At our January 2021 meeting club members were treated to a talk given by John McGrath. John, now 92, has never owned a car or had a driver’s license.

In the late 1940’s while an amateur at the Canterbury Club in Sydney he struck up a friendship with visiting WA State Champion Geoff Baker.

I got to know him really well and he said, “If you ever decide to come over to the West, let me know and I’ll fix you up at our place with board with mum and dad. I don’t know what made me – probably I’d always wanted to come over here and have a look at it but it seemed so distant. It was like another world. People used to talk about West Australia over there as though it was another country. It was so isolated, even then in 1949 it was very isolated. So I decided to come over here and I arrived by ship on the Strathaird.

John stayed in Perth for two years, joining the Fremantle Amateur Cycling Club and was chosen for the WA State Team in 1951. In 1952 he returned home to ailing parents after competing in the Australian Titles in Goodwood, South Australia, again as part of the State Team.

He came back to Perth in 1960, this time crossing the country not by boat but by bike. Setting out on track singles (lightweight tubular racing tyres) he was obliged to make some changes to his touring setup;

Once you got past from Ceduna it was all dirt. I had no idea what I was up against. By the time I got to Melbourne I had to get most of them repaired and by the time I got to Adelaide, they were going again. When I got to Ceduna I stopped at this bike shop for a bit of advice about how the roads were and he said, “You’re not going to ride on that?” “Yeah, why?” “You won’t get round the corner on that bike.” I said, “No?” He said, “No, not on those tyres; no way.” I said, “Well, what do you reckon?” He said, “You need a pair of heavy duty wheels to get through.” So I said, “Okay.” He only had 26 inch wheels so that meant my brakes were no good, they wouldn’t fit onto the wheel and he said, “You don’t need brakes. It’s all flat.” It was nearly all flat except coming down to Eucla! There’s this great big hill – a joke! Straight down, no turns or anything, straight down then flattens out and I thought, “Well one thing, we’re not going to run into a car.” So I just sat on it and let it go. That was the only hill in over a thousand miles.

John joined the Midland Cycling Club and started racing a variety of road and track events including the first 6 Day Race held at Lake Monger. He was sponsored by Swansea, initially riding his Bobby Jones (NSW) built frame painted as a Swansea. The steep track at Lake Monger demanded a frame that would allow better clearance for turning pedals at low speeds, Swansea built him an appropriate frame finished in copper plate.

It (the 6 Day Race) was a wonderful experience. Once I rode one, really I didn’t want to ride another one; because for one thing I considered myself a bit old for it. They ride longer these days but, how old was I? Thirty, thirty-three, something like that; and that would’ve been considered as 'getting on a bit’. The young ones, 19 or 20 year olds used to give you a bit of a serve. The Victorians controlled the race. It was a set-up, you know, and was really determined by Bill Long. He was the organiser and in charge of the event. If he said that one team was going to win tonight, well, that was the way it went. It wasn’t what a lot of people thought.

In 2015 the City of Belmont made an oral history recording with John. John and his family have lived in Belmont since the early 1960’s. As John’s reminiscences didn’t extend to much about Belmont the city never published them. The City of Belmont and John have kindly allowed the WAHCC to publish the transcript of his interview which can be downloaded here as a pdf. John also kept a number of photographs and race programmes, copies of which can be found on the club’s Flickr album.

John McGrath at Lidcombe Oval 1947. Riding off the scratch mark with Mervyn O’Connor.

Australian Championships L-R Bernie Fudger, Noel Davey, F. Jennings and John McGrath.

1961 start of the Douglas Jones road race. L- R John McGrath, Graham Bilton, unknown