ROYAL ENFIELD WALLABY
Small, springy and built for life in the bush: the Wallaby is an indigenous marsupial native to Australia… and a really rather rare Royal Enfield. Rowena Hoseason reports
Small, springy and built for life in the bush: the Wallaby is an indigenous marsupial native to Australia… and a really rather rare Royal Enfield. Rowena Hoseason reports
When the Royal Enfield Wallaby was announced in the UK press in early 1964, it was billed as ‘the least glamorous model ever made in Redditch.’ That seems somewhat unkind, given the 250 single’s competition heritage and cobby appearance, but the press were probably sneering because this was a machine destined for an agricultural life in Australia. While British café racers were getting hot under their leather collars about Enfield’s Super 5 and the sparkling new Continental GT, something rather more utilitarian was needed on the other side of the world.
Few vehicles could cope with Australian winters – even Land Rovers struggled, apparently
– and motorcycles were ideal for sheep and cattle ranching. ‘The chaps that ride them are usually in the wild for days on end, so who needs glamour,’ said the story, and went on to explain that the bike’s bright red bodywork was so it ‘can be spotted with field-glasses from 10-15 miles away…’
Motorcycles were adopted by robust ’Stralians as far back as the 1930s, stripped down and run into the ground on rural farms. During the 1950s, individual dealers turned out their own specials with no fixed specification and variable spares support. By 1960 the market was ready for a purpose-built model from a mainstream factory – enter the Liberty 250
Ranch, based around Yamaha’s YDS1 road bike. The special edition was manufactured at the behest of South Australian importer, Liberty Motor Co, and sold exclusively through them. Even the retailer wasn’t exactly overflowing with exuberance for this type of machine. The brochure says the Yam was ‘specially built and designed for terrain and cross-country areas or for slow, tedious duties.’ Crikey! Despite being damned by such faint praise, the Liberty Ranch 250 carved out a decent niche for itself among hard-working farm hands.
When Yamaha’s attention turned to rather more profitable markets, this left a gap in the Australian showrooms – one which Royal Enfield made a bid to fill. After all, the Redditch firm had a sterling offroad competition history – and an easilyadaptable small-capacity platform which hadn’t quite set the British trials scene alight. The Crusader Trials model was developed by the works team through the late 1950s and became a customer model in 1961. It used the same basic engine and frame as the roadgoing Crusader Sport, with its lightalloy cylinder head, 8.5:1 compression, large Monobloc carb, bigger inlet valve, hotter cams and a 7” front brake.
With a following wind, the sporty 18bhp streetbike could reach
85mph: snappy performance for its time. But try as they might, Enfield couldn’t quite translate that into a user-friendly off-roader for the clubman competitor. Compression went slightly higher, to 8.75:1, with a wide-ratio gearbox and special, two-way damped front fork. Wheel options included a 21” front hoop giving 6½” ground clearance. A slimline petrol tank was matched to light alloy mudguards and a high-level exhaust pipe with its tidy silencer neatly tucked in. The carb breathed through an air filter, the speedo was mounted in the fork crown and the coil ignition lived under the saddle – with the rectifier and battery all crammed in.
Without lights, the Trials Crusader was 20lb lighter than its Sport cousin, but it arrived too late to convert those off-road riders who were already firm fans of the Bullet. The Crusader Trials was shorter and a little lighter, but it offered none of the Bullet’s plonking low-rev power. Meanwhile, the true trendsetters on the trials scene had already taken up with those tempting two-strokes…
The Wallaby, however, is a very long way (both physically and figuratively) from the ultra-competitive trials scene. It needed to be able to maintain the 2mph pace of a shaggy sheep for hours on end, scramble around rocky 1-in-3 slopes, and stretch a tank of fuel for hundreds of miles. This was a back-to-basics bike, built down to a price. There’s no centrestand, for a start: cue howls of outrage about how on earth an Australian sheep farmer could quickly detach the rear wheel to fix a puncture…
Few items were sprinkled with any sparkle; black paint prevailed over chrome on most components. The dinky trials fuel tank was replaced with the bigger steel petrol tank from the Crusader Sport. But the Wallaby’s specification was hardly set in stone; some machines had extra guards around the drive chain, the fork nacelle could be painted or polished, and brackets and mudguard stays seemed to be whatever fell to hand when that bike was being assembled.
