The trophy Tom and I are looking at – only one of countless such awards scattered about the Gibson family farmhouse in the Lockyer Valley – was presented to Tom by the Richmond River Motor Cycle Club. The inscription reads ‘1964 Outright Unlimited Solo’. “That would have been on the Matchless or the Bonneville,” states Tom confidently, though I’m not so sure.
Certainly, in his late teens and early twenties, the young Lismore-based diesel mechanic owned both marques, and also a rigid framed BSA Bantam he named ‘Leaping Lena’. Now in 2023, as Tom approaches his 82nd birthday – having excelled in every discipline of motorcycle racing, competing on more than a dozen different bikes – I was finding Tom’s recollections of past events often defied chronological order.
“Observed trials was all we had around Lismore in those early years,” says Tom. “Of course we had no idea what we were doing. We believed it was all muscle and horsepower, and if that didn’t work, you needed more horsepower.” It wasn’t until seven years later when Sammy Miller toured Australia, demonstrating that balance and body position were more critical than horses, that Tom realised there was an alternative approach to trials. “Sammy was so smooth it was like watching someone ride on air,” says Tom. However, by that time, Tom
