Muscle Man
Country roads
Bryan Thomson was born in 1935 and raised at Rochester in central Victoria, before the family moved 65km to Shepparton after the war. Although cashed up from the sale of their farm, the family – Mum, Dad (now a builder) and six children – had to live in a tent for six months until a house finally became available. After that, another three children came along...
Bryan was shipped off to board at Scotch College in Melbourne – “Why? Because (Prime Minister) Bob Menzies went to Scotch!” – and had dreams of becoming an aircraft engineer.
“I was always enthralled by engineering, but the vocation people told my parents I wasn’t strong enough in mathematics,” he recalls. “They said I had the right attitude and skills to be a good tradesman, so I said to my dad, ‘If I’m going to be a tradesman and do an apprenticeship, why are we paying all this money to be at Scotch College?’ So we walked out.
“My father then said to me – the Depression mentality – ‘You’ve got to have a trade that’s got a government certificate, so you’ll always have a job.’ I wanted to be a motor mechanic, but he said, ‘No, you’ve got to be an electrician or a plumber.’ Well, I didn’t want to clear out sewerage pipes, so I became an electrician. But I never wanted to be an electrician, because I always had motorbikes and cars so I was more interested in them than electric motors.”
He bought, renovated and sold no fewer than 21 motorcycles before finishing his apprenticeship, and indulged in some racing. For his 21st birthday, he bought himself ‘the ultimate’, a Vincent Rapide, which he sold to fund a trip to the Isle of Man with a mate.
“The day I finished my apprenticeship, I booked for England, but my departure was delayed three months by National Service time, so the timing was pretty tight to get to the Isle of Man. Then we got to Fremantle and war had broken out in the Suez and we were diverted around the Cape (of Good Hope, South Africa). So we missed the Isle of Man.”
Instead, they stayed a few days in Cape Town and caught the next ship, which happened to be carrying Robert Menzies. They found themselves up on the top deck, which must have been as illuminating for the young men as it was for the PM.
On arrival in London, the ship was held at anchor while preparations were made for Menzies’ debarkation and the boys listened to radio coverage from Le Mans, where the Jaguars were heading for a rousing victory. That inspired the young Aussies (now numbering four) to buy a Ford Thames panel van, put seats in the back and venture off for three months following car and motorbike racing around Europe.
“We came back to England broke, so I went into the Labour Exchange in London, gave them my Victorian A-Grade Electrical qualifications, and a couple of days later I had a job. They looked at my qualifications and said, ‘Here’s the
