Marty.
"It amuses me to read that there are 'so many M20's in Australia', and yet, finding parts or, even entire bikes is like looking for a needle in a haystack".

G'day Marty,

Back in the '50's the Beanham brothers (Allparts) bought acres of M20 army surplus and as of a month or two ago you could walk into Modak in Melbourne and buy engine, gearbox parts or odds and ends over the counter, (For years an M20 cylinder was used to hold the front door open). The hardest thing to get in Aust is good tin ware. David one of the sons still runs the business but closed the doors to the shop the other month but from all accounts will still answer the phone for mail orders.

https://www.pressreader.com/australia/old-bike-australasia/20160804/281719793948004

There's also Bill Green in NSW and while I've not purchased from him seems to have a lot of M20 parts for sale. Don't have a contact, sorry.

Hi Marty,

There is quite a good picture of a 1942 bike in the Technical section, electrical equipment of this website. Sensusnumber of this bike starts with 4552..... It still has got the horn underneath the saddle so I guess it is an early 1942 model.

Regards, Ramon 😎😎

Hi Marty,

There is quite a good picture of a 1942 bike in the Technical section, electrical equipment of this website. Sensusnumber of this bike starts with 4552..... It still has got the horn underneath the saddle so I guess it is an early 1942 model.

Regards, Ramon 😎😎

Matty
Thanks for your thoughts about my matching numbers. Should this be the case & considering the bike's condition when I got it, I suspect that it was sold to one uncaring owner who hammered it thoroughly before chucking it in the back of the shed or something. The head had a few stumps where fins had once been,& it's had forks from another bike fitted at one stage, the longer ones as discussed on this forum some time back & had the remains of a green colour on the tank (not military green).

No the system worked exactly the same as in the UK.
What we did get down here was a massive number of unused M20's sold at "auction" for £ 10 as military surplus.
Some had quite low numbers.
Mine is 78096, matching numbers bought brand new surplus stock, the person I bought it off was the 2nd owner .
Now here is the interesting bit.
It is not listed in the legers that the war memorial has put on line.
Further more I have come across several others that are not there either so me thinks either BSA or the Dep of Supply shipped them over here to sell in order to raise desperately needed foreign exchange.
Remember post WWII most of the dairy other than fresh milk consummed in the UK and a lot of the dried milk consummed in Europe came from OZ & NZ and it had to be paid for some how.
Then there was the wool , wheat & mutton.
For while we had a neighbour who was born in Hambourg and she clearly remembers all of the dried milk containers having little Aussie flags on them, and after she saw her first real orange also with an Aussie flag on it she decided this was the place to be and became a stow away to get here.
The UK government reniged on the deal & never paid us for any armourments , small arms or ammo we shipped to the UK and we shipped a bloody lot of it so the Aust government was not in a mood to extend the UK credit for food & fiber

email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au

Bill Green trades as bbg34 at big pond dotcom ( put it in a form the web can understand )
0419280650
or Box 750 Kellyville 2155.
He deals mainly in NOS & pattern engine parts , cables etc as he now runs it out of a suburban single garage.

As for the lack of availability of tinwear, why are you suprised ?
As mentioned earlier , my WM20 was civilanized back in the 40's.
The war was over and we really did not need to be reminded of it.
Also we did not need to ride around on a bike that was both obsolete and screamed "PAUPER" as you rode down the road.

Then there were all the small equipment makers who bought them by the hundreds, stripped the engines out and sold off what was left over, mainly to Mr Sims who became the worlds largest scrap merchants once we were allowed to sell scrap to Japan again.

Have a chat to Bill and he will happily tell you stories of buying all the military tin wear of owners in the 60s & 70s so they could fit pretty civy tinwear on them and latter on selling the same people back the military tin wear when it became "fashionable" to have a military bike mainly 90 onwards when the bad taste of Vietnam had finally dissipated.
Naturally he only kept the good stuff & scrapped all the stuff that had seen better days.
Farmers bought WM20's by the dozens and again stripped the engines out to run pumps, 32V generators , portable shearing sets, bench saws, etc tec tec.
Fifty years latter, the frames turn up at clearing sales , go for a song then the quest for the rest of the bits starts.
Seen a lot of barrows and "house trailers" proudly running on WM20 wheels .
The local market gardener had a stack of barrows running on motorcycle wheels and you could bet they were WM20 ones.

email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au

Thanks Trevor and all.

I've been in contact with Bill Green. Super nice fella. No doubt will be talking to him and a couple of other contacts quite a lot in the near future! :)

email (option): marty.whyte@gmail.com