Beelzebub,
helmets & me
Sulphurous smoke, disappearing tickets and helmetless rides before the dingoes
get up. It's all happening to Guido this month...
It's not that I'm religious, or paranoid, but I have pretty good evidence that
there is some greater power which has decided that I shall not, under any circumstances,
experience the trials and alleged joys of riding a motorcycle without a helmet.
Let me explain...
The first time I ever deliberately took off on a motorcycle without a lid was
about 20 years ago. Now picture this scene, if you will: It's before 6.00am
at Uluhru (which was still called Ayers Rock in those days). Lindy Chamberlain
is still in gaol for the dingo-assisted disappearance of her daughter Azaria
and the big motel that now serves the area had yet to be built - there was just
a caravan park. It's dawn, and I'm out with the bike, trying to get some decent
pics of the Rock.
A few minutes in, it's clear the angle I've chosen is wrong, and so we have
to move. Rather than go through all the palaver of pulling on the riding gear,
I simply saddle up helmetless and amble a few hundred metres down the track.
Suddenly there's the glare of headlights, blue and red flashing lamps and, I
swear, a cloud of sulphurous smoke - maybe it was dust.
Sure enough a female cop emerges from the 4WD and announces that 'sir' has transgressed.
In the early light, she looks as though she may have cloven feet and horns.
I point out that it's dawn, we're about 3000km from anything that could be called
civilisation, even the god-damned dingos are in bed, and that 'sir' was only
moving a very short distance. Not good enough...'sir' is to attend the police
station next morning, where his punishment will be decided. The penalty is a
verbal thrashing.
Several years later, on a trip through the middle of nowhere, somewhere way
out west in NSW, I'm sorely tempted to remove the lid for a few kays just to
cool off. Seeing there's a dirt road coming, I postpone the decision. Minutes
later I'm wrestling over 250 kilos of very angry GS1100G through a sand patch,
and lose. With one final flick, the Suzuki spits me helmet-first into the ground
- hard. So hard, that I blacked out for a little while. Now is it just me, or
is there a message in that?
Move up a few more years and make a third attempt. This time we're in Port Campbell,
a picturesque little hamlet in the south-west coast of Victoria. We're photographing
a few Harleys near the water at some uncivilised time of morning and, rather
than root about with riding gear, two of us ride back up the jetty and a few
metres along the street to park the bikes.
Here we go again...headlamps, flashing lights, sulphurous smoke, and plod mysteriously
appears in a 4WD. Again, there's more than a suspicion of horns and cloven hooves.
This time we were both handed a whopper of a ticket, despite (or maybe because
of) our protestations that, under the circumstances, we had more chance of being
hit by a falling ocean liner than coming to grief with the bikes.
Now here's the really weird part: Confirmation of my penalty turned up in the
post, while the bloke I was with got off scot-free. His ticket magically disappeared
into ether (or perhaps more sulphurous smoke).
As someone famous once said, I might be paranoid, but that doesn't mean they
aren't out to get me...
Guy "Guido" Allen
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