Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Those of you reading my blog will have delighted in the photographs and letters written to Allan Schafer in reply to his correspondence in the 1930s....
I'd like to share a couple of photos of Allan as a younger man around this time.....
Allan is shown on his 1940 MAC 348cc Velocette, likely in the Grafton area of NSW where Allan lived all his life, running the family motorcycle, then later bicycle business. He was an excellent tennis player and was involved in tennis at a State level.
A prolific letter writer, he wrote to many famous riders, both in Australia and overseas, receiving delightful letters, now so historic, in reply, usually with an autographed photograph.
These have proved invaluable to historians today and Jim Scaysbrook, editor of "Old Bike Australasia" is keen to utilise them.
Not heard of Old Bike Australasia? A new addition to newsagents in the Historic/Classic literature field and now published bi-monthly, for details check out http://www.bandt.com.au/view_media.asp?mediaid=150150
I'd corresponded with Allan sporadically over the years in my Velocette research and met him several times and was delighted when he invited me to become custodian of his collection, sometime in the 1990s....this blog has to be an obvious solution to sharing his treasures with those interested.
The other photograph, also taken in 1940, at the Easter Australian GP races at Bathurst, NSW, is of Allan watching Tommy Jemison, a sponsored rider from the NSW Velocette Distributor, P & R Williams of Sydney, fettling his Mk.8 KTT.
Few Mk.8 KTTs came into Sydney in 1939, prior to the outbreak of WW2 and is likely to have been either of the two last Mk.8's made in 1939, engine numbers, KTT850 and KTT851 ( I owned the frame of KTT851, serial number SF55 for many years with another KTT engine in it..."nice piece of kit.." as they say).
Left click on the images to enlarge...