MY BACK PAGES

by Mick

This collection of photos tells a story. It is the beginning of and inspiration for me and my glorious two-wheeled journey with combustion engines that never ever seem to have enough power. Nothing ever went fast enough.

I am very proud of my birthplace, and I love Australia but what I do hate, with a vengeance, is that non-breast-fed clan of abused people whose job it is, or was, to tell me "You can't do that". I am fanatically bloody-minded, as those unfortunate sods who have to have me in their professional lives will testify.

Try telling a 17-year-old who had convinced himself he is immortal, has a penchant for violence and firearms and things that went stupidly fast, "No, you can't do that". It gets a very dark reaction.

Every time someone told me I couldn't do something or wouldn't be able to achieve that (which I thought was reasonably and logically possible), it then became a quest to prove them totally and utterly wrong. There is only one drawback to this, the more times you achieve this glorious moment of middle-finger waving, I've-come-in-your-hair, self-satisfactionary moment, the bigger and better the next conquest has to be. I sometimes wish my mouth wasn't 12 seconds ahead of my brain... I would be a damned sight richer and would carry approximately half the scarring that criss-crosses my carcass. The things you do for shits and giggles!

These photos celebrate a collaboration of people, events, and beautiful motorcycles that have come in and out of my life. People who obviously think along the same lines as yours truly.

My passionate relationship with Simpson helmets remains today and I'm still utterly convinced of their strength and life-saving qualities above all else on offer in the marketplace today.

Forgive me on dates and then quality of snaps, but they are all between 15 and 20 years old.

When you start off looking like Jack Shit you have a bench mark to be judged by. You really need to be able to ride fast when you look like this. Really fast. My learning curve was steep but so much fun.

The other thing you need when you embark on a joyful journey of two wheels and high speed, is back up -- being able to machine, weld and fabricate all the bits you are gonna break. This little lot was squeezed in behind a normal three-bedroom house, however my dear friend Dave was far from normal.

What you also needed was a damned stylish hair cut and a company that could sponsor a racer. The fact that you constantly looked like "death due to overdose" is irrelevant. We owned the company, I was a director at 18 therefore I was a god and could look really bad... and I did.

The not-so-normal Dave had the ability to fabricate anything. Here is one of his frames, with a turbo charged 1400cc engine and 3 stages of NoS up its clacker, it hurtled down the strip in 7.2 seconds. The man was and is a genius.

To go really fast meant money, my buddy Kev and myself had access to works stuff, i.e. we could look and hold it and dribble all over it, but that was it, so we copied it and flogged it. That's an oval carbon Kevlar end-can, sexy now but 20 years ago, grown men would let you do things to their wives just to get their sticky fingers on shit like this.