From My Notebooks In 1976: Gribble in Brisbane

1879 was a year in which the British Empire confronted some 4000 Zulus at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, with tales of heroism and a splurge of Victoria Crosses to excite the British public. It was also the year in which George Lucas launched his bicycle lamp, which might seem of relatively little importance. Nonetheless his lamp, mounted on the front wheel of penny-farthings, went on showing the way through darkness long after the battle was history. His was a small one-man business, selling oil and other things from a cart in the streets of Birmingham, but his lamp, which he called “King of the Road,” was the foundation of a business which came to flourish throughout the Empire and was still a household name when I began my journey in 1973.

All Triumphs were fitted with Lucas electrics and, because they had offices and workshops in most of the big cities along the route I had planned, they agreed to help by allowing Avon to send me new tyres at various places along the way. So I came to know the Lucas culture well, in Nairobi, in Cape Town, in Rio and Santiago, in Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, Penang, Madras, Bangalore and Delhi, and I paid courtesy visits even when there were no new tyres to fit. The managers were very old-school British businessmen, jacket-and-tie, belonging to the right clubs, occasionally inclined to grandiosity, very much wedded to the idea of Empire even though it had been dismantled around them. All the jokes and sarcasm among bikers – “Prince of Darkness” was the most current epithet – didn’t seem to impinge on them at all, and although I had my share of trouble, I think the criticism was generally unfair. More often problems arose from connectivity, and Triumph had to share the blame. In any event they seemed unaware of the encroaching doom and were always generous and helpful to me. So in Brisbane too I made contact with Lucas.

Carol, I, and the bike arrived in Brisbane on the morning of January 9th by train. I must have done some phoning beforehand, because we were invited to have lunch that day. The manager’s name was Gribble. Here is what I wrote:

Friday 9th

Brisbane at 12.30. Lunch with Gribble, a firmly fat man, fawn trousers, light brown shoes, white shirt stretched over his chest and belly. When I heard him over the telephone he reminded me of all the other Lucas men, and I thought of portly tolerance and good humour, and a good steak.

He greeted me with a necktie folded in his palm – a token of his extraordinary powers of anticipation – for me to wear in the club. He showed no pleasure, it isn’t his style. He prefers an impassive stance and delivers verbal blows unheralded by expression. The effort to maintain this poker face cause a muscle at the corner of his mouth to twitch a little and adds a slightly sinister cast to the general blandness. He has a butcher’s face; square, fleshed, opaque.

He started the conversation immediately by his hatred for Germans, all Germans. He loathes them, despises them, won’t allow one across his threshold. “There are only two kinds of German . . .” dramatic pause “ . . as Churchill once said, they’re either groveling at your feet or lording it over you.“

He continued with a terrible tale of punishment inflicted on some putative Nazi in Nigeria before the war, who said Heil Hitler and was foolish enough to leave an outboard motor on his, Gribble’s, property.

The motor was pitched directly into the sea. The Nazi came to remonstrate.

“ ‘I shall give you exactly ten seconds to get out of here,’ I said, but he stayed one second too long. I was wearing African army boots, you know, the ones with laces up to here, and on the eleventh second “ – Gribble lost his cool and became ecstatic – “I kicked him where it would do him most good, and pitched him out into the street.”

Gribble’s adjutant in Nigeria, when he was commissioned, was Quintin Hogg – later Lord Hailsham.

[Hogg, who had a distinguished war record, cut short by injury, later became a man of considerable importance in British politics and was almost Prime Minister. Read Gribble’s account in that light.]

He told a story of how he “unmanned” Q.H. He delighted in the word “unmanned,” repeated it several times. It was some foolishness about not having asked the C.O’s permission to marry.

“I don’t know what he’ll say,” quavered Q.H. according to Mr. Gribble.

“The best way to find out is to ask him,” said G.

In all his stories the protagonist makes strident or pathetic remarks in a silly voice, and G snaps them smartly to account with the pithy voice of reason and courage.

