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I'm sure there must be ppl here that can tell us stories about the good old days, I'm very interest to hear about them, I'm sure I'm not alone.

Here's one of mine, yeah I've got quit a few.

I started working at the young age of thirteen,I worked for my old man, we traveled all around Victoria building steel hay sheds, sheering sheds, wool sheds & machinery sheds, we had a holden ute, & towed a caravan, anyway we were going to another job, traveling along the back roads the old man over shot the turn off, the road was narrow & big ditches on both sides, after few attempts the old bloke got pissed off, he then asked me if I could back it back, I said I'll try, he knew I could because he has seen me practice backing the van around in our back yard, so after I got it back on the right road the old man said you might as well keep driving for a while, from then on I used to drive a lot.

We were coming back from Yarrawonga to Ararat, I was driving my old man was talking business with my older brother, neither of them knew that I was doing 85 miles an hour between towns all the way home ;D yeah my old man thought me to drive fast because he was always in a hurry ;D

I don't think I would get away with it these days.
the good old days.

How come you go so slow now  :D ;D :D ;D

I remember being able to buy bullets for my 22 out of k mart when I was 15, and the Iron Maiden concert at festival hall standing only and so much pot smoke in the air you could not see the stage, being able to smoke were ever you liked, and being able to call a wog a wog and sing Christmas carol's in school without offending a nation full of soft kock's, on the bright side, we still live in the lucky country, with great places to ride and great people to ride with. With hard work and determination it is still possible for some one with nothing to end up with something, so try not to despair to much and resist the softy's and harden the fook up, life is still good. Will 

I'm not saying that life is no good Mate, I'm saying that life in the old days was a hell of a lot better, then it is now, you could go out at night & not have to worry about that you might end up in hospital or worse.

I'm not having a go about life the way it is now, I'm interested to hear stories from members from the good old days what sort of stuff they got up to, so come you fellas spill your guts ;D

Just wait till the 4th have I got a surprise for you  ;D :D ;)

I used to like the days when shops closed at midday on Saturday.

My dad used to run his own business.  He'd shut the door at midday, hang around for an hour doing book work, then he'd be home.  We would all do stuff, as a family, then.

If you were ging to plan some project to do, you would have to get everything you needed my midday, otherwise you were stuffed!  No running down to Bunnings just to get a packet of nails.  Now, we don't need to plan, we just get what we need when we need it.  Saturday has become Friday.  Sunday is now Monday, there's no differance (in that respect).

I miss that simplicity!

I miss 15c for a pack of Cheese Twisties.
And a Wagon Wheel was Twice the size as they are now!!
"Tic Toc Biscuits", i remember 1c each when i was in grade 1.

6 and 3 cent Wagon Wheels!

The old Cheese stick "5c"

Crystal Cylinders Windcheaters.

East Coast Jeans
And a Pack of Lollie Fags, now there called Fads, We now live in "P!SS WEAK WORLD"

Those were the days!  You new where you stood!

Now it's all reconcilliation and "I'm sorry!" crap, mung-bean sandwiches and kum-by-yar with tofu extract and mocca-chino.

Bollocks!

Lets not forget the bad old days too Frankie, when you had to make a phone call you had to find a phone box, if you needed info you needed a set of encyclopeadias , imagine trying to run this club now without the internet, drum brakes awesome, ignition points awesome, open face helmets awesome, body armour mmmm padded jumpers awesome, no electric starters, on motor bikes, and crank handles on cars and trucks awesome, black and white TV even awesomer, standards like a minimiun height for a person to enter the police force were dropped cause that would be descrimination , so when you start anylising it there were more bad things than good, but what we need to find is a blend of old and new, and we need to start by resetting the standards, and foook descrimination, we need some hard core Judges to tell some of the folks who go to tribunal's, and court over crap, to HTFU and get on with life, we need folks to be a little bit scared of our police force again, so we need the cops to HTFU, infact the nation needs to HTFU, owe my god, I can feel another ride coming on, owe no my heart rate is on the rise, I better relax, to soon for another HTFU ride, they havent forgotten the last one yet, and Frankie would probably want to kill me if we had one so soon.
Sorry Frankie but we need to keep our in my day stories, for around the camp fires when camping out, and just get on making this club the best trail bike riders club in the world. LOL Will   ;) :D ;D

