The B.S.A. 500
The first occasion I ever rode a motor bike was also my last for some considerable time. I was eleven years of age when I ventured, in 1949 when Box Hill was still a small village, on my motor cycle career.
My mate Maxy Murdoch owned the motor bike. The Murdochs were an unusual family. They lived on the other side of the railway tracks down in the unsewered area of town where the roads had yet to be made and where they kept their own cows staked in the paddock next door. Mrs. Murdoch was a tired, thin woman, very plain, always seeming to wear the same dress and apron, with lank pieces of hair hanging down over her eyes. She had eight children, each about one year apart from the other.
Mr. Murdoch was always well dressed. I remember Mrs. Murdoch saying that her husband had to have a clean white shirt every day for his business. I’m not sure what his business was. He was known in the community as “Mr. Fix It For You”. If you were short of anything at all he could always “fix it for you”. He was not in the armed forces during the war for some health reason. In the years immediately after the war, when there was a shortage of every kind of building supply, plumbing fitting, car part and the like, you only had to speak to Mr. Murdoch and he would “fix it for you”.
During the war years he always had the capacity to get a lady a pair of nylon stockings or an extra couple of ration books. After the war his business was just the same although it usually meant building or plumbing supplies. I can remember my mother wanting to build a small extension onto the back of our bake house and pastry cook business in the heart of Box Hill. She could not buy a thousand bricks. Someone suggested Mr. Murdoch could “fix it for you” and I can remember my mother indignantly replying that she would rather wait ten years than get Mr. Murdoch to “fix it”. He had, at the time I became friends with his son, a thriving business in war surplus items.
Maxy became my friend for a short while. He was two years older than I and twice as big. Yet he was in my grade at school. In some ways he was a bit slow with his learning but when it came to things mechanical he was bright and ahead of us all. Maxy was given by his Dad a war surplus dispatch rider’s motor bike a magnificent B.S.A. 500 painted khaki.
The bike was a huge, framed affair, very noisy with one single cylinder of 500 cc capacity.
Maxy told us about his motor bike at school. So on some nights I came to his house to watch him ride round the paddock near his place and to the park on the south side of the railway station. Maxy could ride the bike magnificently, bouncing over the rough tufts of grass in the paddock. It made a frightful din from its straight out exhaust.
We took it over to our side of the railway line by rolling it down the subway underneath the railway station and then pushing the bike up the other side. We rolled it under the subway a couple of times even sitting on the seat while it rolled down the subway.
Somehow it seemed only natural to graduate from rolling the bike down under the railway subway to riding it under.
The Box Hill railway station had two platforms and the second platform was an island platform in the middle of a wide expanse of tracks. On the island platform were Platforms 2 and 3. The people reached this platform by walking in the subway under the railway lines and up the ramp to the platform. The ramp had a turn half way along and rose up to the ticket box.
Several afternoons after school, Maxy and I fooled round with the motor bike with Maxy riding it round and round the cow paddock with me running afterwards shouting out instructions. The first time we ever rode the motor bike under the railway line was a tremendous success. A train had just pulled in at the island platform and crowds of people got off. In those days women used to do their shopping in town and come home with a jeep full of groceries and vegetables and burdened with string bags. Chickens were bought live at the market and brought home in a string bag, often with the head hanging out and the feet tied with string. There were men coming home from work with a newspaper under the arm and carrying a Gladstone bag. The Gladstone leather bag used to come in two sizes the smaller size able to fit six bottles of beer and the larger size able to fit twelve bottles of beer.
On this day men with their Gladstone bags and women loaded with shopping got off the train and started to walk down the ramp into the subway. Maxy and I came down the subway on the old B.S.A. 500 with its straight out exhaust roaring. We hit the bottom of the ramp together and as we approached, the increasing racket of the motor bike turned the first railway passengers on their heels and sent them scurrying against the on coming traffic up the ramp towards the safety of the platform. Men, women, vegetables and chooks went in all directions as we roared through on our B.S.A. 500.
