Motorcycles - how the dream began

1966 is the year I bought my first motorcycle magazine.
I would have been.....13.
When did I notice bikes???
My first recollection was my school teacher in grade 1. He turned up at our small country school on this blue a chrome british bike, looking back I think it was a Triumph Twin.
I remember it parked behind the school next to the rain water tank. I remember when I poked a MatchBox toy car up one of the exhaust pipes. Luckily I was able to retrieve it with a small stick.

My next memory would have been when our workman Frank turned up on a brand new Honda Benley. This was one of the first Honda's in the district, it was something totally different from the British examples of the day. It was red, modern and shiny and ran like a dream.

Sometime later......maybe when I was 12 my cousin Robert was given an old BSA Bantam by his parents. Robert took me for a spin around their property, I was perched on the hard carrier on the back mudguard. I was hooked.......I started to think I wonder if I could get a bike for Christmas or my Birthday.

Another brush with the world of motorcycles came when a friend of the family used to visit on his Triumph Cub. It was his daily ride to work, and not very well looked after. One day he was visiting Dad and he said I could have a ride if I wanted to. Wow, that was a special moment. Not only did I ride the bike, I got out the tin of petrol and cleaned off all the grease and dust that had collected around the motor and gearbox. I wanted that bike to look clean. Kingsley was impressed.

Well the bike magazines were the next step.
Our newsagent only sold the following bike magazine, which was a British publication. I don't recall any Australian bike magazines in the newsagent. Well I started to collect them and today I still have a stack of them. That was until the Australian magazine Two Wheels started. Naturally I started to buy every one of them and read them from cover to cover, soaking up all the information I could gleen.

One day I was on the bus on the way highschool. The bus went past the Ford dealer in town. Out the front on the lot was sitting this seconhand bike. It looked like a Bantam, but different. It looked like a bike I could love. At lunchtime I walked past the bike and saw that it was a 150cc CZ, single cylinder with twin fishtail exhausts. I was impressed. That night at home I was telling my parents about the bike and that I would love to own it for my first bike. Hint hint hint...
Next day on the way to school that bike was still sitting there.
That afternoon Iarrived home from school.
Dad wasn't home and my sister I walked inside to see Mum. I guess we had the usual after school snack, YoYo biscuits and milk or cordial. I was sitting in my room reading when I heard Dad coming home in his ute. I looked out the window, and.................what was that on the back. It was the CZ all tied down. I raced outside as Dad pulled up and he was smiling at me. Turns out the parents had decided that I should get an early birthday present.
I was over the moon, and that's where my love of bikes was cemented.