Ground clearance was increased by simply fitting longer rear shocks and the belly of the (wee) beast was protected by a sturdy steel bashplate. The 18” wheels were fitted
with chunky tyres (3.50 and 4.00), and some mods were made to keep dust and dirt out of delicate places, like the kickstart / clutch adjuster. Trials bikes used in the UK had the nasty habit of accumulating dirt in the crankcase housing around the sprocket, transferred there by the drive chain. A muddy / sandy / stony goop could then find its way past the drive oil seal, into the gearbox and primary chain and thence to the engine itself. That doesn’t bode well for a bike intended to spend its life in the Outback…
With its ultra-low-ratio gearset and in some cases a low-comp piston to cope with variable fuel quality, the Wallaby’s top speed would be unlikely to exceed 60mph. It was a sturdy and simple machine – just as the specification requested – which proved to be practical and affordable. But customer response and predicted sales weren’t strong enough to prolong the Wallaby’s existence beyond a couple of sample shipments.
The Crusader Trials is in itself rather rare; RE’S factory records show that only around 150 were built. Just fourteen of those had the notation ‘Wallaby’ in the specification column, and would’ve been shipped to the far side of the world.
Owner Dan discovered some of this history in the paperwork which came with his bike, and contacted the REOC in the UK to learn more.
‘The first four were shipped to Ken George’s dealership in Perth in March 1964, along with two Trials machines that weren’t designated as Wallabies. The remaining 10 left the UK in November 1964, with six going to Ken George and four to the Liberty Motor Co – mine is one of the latter. In total 12 were delivered to Australia and likely two went to New Zealand.’
So Dan’s Wallaby isn’t just unusual – it’s now almost one of a kind. ‘I don’t know of any other road-registered ones in the world. There is one which has been totally restored and is in the WA Motor Museum.’
So how exactly did the Wallaby leap into Dan’s life?
‘I was working on one of my Panther projects in the old Qantas hangar – which is a collection run by the Darwin Motor Vehicle
Enthusiasts Club. I was tinkering away and a bloke called John came across for a chat, laughing about a young bloke working on an old bike. We had a laugh and chatted about Panthers. Then he said “I’ve got a Wallaby motorcycle. Do you want it?”
‘“Well it has an animal name so it’s welcome into my stable,” I joked. I had no idea of what it even was.
‘John was only in Darwin for a rally, using our club facilities for running repairs, so I got to know him and his wife Kate over a few days. I mentioned I was going to a Panther rally in SA later that year, near to where they lived. John said to come and pick up the Wallaby, and we stayed in touch.
‘A few months later I packed my ute for the three day drive, taking my 1950 Model 100 to the Panther rally. I enjoyed the event and then called John and Kate before driving over to find them. Before I knew it we had agreed a price: sight unseen. I had attempted to research the Wallaby as much as possible but there wasn’t a great deal of information. I had a ballpark figure for that size engine and style of bike, but that didn’t account for its rarity.
‘John took me into his shed on a cold and wet day, kicked her and she started. It was love at first sight: she is an attractive beastie. I used to race speedway solos and always had a preference for single cylinders. This girl was a single cylinder, looked the business and best of all had an animal name! But mainly, she was a piece of Australiana. John and Kate were keen that it would stay in Australia; there were collectors in Europe who wanted it but I agreed. She needs to stay in Oz.
‘The Enfield was originally sold to a South Australian farmer, Edward R Cotton, who used it for sheep work on his farm. In 1985 Grant Cotton took over the farm and the bike, continually using it until it was sold to John, from whom I bought it. John remembers the day when the original owner bought the Wallaby – he was a young boy living on the neighbouring farm. John said it was purely ridden a few miles a day by the farmer, from his homestead to the farm sheds.
‘The bike has only around 7000 or so miles on it. I’ve even got the original white helmet that the Wallaby was sold with. She is still totally original, including a couple of dints on the tank which were caused by Edward Cotton. He rode through a gateway without getting off to secure it, and it blew back onto him!
‘The only items that have been changed are the tyres and the ignition coil, which I damaged myself when struggling to start it. The poor starting was actually due to a dirty connection, not the coil.
‘First gear is definitely slow, to suit the walking speed of cattle and sheep. There’s a big gap between third and fourth gears so you need to get the revs up, but she bleats along comfortably at 55mph. I’ve done around 800 miles on her and she’s just
needed attention to the coil, lubrication, and cleaning the carb due to rubbish modern fuels. She is road registered and ridden frequently. Everyone who’s ridden her is surprised by how easy and comfortable she is.
‘I’ve ridden the Wallaby a lot here in Darwin, on bike events, the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride and a lot of club rides. She’s seriously comfortable and you could easily ride her all day. She rides sweetly, I don’t push her too hard due to the higher ambient air temperatures.
‘I’ve got my eyes on a few other Panther projects – the Wallaby is probably the only other machine I’ll let into my stable. I can’t think of many other old motorcycles with animal names, but you never can tell as something might pop up. This Wallaby sure jumped into my life when I least expected it!’