At one point Gribble evidently blundered into some perilous enterprise with his men and was lucky enough to get away with it. He rationalises that since the enemy would never expect such impudence (stupidity?) it was tactically brilliant to perpetrate it.

What upset Carol most was how Gribble taught his servant to refer to himself as “a gentleman’s personal gentleman.” In Australia, I imagine, there might be some kudos in some quarters to have actually had an officially legal black slave. When he joined the army, a regulation was promulgated that all officers’ servants had to be soldiers too. The black man promptly (and voluntarily according to G) joined up.

Quintin Hogg approached Gribble in the officers’ mess. “What do you suppose your fellow said he was when I gave him the attestation?”

“Gentleman’s personal gentleman,” replied G. [With satisfaction.]

He claims that the Germans rendered him childless. Did they kill his child, or render him sterile? I don’t know.

The vital point is that his stories, all perfectly acceptable in their time, seem gross today. Yet he has preserved his attitudes unchanged – and they are apparently still valid currency here.

[Gribble was the only insufferable Lucas man I met. The others, as I’ve said, were true gentlemen, but nice with it.]

We escaped from Gribble at about 2.30 and rode off to find the New England Highway, through Ipswich – nothing special – along the Cunningham Highway and past the National Park where there were fine forested hills, and up to Warwick where the N.E. Highway begins. Here we looked for vegetables, but the shop was a travesty (beans at 45 cents and not much else) so we got a steak (1lb 2ozs for $1.10 – very good rump). A heavy shower caught the bike while we were there. Then we went on for a way and found a gate into a field.

At first, difficult, Carol was nervous being on private land. Then we found we had no matches. I rode off to find some, and came back to find her calm, and lit a fire. Then it went very well. We slept out, there were a few mosquitoes, and I didn’t sleep much, watching the wind sweep the clouds away, and listening to odd sounds, and feeling Carol’s presence very lovingly.

This is hilly country at about 3000 feet: a cool area where sheep graze and apples grow. Stouthorpe, Tanterfield, etc. All Italian fruit growers.

What was that you said?

Saturday 10th

Blue sky with bars of white cloud. Cool, rather English countryside. Tanterfield a busy town, full of life. Had a poor lunch but enjoyed the place. Armidale is obviously the most prestigious of these “New England” towns, with the main street blocked off to make a pedestrian area, but no life – all home at lunch. After Armidale many ups and downs, but mostly downs, with safety ramps on the steeper descents, then into great heat of Tamworth. Old thin guy, called Walt, who owned village store and burned his sawmill for the insurance to build a new motel opposite, where we had a beer. Carol came out with a beer and a packet of crisps (SMITHS CRISPS) saying how gross it was, and that someone had said something about arses, but she wasn’t sure it was aimed at her.

In Tamworth I stopped to fix my helmet and passed a man in a half-shell helmet on a tiny bike with an even smaller tank. Turned out to be a 1934 Velocette, and he an old-time m/cycle mechanic who had restored it. Said he’d worked on them for 13 years (as a race mech. I suppose).

At Tamworth we took off on the Newell Highway, into big flat land where an increasingly strong wind blew, ‘till it was quite hard work to stay upright. Going West in the setting sun – with dust clouds in the air – like N. Nebraska, said Carol. Nearly a hundred miles of that, but some relief towards the end as ground rose and wound among hills before coming down into Coonabarrabran where Coolcappa turned out to be name of the sheep station where the Pembertons (?) lived. 800 acres of wheat, 2500 head of sheep, 600 head of cattle, etc. (10,000 or more acres). Earlier passed slaughterhouse, with shed for skins to dry out (like tobacco). Passing the cattle in the fields, it can be odd to reflect that each cow goes to support one person in the city for a year.

The Pembertons, it turns out, are people I heard about in Central America. Next week, if we’re lucky, parrots and Pembertons. Cheers!