From our Old Bike Archives – Issue 62 – first published in 2016.
Edited by Jim Scaysbrook from research by Baden Butler. • Photos: Robin Lewis, Keith Ward, Baden Butler, Bill Snelling TT FotoFinders, Alan Stone, Merv Whitelaw, OBA archives.
It is one of the sport’s great ironies that a talent and a character like Alex Campbell should lose his life in what was to be his farewell race meeting. But then, very little about Alex’s life followed a conventional path.
As a child his early life was spent at the coastal town of Port MacDonald, with his parents, older brother Lance and younger sister Gaylene. Even at a young age, Alex was seen as a gifted mechanic, and his first employment was at Walker’s Garage in Mount Gambier. Old Bill Walker said, “Alex only needs two tools, a screw driver and a shifting wrench’’. He learned his trade on both cars and motorcycles, but only rode as a means of transport – there were no thoughts of racing. Around 1951, he decided to take an extended trip to Queensland, although there are conflicting reports as to whether he rode a BSA A7 or drove a car. While in Mackay where he lived in a boarding house, Alex worked at the local Holden dealership, and soon joined in scrambles racing held in a paddock on the outskirts of Mackay. From all reports, he gave a pretty good account of himself, and the racing bug certainly bit.
On his return to Mount Gambier, his BSA twin was pressed into service for races at Bucks Hill, but was quickly replaced with more agile tackle; a pre-war OK Supreme in an Ariel frame. With encouragement from local star Laurie Fox, the OK/Ariel became a racing sidecar, and the die was cast for his motorcycle racing future. With Don Hamilton as passenger, Alex and the newly-constructed outfit ventured across the Victorian border to Coleraine, but against the local opposition the old girder-forked outfit was no match and they finished last. It was time for a new chassis (procured from Laurie Fox) and with this accomplished, results began to happen, despite the age of the OK Supreme engine, which Alex constantly modified. Alex and Don achieved good results at Mildura, and won the Western Centre Championships at Tower Hill near Warnambool, Victoria. Don was Best Man when Alex married Margaret in 1954. The couple produced three children; Sharon, Russell and Robyn.
When Hamilton quit racing to concentrate on his diary business, his place in the chair was taken by Barry Williams. About this time, Basil Coombe moved to Mount Gambier, and although he could not ride a motorcycle as a result of infantile polio, he quickly recognised Alex’s ability and offered to help him. The result of their collaboration was a Triumph-engined BSA outfit christened the ALBA – a combination of both of their names. By this stage Alex had begun working for Max Collins motorcycle business as workshop manager, and the role of passenger in the ALBA had gone to Kevin Gleeson, who was to remain there until 1967.
Using his own chassis and a Vincent engine, Alex developed his new outfit into a race winner, taking the Australian Unlimited Sidecar TT at Mallala on December 28th, 1967 with Gleeson as passenger. The Vincent, now wearing what had become Alex’s familiar race number of 33, was not the prettiest machine in the paddock, as it was stored between races in the only space available – Alex’s chicken shed. The resulting chicken manure had to be cleaned off prior to each outing. Securing the Yamaha dealership for Mount Gambier gave Alex more than enough to occupy his time, but he and Kevin still managed the occasional interstate foray, including the 1968 Australian Grand Prix at Bathurst where they won the Unlimited Sidecar GP after an electrifying duel with Noel Manning’s Vincent that saw Manning clout the fence on the final corner while attempting a final outside lunge.
But the writing was on the wall for the big Vincents, and somewhat reluctantly, Alex procured a CB750 Honda engine, again from Laurie Fox, and installed it in an Urquhart chassis. Alex’s brother-in-law Jim Pearson was now in the chair and the duo remained together for the next eleven years, but the Honda was not to their liking (nor compatible with the Yamaha dealership) and Alex set about creating a completely unique machine – one that would literally create history.
Starting with a pair of air-cooled TR3 twin-cylinder Yamaha racing engines, Alex removed the gearboxes and coupled the crankshafts to create a 700cc in-line four-cylinder engine, which was bolted to a Manx Norton gearbox. Initially, reliability was not a strong point, with broken cranks, broken primary chains (it was the passenger’s duty to apply oil to the chain during the course of a race using an oil can carried in the sidecar!) and gearbox failures being fairly common. But it certainly was fast. In order to compete in the Junior category (up to 650cc), Alex would change the right hand barrel and piston from a 250cc TD2, but passengers attest that there was scarcely a noticeable drop in power. It was not just Alex’s rivals that became aware of this ground-breaking engineering. In Japan, Yamaha itself took such a keen interest that the factory sent two engineers to Mount Gambier for a closer look, and soon after, details of the Campbell Yamaha appeared in the official Yamaha factory news letter. To cope with the primary chain breakages, Alex designed a gear primary drive, enclosed in a casing cast locally by the Varcoe Foundry, which also cast the cylinder heads. But it was a frustrating time, because although the ‘four’ was clearly the fastest machine on the track, it rarely finished a race.
When the water-cooled TZ700 was introduced by Yamaha in 1974, Alex purchased an engine and built a new chassis around it. Finally he had an outfit that was both fast and reliable, and he made up his mind to satisfy a life-long urge; to race in the Isle of Man TT. The new Yamaha outfit was crated up and shipped to England, with Alex and Jim Pearson flying over in preparation for the 1975 TT. Arriving in England, the outfit was collected and placed in a trailer behind a Ford Transit van they had purchased. Alex was keen to visit Scotland to trace his ancestry but said, “I’m not going to tow the sidecar all the way to Scotland,’’ so he spied a farm house with a shed, pulled in, knocked on the door and asked the farmer if he would mind storing the outfit in his shed for a few days until he came back.
