Harley the sparky got sick and didn\u2019t get to our appointment in Brisbane Friday afternoon. Chest pains, I heard. We were supposed to work Saturday as well. I was ready to cancel and fly back to Sydney, but he signed himself out of hospital in time to arrive at the office at 0800 Saturday.<\/p>\n
He had his old master from when he was an apprentice helping him. The old master left late afternoon, but the job looked like it was way bigger than Harley had quoted. The next people to arrive were Harley\u2019s parents. His mother took charge of feeding everyone. His father took charge of going out to buy extra gear and generally helping out.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you flew up from Sydney for this job?\u201d he said to me. \u201cI used to live in New South Wales before we moved up here. Where are you from?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe office is in Chatswood\u201d, I told him. \u201cI live a few kays south of there. What about you? Where are you from?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA little town you\u2019ve never heard of,\u201d he said. \u201cTarana.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAu contraire<\/em>\u201d, I corrected him. \u201cI was having a BLT and a schooner in the Tarana hotel only last Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd what were you doing there?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n I told him that the girl-child was driving me to Ben\u2019s place to rack up training hours to get her driver\u2019s licence, and whenever we did that we stopped at Tarana.<\/p>\n He told me Tarana stories. He said his great great great great grandmother was one of the first women to cross the Blue Mountains after they discovered the Bathurst plains, and his family settled around Tarana. He said his great great great grandmother once shot one of Ben Hall\u2019s gang with a shotgun, because he was paying too much attention to her nineteen year old daughter; and the government gave her a reward for shooting a bushranger. He told me about how Ben Hall\u2019s gang had buried some of their treasure on one of the mountains near there under a distinctive tree, but then a bushfire had come through and destroyed the tree and the treasure is still there somewhere.<\/p>\n He told me his mother\u2019s family name, and said I should look for it on the cenotaph near the pub the next time I was there. They were always keen to go overseas to shoot Germans for King and Empire.<\/p>\n \u201cI go there a fair bit, actually\u201d, I told him. \u201cI ride a motorcycle, and the roads around Tarana are fun to ride on a motorcycle. It\u2019s thirsty work, so we generally stop at the pub for lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat sort of motorcycle do you ride?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cA Japanese V-twin\u201d, I said. \u201cA Suzuki DL1000.\u201d<\/p>\n He nodded politely. I thought he would leave it at that, but then he said \u201cI have a motorcycle too. Would you like to see a photo?\u201d<\/p>\n He got out his phone and showed me a picture. I don\u2019t know much about Harley-Davidsons, but I knew that one. \u201cIs that a WLA?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n He nodded. I looked at the photo more closely. \u201cIt looks like it just rolled off the production line in 1942\u201d, I said.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n We got back to work. There was lots to get back to. When Harley had quoted the job he didn\u2019t know that the ceiling was full of old decommissioned air conditioning systems that got in the way. They had to rip them out. The old man did three runs to the tip in his truck. We worked all night, and finished at 05:30 Sunday morning.<\/p>\n \u201cSo\u201d, I said to the old man, as we shook hands before he left. \u201cYou like bikes, you own a WLA, and you called your son Harley. That\u2019s okay, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n He looked pained. \u201cOf course it is\u201d, he said. \u201cI let the missus name the girl.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI go there a fair bit, actually\u201d, I told him. \u201cI ride a motorcycle,”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":585990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585973"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586093,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585973\/revisions\/586093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}