Menai Yarn , FWIW
Bloody hell, that place brings back some memories !!
The bike mob EA and I hung around with at the Ponderosa, Caringbah in the Sixties used to go out to the Heathcote road for impromptu drags. But the run through the old Wonny road across the bridge up the other side, along the Menai straight past the old Servo, through the Menai Esses turn left and past the Bomb Factory onto the Heathcote road, that was the best part of it for me, anyone can go fast in a straight line !!
As a 19or 20 year old, I lived down the Wonny at the time and used to ride me T Bird to work, at the AAEC in the Reproduction Unit , now I know what you’re thinking but we were the Printing section !!
Used to meet a older fella on an A10 at the junction of the Prince Edward Park Road and the Menai Rd.on the Wonny hill and it was on for young and old till we got to the Reactor, first few times, he beat me until I worked out that if I beat him through the Menai Esses, I would then get to the Reactor first !!, It worked !! he just nodded to me at the Reactor gate and then I noticed this three legged logo thingy on the front of his puddin basin helmet, didn’t think much of it at the time !!
THEN
I got the T120, he didn’t even see which way I went, UNTIL, one morning , waiting for him, I heard this strange clattery, rackety noise coming down the Wonny towards me, It was him, but on a different bike, strange looking thing, single cylinder, all clip ons, hairpin valve springs and noise from a mega, lights and plates seemed to be just cobbled on, same number plate as the BSA, strange that !!
Anyway, across the old Wonny bridge we go, up the other side , ' phark, that thing goes round corners” I thought, then he gave it it’s head along the Menai straight , not a hope in hell of the Bonny catching it !!, he disappeared though the Menai Esses, I did catch a glimpse of it along the straights leading to the Reactor.
He waited for me at the Reactor gate, just nodded, and went on in , I did notice it was a Norton , said so on the tank, a humpy single seat, and , I know now, didn’t then, an OHC engine.
He went back to the Beesa next day and we just rode to work, reasonably sedately but having fun , we never spoke a word to each other, just nodded. This went on for months until he and I moved on. Never found out who he was.
When EA and I got married , we lived at Menai for quite a while, just opposite the old Menai Servo, brought our fist child , Kerry, home there, , Menai was all chook farms and gravel pits then ,conned the local grader driver to carve out a quarter mile oval underneath the power lines, not far from where Bro Jim lives now.
Aside from tearing around on our Dirt Track bikes , I used to shoot foxes up there with a 303, no-one took a blind bit of notice.
Our daughter, Kerry had her frist ride on a bike on the powerlines track, two weeks old , stuffed down the front of me jumper, on me Skids bike giggled her head off, didnt get a car licence till she was 32, rode bikes until she had 2 kids, maybe I started something !!
Menai , Bangor , Barden Ridge or whatever fancy name it’s called now is a very, very different place,
went through there last Sunday, to visit me Mam and Dad , the Wonny hill is a shadow of it’s former self, the Menai Esses are long gone, and there are far too many people, and too many memories!!
Foss
The only photo I have of the Powerline track at Menai, on one of me Ariels, early 1970
