Dad’s T100

From Peter Gallagher: “I was going through my old issues and the Tracks in Time in OBA 48 on Wallacia caught my eye. That was my dad Laurie Gallagher’s favourite track and he has many great stories of his racing days. One such story is of a race at Wallacia where he was racing Eric Debenham and dad was leading by the length of the back straight when he made the mistake of backing off on the last lap. As a result he crashed and heard Eric laughing as he rode past. Later Eric went on to race speedboats against dad’s cousin John Gallagher and he told John that he used to race against dad and he was good at falling off. Dad will be 90 in September. The photo (above) is of dad on the left (1949 T100) with Fred White standing, Dan O’Brien on his 1947 Ariel 350, my grandfather Bill standing and John (Frog) Richards on a 1947 BSA 350. Dad has lost most of his mates over the years and everyone except him and Frog in the photo have gone. He only ever had one bike the 1949 T100 in the photo. However he had what he called spring tank and guards for it and a twin carb set up. The tinware was black and he always raced with the nacelle in place. He normally converted the bike to race trim on a Friday night and they would either tow it to the race meeting behind another bike or put it on the fruit shop’s Chev truck. Then he would convert back to street trim on Sunday night so he could work the next day. He would have raced from sometime 1949 to around 1952 or 53. He started out with the solo saddle but after my grandfather traded his LE Velo for a new 1951 all alloy T100 they swapped seats because the 51 had a rigid rear wheel where dad’s had a sprung hub. He rode with Arncliffe Bexley Motorcycle Club and raced at Wallacia, Castlereagh, Vineyard, Mt Druitt and also did speed trials at Heathcote Rd near Menai and Lucas Heights.