The memories just keep flooding back Frankie, it should be called 'I remember when'. I remember when my mates and I went to k-mart in Keysborough and bought slug guns and boxes of 500 slugs.Then we had wars at the local Tech school. One kid got hit on the forehead and got knocked out. We then made a pact that we would only aim for the body.
Mates (lolly variety) were 4 for a cent.
Sauce was free with your pie. (Tim)
4 potatoe cakes and chips for 20 cents (last a week)
6 up in the kingswood heading to the Murray at Christmas in 45 deg heat. Vinyl seats, no air con, in a tent with no floor. Those were the days !!!
The negatives
Two many had outs, too many people working the system. Get a girl pregnant - move into a commission house, get rent assistance, dole, $5000 when the babies born to buy a new plasma, job search money, free medical and dental, health card. 12 months paid maternity leave, another kid - here's another $5000. Update your plasma. Who pays for all this ???
 
 

I am not as old as you Frankie but was lucky enough to catach the end of the good old days , I remeber when I was a kid and the bread was delivered by a bloke with a draft horse and cart ( modern cart of course ). During the school holidays we would wait for him at the top of the street and he would put three of us on the horse and we would ride him to the end of the street while he delivered the bread door to door , no skate boards but lots of home made billy carts that you built with your dad , shooting the old boys chickens in the back yard with our sling shots . I also remember going to woolies with mum and the weekly grocery bill was like 19 bucks which included a 4 LITRE flagon and tobbaco for the old boy. I also remember the family dog  going with us kids every where except when we went to the creek to catch tadpoles casue we couldnt keep the bugger out of the water.  :D Times we will never see again but we should never forget .....  Great topic Frankie .... And most importnatly I remeber when nearly all dirt bikes were two strokes them were the days  ;D 

Great meeting the other night, well done to all the award winners. Ken Robinsons 5-10 minute history of his introduction to dirt bikes was great. Try riding a dirt bike from South Melbourne to Frankston today and see what happens.
Anyway, does anyone else want to hear more from Ken and any other founding members of these experiences. Anyone ever thought of writing a history of AMTRA.
I am sure there are stories about old blokes and old bikes that are too good to loose forever.

I'm not old enough for one of these stories, so i live for now not in the past!

when im frankies age it will be HTFU 50 , ;Dworked out at a rate of 2 htfu/per year

Remembering the old days, when I was fifteen years old I used to nick my brothers motorcycle when he was away at work, it was a 250cc Puch, I used to ride around Mulwala NSW & also in Yarrawonga, on one of many rides I met an oncoming cop car not a problem I thought to myself ;) keep in mined that I was also wearing my brothers helmet & jacket.
Anyway my brother arrived home from a ride the next day, & said to me that he got pulled up by the local copper, I thought lucky that it was you & not me ;D the copper said to my brother, you're a funny bloke, my brother asked him why is that, the copper then said well one day when I see you on the road you give me a wave, & then the next time I see you, you look the other way, the copper then asked is that your brother riding that bike, my brother just looked at him not saying a word, the copper then said tell him not to ;D
yeah there are some good cops ;D

I remember leaving home after lunch on a Sat and kicking a footy or playing cricket on the street with all the kids of the neighbourhood [yould have move the bin if a car came ]and they'd give you a wave not the finger, or riding your 3 gear dragstar around thinking you were cool, getting lollies at the milkbar [ 2 cents would get you a bag you could choke on for days] and you would'nt go home till you were called in for tea or it was dark, and your mum never worried where you were :'( :'( :'(

i remember being able to leave a six pack out for the garbo at xmas time..