Although letters had been sent prior to arriving on the Island, nobody new a lot about Alex in that part of the world. Rowley Armond, who was working on the Island at the time, took the Aussies under his wing and arranged a place for the sidecar to be stored. Rowley organized for Alex and Jim to compete at a local meeting at Jurby, which incorporated an old airfield and some very bumpy and fast country lanes in a three-mile roughly triangular circuit.
The locals told them that they needed padding in the sidecar, so following the first practice session, Alex went to the van, dragged out his rubber foam mattress, carved it up and taped it to everything. With the drop of the flag Jim said, ‘‘we left them for dead”. The boys won both races and shattered the lap record, although Jim’s knees got a pounding and when they loaded the bike onto the trailer they discovered they had broken the fame. For the next few weeks, Alex and Jim drove around the TT circuit in the van, familiarizing themselves with the 60-kilometre lap.
With the capacity of the Yamaha reduced to 500cc by fitting TZ250 barrels and heads, Alex and Jim finished a highly creditable 7th position in the 500cc Sidecar TT, averaging 84.52 mph with the engine back to full capacity, better was expected in the 1000cc race but it came to naught when a spark plug electrode let go. Still, it had been a competent debut at this most daunting of circuits, and Alex knew that he would have to return for one more crack. With his taste for international competition whetted however, he was encouraged to try the Indonesian Grand Prix held on a road circuit outside Jakarta in the same year. Now with son Russell in the sidecar, the Campbell pairing blitzed the field to record an outstanding victory.
Although he was now 45 years of age, Alex seemed to get better with every start, and with Pearson back aboard, Alex completed a double Junior/Senior Sidecar crown at the Australian TT, held at Laverton Air Force Base outside Melbourne in January 1976. At Easter, father and son made the trek to Bathurst for the Australian Grand Prix, and after finishing third in Saturday’s Senior Sidecar GP, they won both the Junior Sidecar GP and the Sidecar Feature on Easter Sunday. Then it was time to pack up the Yamaha again for the second crack at the Isle of Man TT. In the opening 500cc Sidecar TT, Alex and Russell came home in eighth place at an average of 89.58 mph, and finished the week off with a brilliant sixth place, at an average of 90.32 mph in the 1000cc Sidecar TT.
There were to be no further Isle of Man excursions, but back at home Alex and Kevin Gleeson beat Steve Bayliss to win the 1977 Australian Senior Sidecar GP at Bathurst, and took other major victories at Symmons Plains, Tasmania, Phillip Island and Calder. With a business to run, Alex was not able to undertake the multi-round Australian Road Racing Championship each year, but managed to find the time to compete in the 1979 Indonesian Grand prix, where he showed there was life in the old dog yet by again winning the Sidecar Grand Prix.
The strain of running the dealership and racing all over the country was beginning to show, however, and Alex decided that the 1980 season would be his last. He gave Bathurst a miss and had sold his Yamaha dealership in Mount Gambier, and was managing a hotel. The plan was to move to the Gold Coast and become a publican, a life he figured would be less stressful and demanding than the previous 30 years. His swansong appearance in his home state was to be the South Australian round of the Australian Road Racing Championships, held at Adelaide International Raceway at Virginia, north of Adelaide. The meeting was drawing to a close and only the Sidecar Championship race remained on the program. Powering into the first corner at the end of the long main straight, Graeme Dewhurst and Alex got tangled up and shot off the circuit at high speed. Alex collided with a steel fence and died instantly, while his long-serving passenger Kevin Gleeson received facial injuries. It was a freak accident, but one with tragic results, taking the life of one of the most respected, and gifted, members of the sidecar racing fraternity. Alex’s funeral was conducted in Mount Gambier on May 28, 1980, attended by a very large turnout of fans and well-wishers. It was a sombre farewell to one of the most popular and enduring members of the sport; an innovator and a gifted rider who was held in the highest respect by his peers.
Baden Butler remembers
In my younger years, I met Alex for the first time. I was with my father who called in to see Alex, as Dad had a stationary engine being repaired. We weren’t there very long when Alex looked down and started chatting to me and sort of included me. Years later when I turned 16, he offered me an apprenticeship, which I turned down favouring an Auto Electrical Job. I witnessed Alex in action at Mac Park sliding the twin engine Yamaha sidecar through corners and powering down the main straight and then an all so common mechanical failure. He was half a lap in front of the rest of the field. Back in the pits, under a lot of pressure, he was busy replacing the broken primary chain and right hand barrel and piston reducing the engine capacity to 650cc for the next junior race. He looked up and as always, said hello and asked how I was going?
Through my time in tracing Alex’s life, and talking to many people at home to the Isle of Man, one common thread shines through. He was so down to earth, and an incredibly likable man who would help anybody that needed a hand, even his fellow competitors. I still remember the day when I received the news that Alex had lost his life. I remember telling dad the tragic news and we remained silent, saddened, reflecting and ultimately shocked. It didn’t seem right. His death impacted everyone that new him personally and many people who were acquaintances. Dad says, ‘’Alex used to talk to you like he was your brother.’’ I think this is pretty well on the money. He made a huge impact on the sport of sidecar racing over three decades with his ability on the track, his ability as an engineer, and his personality. He is truly missed.
