KING GEORGE THE FIRST
You would not be reading this milestone issue, celebrating 70 years of AMCN, were it not for the ambition and perseverance of an enthusiastic motorcyclist George Lynn. The publication came into being on Friday, 1 June 1951, under the masthead of The Victorian Motorcycling Weekly.
George, whose real surname was Lim, was born in Melbourne in 1908 to a Chinese father and a British mother. At the age of nine, George and his family moved to China where he and his elder brother attended boarding school. Once he finished school, George cut his teeth as a journalist working for the English-language South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.
George’s eldest daughter Barbara Lynn, now in her 60s, told AMCN that after George’s father died, who was an anglo-Chinese businessman, George brought his mother and sisters back home to Melbourne where, sadly, widespread racism forced him to change his surname from Lim to Lynn. But George would soon meet his future wife Elsie and their honeymoon would, thankfully for us, ignite his lifelong passion for motorcycle journalism.
“Although my mother was English, I think they met in Australia and certainly they