also potato cakes were 5cents. we used to put a tiny piece of bubble gum in the phone then when we got outa the surf , shove a icypole stick down it and bingo..you would always get about 2 bucks..enough for 3 hungry lads to get a heap of tomato sauce with out potato cakes and a 1.25 litle bottle of solo or fanta..

then we found out that, if you turn the old public red phone upside down then uprite again it would also pay out..
 ;D

There was a Coke Machine at the Bundoora Tennis club, you could put your hand up the shoot, and put the bar "And Bingo" 5 Cans would fall out.
 Then we found out they would store the Slabs of Coke in a Garden Shed out the Back and my mates Mum had the key "BINGO" 
  5 Slabs!!!

Not much happening to-day, so I thought I would share another  one off my stories, this one goes back to when I was 16 years old. We moved to Yarrawonga/ Milwala from Ararat early 60ties, after a few years there, the old man wanted to move back to Ararat again, having a girlfriend in Mulwala I wasn't happy to leave, being only 16 what can I do about it, being back in Ararat for a short time, I missed my girl so much, so I left home to be with my girl again, I stayed at her place for a while which was great but I had to fined some work, luck was with me my eldest brother was working in Canberra on the cotter dam wall & told me that he could get me a job their, so off to Canberra I went,the job would only be for 5 weeks, it was at the finishing stage of the job, it was a very good paying job, I was getting 30 pounds a week (6 days)we were not allowed to lift a hammer before smoko, & after smoko we could lift a hammer but we couldn't do any thing ;D we just walked around looking busy, anyway while I was there I earnt enough money to buy a 250cc Honda Super sport, riding around Camberra taking in the sites was great, the roads were awesome, I remember flying around capital hill a 4 lane round about, the bike had a tow/ heal gear change, anyway I was hooting around the hill one Saturday afternoon the bike revving pretty high I though I had a gear to go, so I changed up to the next gear only to go back to 1st gear, the wheel locked up, smoke coming off the back tyre, I tall ya you never seen someone grab the clutch as fast as I did, that bike had a funny gear selector,because it had a tow heal change, you used your heal to change up & your tow to change down, so when you're in top gear & you come to a set of lights, all you had to do was press down once with your heal & then you were back in neutral, unbeknown to me there was a pin that held it in gear it had fallen out, yeah I missed gears a lot >:(
After the job was finished my brother & I moved back to Yarrawonga. We left Canberra late evening, we traveled through the night, my brother in his VW & me on the my bike, my brother told me if I wanted to swap just pull over, I thought no way I wanted to drive the beetle, I was very happy riding my bike, I had heard that you can fall asleep riding a bike, believe me you can, I was fighting to keep my eyes open even though it was very cold.

To be continued.............

Now where was I, oh yeah it's coming back to me now :D
So I stayed at my girl friends place again until the bank balance was getting low, the nearest place I could land a job was in Wangaratta, so I worked there & traveled back to Yarra on Friday nights to spent the weekend with my girl.

Anyway the Honda had some bad noises coming from it & it was going to cost me more money to what I've had, so I did a deal with Ray Wason motorcycles, I swapped the bike for a Trumpy tiger 110 650 cc, it's true it leaked a lot of oil & you had to ride with a spanner in ya pocket ;D
I met up with some locals & we used to go on a few rides together, one of the rides was to Albury to watch some road races at Hume ware,  we met up with some blokes from Myrtleford, so after the races were finished, all 9 of us if I remember right, went to Myrtleford for a coffee, while we were parked in the main street, A cop came around the corner driving very slowly & giving us a look, yeah I was a bit nervous, I was happy they kept going, made sure not to break the  speed limit say in case they were hiding around the corner.

