Alan’s Indian

I was particularly interested in the cover story of Old Bike No 86, featuring the Indian Scout 101. In November 1931, my father bought one and he kept a diary for much of the time he owned it which makes interesting reading today. He paid £25 deposit, (which according to the RBA now equates to about $2,300) so it may have been new, but more likely it was a recent second hand model as it had a front brake. He paid £1/5/0 for his registration and 5/- for his license at the local Police station and sometime later he had fitted the Indian with a sidecar in order to take my mother out.

The diary covers everyday journeys and social activities and interestingly, he often records the times taken and various other statistics, such as fuel and oil and the occasional mechanical problem. He was a new rider and on his first trip to work from his home in Ryde in Sydney, to the city, he records; “Roads wet. Stalled once. Nearly bumped large lady near Rozelle…” so it was obviously a bit nerve-wracking, but he still made it in 30 minutes. Once he got to the city in 17 minutes but usually the trip was about 25 minutes and on one occasion he complained that there were “…many horses.”

During his first week of ownership he bought a leather jacket for £ 4/10/0 (now about $430) and interestingly, a speedo for 15/- for which he later fitted a ring gear for the drive on the back wheel. For a long time, I was puzzled about the Scout’s consumption of oil, as he often bought a quart of Mobil or Plume but then I realised that the bike used a constant loss system, so no doubt it left an elegant trail of blue smoke.

I believe the Indian Scout 101 had a reputation as a fast, good handling bike and this is amply demonstrated in my father’s diary: On Boxing Day 1931, he left home at Denistone for Leura at 5.15 am and experienced dense fog much of the way to Penrith. Then the Indian “…climbed over Lapstone, just got over in top & went in top all the way. Arrived Leura 7am.” When one considers that this was on the old two lane Great Western Highway which ran through Parramatta and Penrith and all the Blue Mountain towns thereafter, with steep climbs, many right angle bridges over the railway, not to mention the notorious bends at Linden and Woodford, I think this is impressive. Even today, that journey out of peak hours and via the expressways, could still take about an hour and a half. Including a number of local trips around the Blue Mountains, the Indian covered 306 miles at 17/4 for oil and petrol.

Then, six weeks later, he makes this rather frightening entry after the generator belt flew off, resulting in a flat battery near Marulan; “Moon up & did some speeding without lights…” Another fast trip was to the Central Coast, leaving the City in peak hour at 5pm via the brand new Harbour Bridge with a 10-minute stop at Warrawee and time taken to cross the Hawkesbury River at Peats Ferry (there was no road bridge at that time) where he “…got ahead of all the cars and reached Gosford at 6pm”. Again, this was on the old Pacific Highway with hardly a straight section from Mount Colah to Gosford, to this day much loved by motorcyclists. Traffic was no doubt light by our standards, and I tend to think that the diary says as much about the rider as it does about the Indian Scout.

Dad’s riding career finished towards the end of 1932 after having two accidents. One was with a car in Clarence St, in which the bike sustained some damage and he was slightly injured but the second came some months later which was not recorded in the diary but often related to us as a cautionary tale: One dark night he rounded a corner and ran straight into a cart whose horse had died, such were the hazards of the day. He sustained a cut nose and a badly broken arm and spent some weeks in hospital. With his impending marriage to my mother, it was probably suggested that the time had come to sell the Indian.

Over thirty years later when I was a teenager, one of my brother’s friends owned a WLA Harley and my father, then in his early 60s, was rather taken with it. He was offered a ride and although he hadn’t ridden a bike since he sold the Indian, he didn’t miss a beat and confidently climbed aboard, started it up and rode it down our long drive and disappeared down the street, returning quite some time later with a huge smile on his face! I think a lot of old motorcyclists are familiar with that feeling.

His many Indian stories were directly responsible for my riding career but that was on Hondas, not big V twins. By that time, my father had died and in any case, I doubt whether he would have thought much of those clean, effete little Japanese bikes. The Indian Scout certainly remained a family legend.

Jeff Rigby Bullaburra, NSW