March 22, 2010 by gerard oosterman

 

The issue of remaining secretary of the Parramatta Lambretta Scooter club came to a head when I turned up with the Triumph outfit. They told me to either stay faithful with the Lambretta or even a Vespa but no one would ride a motor bike. This was set out in the rules. That is the problem with clubs and even political parties. They thrive on rules. I had enjoyed my secretarial job immensely and gave me opportunities to check out lovely sheilas. Some of those were a bit rough. They were called widgies. I was a bodgie with an accent and my hair rock solid from Brilliantine.

 The best way to woo a girl and get noticed was to shout her milk-shakes. One girl, I have forgotten her name for now, insisted on her milkshake to be given a spoon full of malt. I even then had medical concerns about girls’ and thought the malt might have been to calm their nerves. For some reason, the tabloids and monthly or weekly magazines had lots of advertisements for women’s trouble that seemed to focus on them suffering from ‘nerves’. I, with due concern, thought the malt might have also been some calmative for female ‘nerves’.

The Widgie Lambretta members hardly showed many nerves though and could be driving their Lambrettas as hard as any male. They would take the head off the cylinder block, give a regrind and adjust valves like any bodgie.  No doubt, good practise for future marital delights! 

widgies 

Another fascinating time with the club was to go on treasure hunts. Maps would be consulted, hints were given were things were hidden the day before and at the end of the day, after riding the scooters to Palm Beach and back, we would all lay about someone’s house, enjoy fish and chips and spread our leather jackets. I can’t remember that grog played any part then. Strange, isn’t it?

 A meticulously planned trip to the Mount Panorama Bathurst races was the end for me as Secretary for the Parramatta Lambretta Club. No way was I going to go back to Lambretta. I loved my Triumph and the constant warring between the Sydney Vespa club and ours was getting petty. One girl on our side was seen cavorting with a Vespa member at Bathurst.

 The week-end was one that I remember as the wettest I ever experienced. We all slept under the cover of a cricket stand roof, in between seats. Terrible. Being perched on the side of a mountain in pouring rain with flashes of water spray roaring past wasn’t my idea of a week-end out. We all rode back to Sydney somewhat dishevelled and dejected and I wrote a last report to be read out at the next Parramatta’s Ambulance Hall meeting, and resigned.

It was roughly at that time that I decided to get earnest in my pursuit of a decent girlfriend. Dancing lessons was to be the answer. I had read numerous advertisements urging young people to learn to dance. The accompanying pictures had beautiful smiling girls offering themselves up to handsome swirling men. The chests on those smiling girls looked as if they were encased in those red traffic cones that direct traffic into a different lane, poking forward at 90 degrees to the road below them.

Fox trot 

One of a major dancing academy was Phyllis Bates at an address in Pitt Street. When I say ‘major’, I think it might have been the only one then. I had moved up the social ladder somewhat with dating a girl whom I had taken out to one of Sydney’s most prestigious restaurants In Sydney at Martin Place, called Quo Vadis.