As time went on I got more & more cocky, I have been known to scrape the foot pegs coming into the main street of Wang, it wasn't hard to do as the pegs were close to the ground on the old Trumpy ;D
The coppers must of had complaints about me scaring little old ladies ;D
One Saturday I didn't go back to Yarra, I can't remember why I didn't, but anyway I was having a nice ride around town when I saw a divvy van coming towards me, when they went past I looked in my mirrors & saw them turn around, so I took off :D
I headed towards a foot bridge across a dry creek, my Marlin bars just cleared the hand rails, when I got across I looked back at them & see them sitting there :D they must have been really pissed off :D

I was thinking that I got away, wrong, on my way home around a few corners I see them again, & the chase was on again, the divvy was no match for me & my trumpy, so when I lost them again I headed home, very happy with my self, later that day around 6 I was in the shower, the landlady knocked on the door & told me that there was 2 policeman there to see me, my heart sank! I couldn't think of anything at that point, when I came out to see them, they asked me is that your bike, I answered yes, he then asked me did I ride this afternoon, I couldn't say no when the oil was still burning on the hot engine ;D

Now is the bad part of the good old days ;D
I had to front the court on Monday morning, the judge through the book at me, I was fined 105 pounds & not be able to get my licence until I was 21, I didn't have the money, I was only earning 15 pounds a week,I reckon because I was only 16 that kept me out of jail, so I had to go the the court house every payday & give them 5 pounds until the fine was finalized.

The next day it hit the front page of local paper

Motorcyclist behaved like a moron ;D
I wish that I had kept that paper ;D
This my make me look bad, but I'm not really a bad bloke ;D

I remember traveling on the school bus with my (now) brother in law. He used to bring his 12 gauge shot gun to school. They had a gun club on Wednesday afternoon. This was not that long ago. Early 1990's.

I've only just joined the forum

This is some of the best forum reading

The old days for me was milking the one cow we had for our daily milk and learning to ride a motorbike on a Honda Ag CT 125

Welcome to the club mate, I'm glad you liked my story, I was hoping that there was more members sharing their stories,come on ppl I'm waiting to hear yours.

We lived in Box Hill and watched all the houses being built around us. Was great to play on the building sites after hours, chasing each other around through the framework of a house. Grab scraps of wood and dropped nails and hammer them in somewhere. Now builders put a fence up around their site now. They are going to miss out on all my design mods.

At the back of the house was Gardiners Ck, all paddock with a few horses in it. Play in the creek and catch tadpoles. Walk along the creek to school and cross using a fallen tree. Now that is all landscaped and the creek is channelled too I think with bridges instead of trees. Looks nicer but no adventure.

First bike I rode was the minibike with the lawnmower engine, no brand on it. Round the back of a local bike shop. Must have done a thousand laps of that paddock. Sometimes I wore a helmet.

Now if my kids do something like that I am not sure if I will encourage it or be telling them off.

HaHa I've told my son some stories from my young days, one thing he did, he took my bike to the nearest shopping center to his school, he was 14 I think he parked it there all day, anyway I arrived home a bit earlier then usual & caught him taking the mirrors off, I asked him what are you doing, he said that his mate came around to have a look at the bike & wanted to see it with the mirrors on..................yeah right........When I got to the bottom of it, he then said, you used to ride around when you were my age, I said yeah I did.......... But that was different ;D
It pays not to tell your kids to much ;D

I forget! ???

As mentioned earlier I used to ride my DT1 Yam down the beach from work in Sth Melb to Frankston. It was grouse riding along watching the sun setting. Eventually there were 10 of us in the Monarchs touring club with dirt bikes so when there was'nt a road ride on we hit the dirt. There were a few trailers around but mainly for the road racing bikes so most of us just rode the dirt bikes to and from. One of our favourite rides was to Arthurs Seat on the Mornington Peninsula. It usually started with some road racing up Olivers hill and along the beach road. Down near Arthurs Seat it was onto the beach for some sand racing and when we had had enough of that it was back to thr road racing up and down Arthurs Seat. When those trail tyres got warm they had really good grip but the drum brakes were a bit scarey coming down. When we got sick of that we had a go at trail riding up and down under the chair lift. With the look out cafe at the top for food and a servo not far away at the bottom it was an all day flogging for those bikes, we loved it.

I have good stories to tell. One day when I get time I will post them.