“CHANCE FINDINGS, HUNCHES AND OLD-FASHIONED SHOE-LEATHER JOURNALISM”
Leaning out of a racing sidecar outfit, left shoulder 6cm above the tarmac at 160km/h, wasn’t how dress-cutter Jean Kilpatrick saw her future when she left Melbourne with racer boyfriend Ray Foster late in 1958. Nor was living on packet soup when funds were tight at race meetings. But Jean’s willingness to “try anything” made her Australia’s first female competitor in motorcycle Grand Prix racing, a role she filled for four years.
Jean’s unique experience was indicative of what you may unearth when you search outside the square and listen to Australian private entrants of the day. Similarly, visiting a then 85-years old Jack Ahearn at home in Lismore and quoting his contemporaries, who reckoned they knew when he was poised for a ‘big’ ride, because he would sit and stare at his bike for ages. The arch privateer roared with laughter at this suggestion.
“No, I kept racing on the Continental Circus because it beat working for a living!”
It is 10 years since Circus Life, Australian Motorcycle Racers in Europe in the 1950s was published. Earlier this year, Mike Nicks, former editor of Bike magazine in the UK, read the book and said it would be worth telling how those interviews came about and how the book was compiled.
So here goes! It began with the thought of doing more on the 1950s’ Australian private entrants’ story and their peripatetic lifestyle, a topic Will Hagon and I explored in Australian Motorcycle Heroes in 1989.
