Cockeyed Optimist

The first chance I had to own any sort of vehicle, either motorbike or car, was when I joined the RAF. More particularly, it was when I got my commission as a Pilot Officer, because then my pay went up from four shillings a day (call it 40 cents!) to the unimaginable affluence of seven pounds a week (call it 14 dollars). Of course, meals and accommodation were provided, so this was all pocket-money.

The Corgi

So, when I was at RAF Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, trying to fly Oxfords, I invested in a curious little scooter, a Brockhouse Corgi (the best picture I could find was an American copy, the Indian Papoose, but the Corgi looked very similar).

This was a civilian version of the Welbike, which had been designed to be dropped with paratroopers (I imagine that they were a mixed blessing in combat). This beast had a 98cc two-stroke engine, with only one gear, so when you accelerated away from rest the engine note just went up and up and up, with bystanders waiting for a gear-change that never came. This was fun, but a little impractical for long distances. I must have sold it, but I can’t remember to whom.

The Scott Super Squirrel

A friend heard about a guy who had two Scott motorcycles for sale, so we went off for a look. By the way, this friend was (the late) Keith Duckworth, who was later famous as half of the team - Mike Costin was the other half - who produced the Cosworth-Ford engine for racing cars. Keith bought the best one, a Scott Flying Squirrel, and I had to be content with the other, a 1926 Super Squirrel. Scotts were a different sort of motorbike for the era, they were watercooled twin-cylinder two-strokes, fairly large capacity, 596 cc, I think. My Super was even more unusual in having two gear ratios but no gearbox. Instead of a gearbox, there were two primary chain-drives of different ratio, each driving a drum like a brake-drum. Inside this was a device controlled by a rocking pedal, so that when you rocked it forward with your right foot it engaged low gear, and when you rocked it back, it went into high. It looked a bit bizarre, too, with a strange petrol tank.

When I was chucked off the pilot course and went to navigation school in Northern Ireland, I took the Scott with me. At that time, Northern Ireland was somewhat of a paradise for young tear-aways on motorbikes - there were no speed limits, not even through towns, I recall riding pillion on a friend’s hot BSA, going down a long hill and through the middle of a market town at over 90 miles an hour (the town was like many an Australian country town, with a main street wide enough to drive cattle through).

Outside the towns many of the roads were narrow and winding, between high banks or hedges. Once two of us were humming along when we rounded a curve to see a huge pig rooting up something in the edge of the road. My companion swerved enough to avoid him, but I just caught his rear end a glancing blow. As i looked over my shoulder I caught a glimpse of a very surprised pig, now facing completely the other way, head out into the road.

I can’t remember disposing of the Scott, but I certainly didn’t have a vehicle when I finished my RAF service and went to Cambridge University. The rules were very strict there, and the attitude of the authorities was highly paternalistic; in the early 1950s we students simply accepted this. So one of the rules was that no undergraduate could keep any sort of motor vehicle within three miles of Great St. Mary’s Church (in the centre of the city). My room-mate, whom I had gone to school with, got round this rule somehow - I think he might have said he was a member of the Sailing Club, which was housed some distance away, at St. Neots. Anyway he ran a little Ford Prefect.

The Scott Flying Squirrel

After I graduated and started work at Rolls-Royce Aero Engines, in Derby, I renewed my acquaintance with Scott motorcycles, getting a Flying Squirrel this time. This picture is not identical to mine, but it gives the general idea - a conventional gearbox and a less peculiar petrol tank than my former model.

Since by then I had a wife and baby, I bought a sidecar chassis and was preparing to build a body on it with the idea of holidaying in Northern Ireland; however, circumstances intervened. As described in “My Story” on this blog, I decided, after three years at Rolls-Royce, to take a job at the University of Queensland, and it was there that I acquired my first car.

1926 Chevrolet Four Roadster

When we (me, my wife and our 18-month old son) arrived in Brisbane, we decided we would need a car. So I looked at the private ads in the Courier-Mail and, after looking at a couple of wrecks (we were still fairly hard up) I fell in love with this Chevy. American cars of this vintage were plentiful in Brisbane at that time, which was a novelty to us coming straight from England, so this coloured my choice. (If only I had invested in two or three and put them away somewhere safe, they would be worth a mint today - so it goes.) Ours was dark green not yellow, but this is close; note the disk wheels and the dicky-seat.

This was a delightful car, but it had some eccentricities, from my point of view:

• Rear-wheel brakes only. So you had to be very careful, especially driving on tram-tracks in Brisbane.
• Windscreen wiper was hand-operated, via a little crank.
• No petrol pump to the engine; instead it had an “autovac”, which used suction from the inlet manifold to fill a little tank under the bonnet (hood), then by gravity to the carburettor. Unfortunately the autovac was leaky, so that the level gradually dropped and the engine cut out. Then you had to syphon petrol from the tank by sucking through a tube into a milk bottle, then top up the autovac. Goodness knows what harm I did to myself from the fumes!
• The engine was a big four-cylinder that developed its torque at very low speeds. The top speed was probably 50 mph, but it could climb extraordinarily steep slopes.
• No synchro-mesh, so I had to learn to ‘double de-clutch’ when changing gear.
• But it did have a self-starter, so no cranking!

This account takes us to 1959; there were a number of cars to come later.

Keep watching this space!

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