Alf, 88, riding cycles of history

Andrew Mathieson
WEARY old Alf Berry jumps onto his next hotted-up bike, revs the throttle and motors off to the countryside – and sometimes even to Queensland – without a care for his well-being.
“Getting the leg up”, as 88-year-old Alf says, is the only thing that stops him from the next ride.
Certainly not his understanding wife, Lois, who has followed many a rally from the comfort of a tour bus window, waving to Alf on the road.
Alf has repaid the loyalty, once putting Lois on a Gold Coast flight then days later deciding to unexpectedly pay her a visit on his bike.
“I stayed at Riddell’s Creek one night and the next day I was going to see a friend at Wangaratta. I went up the back way, got to Shepparton, and just kept going and going,” he explains.
Lois likes to call their home study Alf’s own Hall of Fame.
The room’s walls are filled with framed photos of his most-prized motorcycles, from one era to another, and of his bike rallies, which tally in the hundreds.
The photos have ever-lasting memories but they are still just photos.
Alf can build the real thing from rusting scrap; vintage bikes brought back to life.
They are from an era when bikes resembled a conventional road bicycle with an oversized engine plonked somewhere under the seat.
Fortunately, their seats, like on the 1955 Jawa 250 model, an all-time Alf-favourite for its clean lines, are low enough for him to mount.
“The trouble started with my hip,” Alf grimaces, simulating the pain.
“I was getting pain in my groin and it would go down my leg.”
Just mowing the lawns now aggravates the arthritis.
But strokes and heart attacks years earlier didn’t stop Alf’s love affair with motorbikes, either.
The willing Hamlyn Heights senior has reconditioned at least 60, probably closer to 70, pre and post-war motorcycles, even though the process can take a year’s work for each bike.
But the self-starters – bikes that have to be pedalled for ignition – were too physically demanding.
“I sold them because I didn’t think I’d be able to pedal enough to start them,” Alf admits.
The retired motorcycle mechanic used to buy the bikes for 10 pound each to make “a couple of quid” selling his restored creations to friends who wanted a piece of riding history.
He has half a dozen bikes sitting in his garage, including a couple in mint condition and another that is unrecognisable.
“It keeps this working,” Alf says, pointing to his head, “and the hands working, too.”
The oldest bike he has owned dated back to 1914 and was still in his possession until a decade ago.
The Berry family grew up surrounded by engines and the vehicles that moved them.
Alf’s dad rode bikes in the early 1900s and his grandfather owned the first motorbike in Horsham as well as the third car.
Alf and his brothers would buy bikes on the cheap and pull the parts off each.
“They’d find one motor would go good but the frame would shake when they were riding it, so they would pull the crook motor out, put it in the crook frame and sell it off,” he laughs.
Learning to ride at 12 with just two gears, on a trotting track for horses, conditioned Alf for success on dirt tracks.
Seventeen time-trial wins over 23 years, including 10 in succession, at Geelong’s Sporting Motorcycle Club years later are something of an afterthought to Alf these days. They are achievements he fails to mention.
But his speed since an early age is no surprise.
“I didn’t have a licence to ride then, so I used to sneak onto the outskirts of Horsham,” Alf reveals.
To get a licence, the cops would test for colour blindness and then ask Alf to read the details on the back of a car out the window of the police station.
The cop was all too aware of young Alf’s reputation for spinning up dirt.
“Hey, we’ve seen you riding around, so we know you can ride,” he reassured Alf, “but we haven’t been able to catch you.”