G’day, Welcome to my new website, BikeReview.com.au, which launched in December last year.
Many of you are already long term readers of mine that have followed me over from previous publications. If you are, I appreciate it and I hope you are enjoying the site.
For those who are not so familiar with me, here is a quick rundown on my past, the team here, and why I have started BikeReview.com.au. For all involved, it’s all about passion for motorcycles, getting more people into motorcycling and the great things two wheels can bring.
For me it all started in 1987 when I was 11. Although I was totally obsessed by bikes before then, I had never owned one and aside from the odd scab ride on a PW50 or similar, I hadn’t really ridden much at all. Most of my mates had bikes, I was the one on the BMX chasing them around after school in the laneways, “Give me a go, C’mon man, give me a go”!
I had a Suzuki Go The Rat jersey, plenty of copies of Australasian Dirt Bike, but no money or bike…
Then I came across a 1981 RM80 leaning up against a shed out in the weather at a schoolmate’s house. His parents had bought it for him but he wasn’t interested in it.
We got it going and I offered him $150 cash that I’d saved, plus a skateboard. I rode it home in my school uniform, no helmet, on the main roads. My mother had a fit when I arrived on the RM… My parents helped to fix it up and I was on my way…
That bike became my pride and joy. One day I skipped school and headed to Sydney to buy a crossbar pad for the bike at a big shop, MCA. By the time I got home to the Central Coast, my bike had been nicked.
I’ll never forget walking into the backyard with my crossbar pad ready to fit to the bike, only to see the shed door ripped off its hinges and the bike gone. I spent days and weeks looking for that bike. My heart was broken, no, shattered, but the bug had bitten big time. I never got another minibike that ran but as soon as I turned 16 I was on an RZ250FN I had restored since age 15 when my Dad helped me out buying it and the rest is history.
After completing my motorcycle mechanic apprenticeship at Len WIlling MC and Parry’s MC I started road racing in 1994, aged 19. I wanted to be either a racer or a bike journo – or both, and I was going to make it. Racing took me all over the place and I got to A grade pretty quickly, racing 250 Production, 600 Supersport, BEARS, Formula Xtreme and I’ve raced actually just about every class there is from proddies to superbike and recently retired from racing after 22 years and approximately 413 races.
I won’t list my injuries there are too many, I’ve had hundreds of big crashes on the track, but my two full trophy cabinets make me very proud and racing truly helped me through a hellish time.
In October 1999 I returned to Australia after having a crack in Japan that was not too successful. I lived in Tokyo and was hoping to break into the All Japan Championship full time. Turns out I was sick, in fact seriously ill.
I had two big brain surgeries in 2001 and that was the end of the serious racing career before it even began. I had a long rehab and decided I would become a bike journalist.
I pestered the late Jeremy Bowdler to give me a full time job and it worked. He and publisher Zara Kilfeather started me on Two Wheels magazine as a Staff Writer. I was in heaven. I still write for Two Wheels, as well as Live to Ride.
Working in the office with the Live to Ride and Streetbike staff as well meant I gained skills from the best. Over the years I worked for Bowdler, Matheson, Seddon, Wootton, Patterson, Raudonikis, Rangeley and others. I was editor of Streetbike briefly before it was closed, so, jobless and broke Heather Ware and I got together with Peter Pap and started Rapid Bikes Magazine.
We eventually turned Rapid Bikes into one of the top bike mags in Australia. We also started Knee Down and Used & Classic Bike Enthusiast (now Retrobike).
We sold the magazines in November 2012 to a big publishing company when magazines were still quite viable assets, allowing us the financial freedom to start again with a new project, while taking the pressure off and giving us some spare time.
I stayed on as editor until issue 100 and then I decided it was time to move on to new things… In my time working with Universal we achieved a lot, as in that short three years Heather and I, along with our Deputy Editor Kris Hodgson, produced around 48 publications from magazines to books and calendars.
So after 15-years of print publishing, although I have owned websites linked to magazines in that time, I felt it was time for a new challenge online and so came up with the idea of BikeReview.com.au.
I have all the same team that was with me in those early years, those trusted familiar faces and names, to bring you some of the best online content around.
So what exactly is BikeReview.com.au? The basic idea was an Australian home base for in depth third party bike and product tests by real bike journalists, plus all the great feature based content you will find in a magazine.
We are unique in that fact and although there is a news feed, we are a product review and infosite.
It’s all about bike tests, custom bikes and lifestyle features like touring, racing, ride days, tech tips and special events. We love hanging out in the shed and tinkering with bikes, talking bikes over a few beers and restoring or customising – and we want you to be one of our mates.
I’m still tinkering with bikes. I’ve got my 1985 GSX-R750F, which is my absolute pride and joy. I also have a 1995 CBR900RR Tiger Stripe I got last year for my 40th birthday off my wife Heather. Next to that is my 1985 RZ that Heather and I have had since we were young and I worked on as a motorcycle courier in Sydney.
I love building special bikes and my RSX550 AprilIa BEARS racer will never be sold. I’m also restoring a 1999 Harada replica Aprilia RS250 and I have a 1981 RM80 finally to replace the one that got nicked. It is a wreck but I will restore it.
With four kids, I don’t have a lot of time these days, but I do manage a few hours on the spanners each week and love the winter months for tinkering by the heater in the garage.
We have a youtube channel too so if you subscribe to that you will get our latest videos. You can also join our Facebook pages and find us on Insta @Bikereview
Let’s stay in touch, email me via the contact page and let me know what you think of my new website.
Cheers friends,
The Author
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