Riding the Bike, Doing the Ton
When I was studying to be a Minister of the Gospel my student churches were two small adjacent wooden churches in the inner slum areas of Melbourne. For seven years during the 1950’s and 60’s the people of those inner slum areas of Newmarket and North Melbourne and Kensington and Flemington, were my parish.
One day early in my student ministry I rode my big black BSA 500 bike out to Newmarket and around into Finsbury Street to the church. Down Finsbury Street I rode with that great straight‑out exhaust blaring, when, all of a sudden a group of boys ran onto the road in front of me. They hardly saw me. They were looking behind them and I had to swerve to miss them. Coming up behind them throwing garbage at them was an older woman shouting from the middle of the road. I pulled my bike over to the side of the road at the church, stopped the motor and got off. I pulled off my leather gloves and the leather helmet that I used to wear with its built in goggles, something like a World War I tiger moth pilot’s helmet, laid it on the seat of my bike and listened to this woman. Did she have a foul tongue! She was swearing and shouting at the kids from the middle of the road.
I said she was an older woman although, come to think of it, I was only about 18 at the time and I guess she might have been 30. Someone was standing near the door of the church that I had to meet and as I got off the bike I walked over to my friend and said, “Who is that woman?” Arthur looked up at her and said, “Oh, that. That’s Barbara the Bike. Everybody round here calls her ‘The Bike’.” When I looked at her I realized that she was somewhat different from ordinary people. She was obviously mentally deficient.
Over the next few months I learnt about Barbara the Bike. She lived with her father. He was on a pension and so was she. She used to look after him although I do not know how much caring she actually did. She used to spend most of her nights, however, hanging around the various hotels.
In the hotels in our area were a group of very rough men. Most of them worked in the abattoirs although some worked in the tanneries. They always smelt different from the people who worked in the abattoirs. There was a group of people from the racetrack and some from the boiling down works. In fact if you got groups of five or six men from each of the works, they all smelt differently. They all had in common one feature: they all smelt! They were all tough men, dirty men. It was nothing to see them with blood down their trousers from where they had finished a day’s work on the killing chain.
Barbara the Bike used to come in and out of the pub and the blokes would buy her drinks. She used to drink particularly with a group of five men who were called the Harlequins. The Harlequins were five tough dirty fellows with long black hair and beards and they all rode Harley Davidson bikes. And they had their name ‑ the Harley Quins.
One night when I had finished a youth programme at Newmarket I was getting on my motor bike and along came Barbara the Bike. She was walking up the centre of the road shouting into the night air. She was a bit drunk. She was shouting out to whoever wanted to hear. “I did not want to go for a drive,” she said. I could not possibly repeat the language that she was using. I waved to her in the street because by now I had come to know her a little.
She came over to me and began to pour out a torrent of filthy language about the Harlequins. I gathered that they wanted her to go for a ride. She did not want to go for a ride that night. They had an argument. She was wet down the front where someone had thrown a glass of beer over her.
I began to talk with Barbara. After a while I said to her “Barbara, why not come to church?” She swore and said “What is the good of me coming to church?” I said, “Look, you are welcome Barbara. You would be welcome here. We would like you to come. There is a man called Jesus who really loves you and in church you can learn about Jesus.” Barbara said, “Do you know my name?” I said, “Barbara, I know your name. You are Barbara.” She said, “No. I am not. My name is ‘The Bike’. Do you know why they call me ‘The Bike’?” I professed ignorance. “They call me the bike because everybody can ride me. Whoever wants.” I began to realize that Barbara’s great contribution to the society of Newmarket was the fact that she gave out her sexual favours freely to anybody who wanted. It was the only way that she felt wanted.
I said to her, “Barbara, do you know that Jesus met a lady like that once? She came from a place in Samaria and Jesus really loved her. He cared for her although he never laid a hand on her. He never touched her. But he really cared for her.” She told me about what used to happen with the Harlequins. She said, “Well, if Jesus loved her, I might come to church and find out.”.
I decided that I should talk to the Harlequins and tell them to leave Barbara alone for a while. So I got on my motor bike and rode to the Doutta Galla pub. The old Doutta was a big place and smelt from all the men who came from the various works opposite Debney’s paddock. The sale yards and the tanneries were just around the corner. I walked into the pub. I knew the Harlequins were there ‑ there were five big shining Harley Davidson motor bikes outside. I was still wearing my motor bike leathers. I ordered a lemon squash and walked over with it to the group of five. There is a strange sort of camaraderie that exists between motor cyclists. You do not have to be like them but if you ride a big bike and wear leathers, then you are one of them.