It was such a success we tried it the next night after school. Then the next. Several times I rode on the pillion seat and other times I ran behind roaring encouragement to Maxy. A night or two afterwards we brought the bike down to the south side of the railway to wait until the train came and the passengers were walking down the ramp. Maxy was sitting astride the bike, his eyes gazing across the railway tracks to the other side.
The train came in and the passengers started to get off. Maxy said to me “Why don’t you ride tonight?” This was the opportunity I had been pestering him. I knew how to ride it and I was confident I could keep the big bike upright. Maxy got off and I swung my leg across the wide leather saddle. The first couple of times I threw my weight on the kick starter nothing happened. I was not even heavy enough to push the kick start all the way down. The third time, however, all of my weight went onto the right foot and the engine roared into life.
Maxy yelled to me “Keep the clutch in”. On the left hand side of the handle bars we had a clutch which I kept in and above it a choke. By turning this choke when we rode, we could get extra petrol into the cylinder and it would backfire. We had tried that once or twice just as we reached the centre of the subway and found it gave an enormous “bang” which startled the passengers. On the right hand side was the throttle and I knew how to use that. It had two handbrakes, a foot brake for the right foot and a gear change which worked with the toe of the left boot.
“Let the clutch out slowly” yelled Maxy over the roar. The bike leaped ahead as I let off the brakes and slowly let out the clutch. The toe of my boot pulled up the gear lever into the second gear and I let out the clutch. I roared down the subway. Maxy stood there. He did not follow me.
Down the subway the bike roared. I opened up the throttle and lay forward over the petrol tank. I pushed the choke around with my left thumb and flooded the cylinder producing an amazing backfire and sheet of flame out of the exhaust. People scattered everywhere! Some went running back up the ramp. I completed the hundred yard length of the subway and came up the other side into daylight.
To my horror the end of the ramp was blocked by “The Black Maria”.
The Black Maria was the police van from the Box Hill Police Station. Standing directly in the centre of the subway was Sergeant McLeod with his arms across his chest. He was a huge man. I kicked the bike out of gear with my left foot, slammed on the foot brake with my right foot, pulled in the clutch with my left hand and pulled on the front wheel brake with my right hand. The bike skidded from underneath me. I went over on my side with one leg on the ground. The bike skidded to a halt on its side stopping not a foot in front of Sergeant McLeod. In one movement he straddled the bike, grabbed me by the collar, swung me round and threw me against the side of the Black Maria.
He grabbed both hands and put them above my head on the side of the Black Maria and kicked my feet back and wide apart. “Is that Murdoch’s bike?” he roared. I blubbered that it was. I was spread eagled against the side of the Black Maria, leaning over with my hands pushing against the top of the big black van. I had seen this happen in movies. I expected his hands now to come down under my armpits and feel around my chest as he frisked me for any hidden weapons. However, it was not under my armpits that I felt Sergeant McLeod.
The next thing I felt was an awful pain as the biggest foot in the Box Hill constabulary kicked me in the pants lifting me into the air. It was the most awful kick in the backside I ever had in my life. He swung me round and pushed me back against the police van. “I know you Gordon Moyes. Get home straight away and if I ever see you on a motor bike again I’ll thrash the living daylights out of you.” And with that he gave me a push in the direction of my parents shop. I fled from the scene in tears and from the gathering crowd of train travelers.
It seems strange but as I look back on it I had enormous respect for the Box Hill police. And a very wary eye for Sergeant McLeod! I have never forgotten the kick in the pants and it did not diminish my respect for the police force one bit.
It is strange isn’t it, but today, my mother would have charged him with police brutality and assault. We would have laughed at his reprimand and would have no respect for the police force at all.
And Maxy? There was no need to worry about Maxy. He had had plenty of encounters with the police before and, I guess, since. The last time I saw him he was operating a used car yard in one of the inner city suburbs.
But I will never forget the feeling as I kept hanging onto my very sore bottom as I walked home that night up Devon Street, opposite the cow paddock, to No.55 Birdwood Street, Box Hill, a great city which was once a village where the adults were kind and the children grew up responsibly.
GORDON MOYES