Funnily enough he started off by saying “I’ve had this bike for 40 years, but it’s not even mine.”

John’s wife Colleen actually bought the bike for herself!

The story goes that John was busy messing around with an old vintage car which Colleen didn’t like.

John asked her what she’d like and she said a vintage motorbike and so that’s where it started.

Colleen bought the bike complete with a sidecar in 1977 from a chap in Windsor who was only the second owner of the Triumph.

The original owner, a Mr ‘Pud’ Huff used the bike and a box sidecar in his job as a carpenter and bridge builder in the Windsor area and was quite well known in the district for riding it daily up and down the mountains with a distinctive throttle note at every bend.

With the sidecar also set up to carry a passenger, Pud was regularly heard yelling out “lean out Lil” on a Sunday when taking his wife for a spin.

“So in 1977 Colleen and I were living in Sydney in a small flat,” John explained.

“We’d take bits and pieces from the bike down to Sydney each week where Barry Graham of Jack Graham Motorcycles in Arncliffe was restoring it.

As each component was repaired we’d store it under the bed,” John said, until they had a complete bike in 1979.

John told me the Triumph is a 548 cc single cylinder sloper engine with a three speed hand change gearbox.

“It’s grey porridge,” John said, “built as a workhorse not a sportscar.”

Which accounts for why they were often fitted with a sidecar.

As far as John is aware his Triumph is one of only two such bikes existing in Australia from a total of five imported into South Australia.

John has always had a passion for Triumph motorbikes.

His dad owned a 1910 Triumph way back in 1922 and John remembers his mum telling stories about it.

“She said she got left behind more than once bouncing off the back on the roads back into Parkes from the Bunbury’s,” John said.

“Dad always went back for her.”

These days John’s (AKA Colleen’s) Triumph gets used for rallies and club runs.

John is a member of the Central West Car Club which meets regularly on the first Wednesday of the month at Parkes Leagues Club.

More information about the club can be had at www.centralwestcarclub.com or on our facebook page.