Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Don Bain was a champion motorcycle racer in Australia in the 1930s and just after WW2, he was a Velocette racer....
Ron Kessing had a generous father, who bought him a new Mk.7 KTT in 1938 and Ron acquited himeself on it well, but is better known for his machine preparation.
They formed a business just after WW2....
Bain and Kessing.... with a shop on the corner of Mintaro Avenue and Liverpool Road ( the Hume Highway) in what I consider is South Strathfield, but Kesso, as he was affectionately known, chose to call Enfield. In fact he advertised his shop at 7, Broadway, Enfield in the print media....many years later he admitted to me it was a ploy to save on the costs of advertising in the daily newspapers...there were many less letters in his "address" than the real one....
Somehow letters and customers found him...
Illustrated is a later advert, when Ron was trading alone, still from the same shop and address....
I've two photos to share with you over the above....
Hidden in the archives of the Telco, Telstra, formerly the "PostMaster Generals Department"...the PMG, was the B & W photo of Bain and Kessing, with Ron Kessing, in overalls, striding out of his shop.
His 1936 Nash car is parked in the gutter and it was for sale, Kesso told me and had a sign on it's windscreen....the year was 1948.
Telstra found the pic to illustrate a conference on the methods of conveying the telephone traffic from the Sydney GPO to the Melbourne, Victoria GPO at the time...it was on the top three cross members of the telephone poles in the picture.
The archivist at Telstra knew me and so the photos were promised to me after the conference...
I remarked that Ron Kessing was still alive...the year 1989 and so we arranged for Roley Walker, arch Velo enthusiast, latterly taken from us by cancer and sadly missed, to bring his Mk.1 KTT ( won the 1929 Junior Manx GP in the hands of one Doug Pirie...) and for Ron Kessing to come and sit on it, 18th September 1989.
The photo was duly taken and used but I never got a copy, until today....when after a chance remark at the recent funeral of the late Allen Burt to the ex archivist, resulted in his tracking down the negative and arranging a print for me.
Pictured is Ron Kessing on the Velo, with Roley Walker to the right. Two senior Telstra people are in attendence ( names unknown) with that B & W picture....
So the story is now complete.....
Left click on the images to enlarge....
