Convivial bikers?
They didn’t see that coming
More posing than acting, Marlon Brando draped himself over a motorbike in The Wild One, and presented early-1950s society with a shudderingly awful thought.
Or two, if you count disastrously introducing a new generation to the notion that sideburns were cool.
But the main problem – leather-clad bikers teeming into a sedate town, disturbing the peace – caused conniptions among the guardians of morality. Or conformity anyway.
If anything, their New Zealand counterparts were even more on guard against such unheavals. Our censors knew what to do. They banned The Wild One outright. And again and again
. . . in fact five times between 1954 and
1959. It was only in 1977, eight years after
Easy Rider had hit the screens, that the Brando film was judged tolerable, and even then with an R16 certificate. A decade later, the video/ DVD versions were labelled PG.
Meanwhile, back in 1960s Invercargill, bikers had emerged organically. About the time Invercargill oldster Burt Munro was starting to do great things racing his immodestly fast old Indian motor-sickle, the town had developed gang of its own, the Antarctic Angels. They feature in Roger Donaldson’s Munro film, The World’s Fastest Indian where, like just about everyone else, they were shown to be won over by the old coot’s singleminded pursuit of adrenalised excellence.
It’s an agreeable question just what 1950s-1960s Invercargill would have made of the suggestion one day that great numbers of bikers would come roaring noisily through the place, to an extent unseen anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere, and the town and province would pretty much rejoice in their presence. As it does, with the annual Burt Munro Challenge.
Society still has a steely distaste for gangs, and rightly so. But these annual arrivals aren’t gangs, nor remotely antagonistic. They are here for a good time and theirs is a sort of camaraderie that tends to welcome, not confront, the casual passer-by. They reliably cause next to no problems and contribute not only financially but socially, adding a sense of vibrancy, enthusiasm and arguably a bit of glamour, albeit mostly of the middle-aged variety.
The competitive excitements of the challenge aren’t to be overlooked. Street racing, speedway, track sprint, drag racing, the hill climb and – most cinematically – the beach racing all have their appeal for onlooking crowds.
Things have reached the stage where it’s not only Invercargill, and Southland, where the Munroists are turning heads. People in points north have come to recognise the sight of the pilgrimage to and the return home.
Sadly those journeys haven’t been without accident, even fatality, which presents a case for continuing rider-and-driver education. The Munro Challenge has only recently changed from November to February and the more used summertime road users become to the prospect of encountering these riders the better. When they’re on the road, best give them a bit of distance. But when they’ve pulled over, don’t be shy. Typically they’re more agreeable company than the intense young Brando with that chip on his shoulder.
Street racing, speedway, track sprint, drag racing, the hill climb and – most cinematically – the beach racing all have their appeal for onlooking crowds.