find Eric Debenham. His constant guffaw rose above everything else, and yet, for a bloke […]
1973/74 Ducati 750 Super Sport – The dream machine that changed Ducati’s fortunes
Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder, and who is there among us that does not behold the silver and green round-case Ducati 750 SS as the personification of motorcycling beauty? “Whenever […]