I walked over and said, “Good day. Do you mind if I sit down?” I put my lemon squash down. They looked at each other and looked back at me. I began to talk to them about their Harleys. I said, “Who owns the big Harley with all the chrome?” They started talking about their bikes. I was younger than all of them and had a difficult subject to raise. Eventually I got round to it. “Fellows,” I said, “I want to talk to you about Barbara the Bike.” “Yeah, she rides with us … she rides with us. She likes it. She likes riding with us.” I raised the question about what Barbara did with them. I said that we were interested in Barbara and wanted to help her.
The blokes told me the story. Down the Geelong Road there was a cement strip about nine inches wide along the edge of the tarmac. The guys used to ride their bike along that cement strip flat out. The big Harleys could easily do a hundred miles an hour as they went down the road in the middle of the night. In order to belong to the Harlequins of a Friday night you had to ride the bike doing the ton. The ton meant a hundred mile an hour. Riding the bike meant that you had Barbara on board while you had sexual intercourse with her on the bike at a hundred miles an hour. That was their initiation, a rite they practiced. I told the Harlequins something they did not know about Barbara: she was an epileptic. She could take an epileptic fit any night on a motor bike and her jerking would throw the bike off the road. Their eyes opened wide at this information.
I spoke to them about Barbara’s needs and about how we wanted to help her and about how they ought to show some respect for her. I explained what Barbara felt about this whole business, how she wanted to be accepted, how she wanted to be loved, and about how she wanted to be wanted. She did not want to be used.
I do not know that I got through to the Harlequins that night but I did get through to Barbara, because on Sunday night, into the church came Barbara the Bike. It was only a matter of a week or two later when I gave a gospel invitation, Barbara the Bike came forward. She wanted to confess Jesus Christ as Lord. I remember saying to her that night, “Barbara, no matter what it is that you have done, no matter what your lifestyle is like, Jesus loves you and you can love Him.” Her eyes took on a new light. “You really mean that?”, she said. I said, “Yes. He loves you.” “Do you think he would have me as a girlfriend?” I said to her, “Yes. Jesus will accept you as His girlfriend.” For the first time in her life she felt really loved.
I only realised then that we had to start changing all of Barbara’s life. She needed a new environment. We had to get her out of the Doutta Galla pub and away from the Harlequins. Where could we place her? She did not fit in with the youth group. She did not fit in with the women’s group. In fact she did not fit in anywhere ‑ until one afternoon I was visiting a nursing home for the aged and was talking with the Anglican matron. I asked if she had any place there where a woman could perhaps help in a voluntary service, perhaps giving the trays out to the old people. I told her a little bit about Barbara the Bike. She looked rather doubtful but said she would give her a try.
So I got Barbara to come to the nursing home for the aged. Barbara started a job with a pink apron helping the elderly people with their morning and afternoon teas. Her loud, harsh voice seemed to fit into that environment. Most of the elderly people were deaf and for the first time they had someone they could hear giving them afternoon tea. “You all right, love?” she would say in a loud voice. The elderly ladies would say, “Two sugars please.” She used to make their tea and give it to them. She enjoyed it. She was significant and wanted.
I did not see her for three or four days after that. But on Sunday I asked if she had enjoyed working at the nursing home. “Yeah,” she said “I go up every day. From early morning I help them with breakfast and I go through to tea time.” Sure enough the Bethany Nursing Home now had a full time voluntary helper and Barbara started a new life. Some years later, I completed my ministry and shifted from the area.
The years went by. I forgot all about Barbara until a young minister who came to see me one day told me about his ministry out at that church which was now his student church. He said to me, “I met an old friend of yours the other day up at the Bethany Nursing Home. Her name is Barbara.” I said, “Barbara. I remember her.” “Yes,” he said, “She has a funny nickname though. They all call her by it.” “Oh. Oh.” I shuddered. I did not think that the story of her past had gone with her. “Yes,” I said, “It is a funny nickname.” “Well,” he said to me, “Fancy being known everywhere as ‘Jesus’ girlfriend’.” All of a sudden I realised she had a new nickname. “Yes. She tells everybody that she is ‘Jesus’ girlfriend’.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. No one knew her by the name I used to know her. And do you know, over all the years I have never told anybody that story about Barbara and about her other name. And I’ve got an idea that now I have told you, you will not tell anybody either. God in His grace had given a person a new start, a new life, and a new name.
There is just one other thing. Barbara never had an epileptic fit since starting at the Nursing Home. As a matter of fact, I do not think she ever had one in her life, but what the Harlequins did not know, would not hurt them!
I remember the first time I met her, when I was out in the heavy air, when the wind blew from the abattoirs and when, after meeting her, I started my motor bike and headed back towards the College of The Bible to train as a young minister thinking of my meeting with some of God’s children in Newmarket.
GORDON MOYES
