An AUTO Biography –
forms of transport as they have related to the life of James Lynn.Upon being born in 1953 a process combining "Grand Exit and Grand Entrance" I was gently
manhandled into the front seat of a tiny Bradford utility and driven home.
Wheels began to surround me. The woven cane Pram, well sprung and well remembered. Progressing to the non foldable stroller requiring Herculean strength to move. We lived on the peak of a hill. Downhill in all directions when leaving and uphill in all directions when returning. Mothers in the fifties must have represented the ultimate in fitness for their gender.
The life was fine and simple, the dog was called
Wuffie a fox terrier of largish proportions, My child hood slowly progressed to where I was trusted to be absent from home for longish periods, perfect for building and trashing Billy Carts in the then gullies of Willians Hill. The gullies are now filled in and have serviceable barbeques built on them. The childhood memories buried beneath those Barbeques are priceless.
Collecting pram wheels was a driving force and even then I wondered if my own pram (which became the pram of my sisters)
had perhaps returned in part to transport me at breakneck speed down McCleay street.
The fixed gear pushbike with an unused paper round rack on the front of it managed, inelegantly to transport me to and from primary and early high school. I remember that bike as weighing more than I did. I was not large as a child and like to think that I am not large as an adult (a digression inspired by vanity). The power to weight ratio of the pushbike to myself was not advantageous to forward motion.
Pusbikes became very uncool at age 14. One had the choice of catching the bus or walking to school. Catching the bus meant arriving at the bus stop early for the obligatory cigarette but as it was not possible to have a cigarette outside the school whilst waiting to catch the bus home I walked . . . and smoked.
Carrying my handleless briefcase under my arm. A briefcase with a handle was very uncool.
Digression is so easy for an artist, we just call it creativity.
Off to college in
Sydney, trains, buses, loneliness and restricted freedoms in the name of politeness and safety. Pleading to my father produced a small motorcycle. The joy this bike produced is still in my blood and is revived every time I am passed by or pass a motorcycle on the highway. Like most motorcycles it needed to be replaced by a larger faster motorcycle as often as could be afforded and in this process ended up "growing" it's capacity from 70ccs to 860ccs, Necessary growth to sustain the need for
adrenaline.
Returning to Wagga and "working" for a living, riding a motorcycle to work at seven in the morning in winter when the dogs water bowl is frozen through, surprisingly my hands still function.
Saved by the creation of an Art School in my own home town. Motorcycles and young women comfortable combined, occasionally to the distress of the woman's parents.
I once rode my motorcycle to Adelaide specifically to see a woman who had been wisely avoiding me. "I will come back and live
with you but not on the bike!" I sold it that afternoon and commenced a long association with cheap and mechanically demanding second hand cars.
A state I find myself in today.
Trains, planes, helicopters, boats, hydrofoils and water taxis have continued over the ensuing years to transport my curiosity and creativity to many corners of our wonderful planet. They have all aided in bringing me to this quite corner of the globe where I now live.
