Adventurer's life on wheels

He’s a dab hand with mechanics and he’s driven everything from a Morris Oxford to a Harley-Davidson.

But for John Cannam it all started with a pushbike.

On April Fools’ Day of 1966, John, now 74, rode out of his East Midlands hometown of Leicester and cycled part-way around the world.

The third-generation landscape gardener had been into pushbike racing since his army days and, by chance, encountered a man who was planning to ride to Australia.

“I said, ‘I’ll come with you’,” John said.

Their adventure took them through France, Switzerland and Italy to Greece.

They travelled into Turkey, then Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and on into Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

“In India we met two fellows with motorbikes,” he said.

“I overhauled the engine in Delhi and we went up into the Himalayas with them,” John recalled.

In India, he bought a ticket on the SS Oriana.

“It was 96 pounds to Australia —I had 100,” he said.

“I stepped off the Oriana in Fremantle with four pounds in my pocket.”

John boarded in Subiaco, street tree pruning for the local council.

He took trips across the Nullarbor in a Morris and toured the east coast on a Harley, and then, during a stint home to the UK in 1970, he met Olive.

He was mowing for the Leicestershire City Council one bitterly cold day when a 20 pound note blew through his mower blades.

“I’d never come across a 20 pound note before, so I decided to use it to buy a ticket to the Isle of Man TT (a motorcycle racing event held on an island between the UK and Ireland).”

During his week-long holiday John met Olive at a zebra crossing.

They married that Easter and booked a passage to Australia in August.

“I returned to work at the Subi shire council, and we bought a house in Subiaco for $12,000,” John said.

“Three weeks later I was felling a tree which dropped the wrong way.

“A branch hit me in the back and that was that — wheelchair bound.

“The biggest thing … wasn’t being in a wheelchair, it was coming out of hospital and no one would employ (me),” he said.

John worked for Paraquad for around eight years, and, in 1980, he and Olive moved to Busselton.

Today, John runs the workshop at the Busselton Museum and restores vintage machinery.

He is a life member of the Lions Club and the Leeuwin Naturaliste Junior Soccer Association, and tears around town on his modified motorbike, The Blue Lemon.

“The motorbike is a godsend,” John said.

“It’s like having four legs!”