to Ken , the times , dates and names whizz by with endless stats about track racing in the 80s and 90s , and his memory is encyclopaedic . He recalls Iain Pero ( brother of Mike ) asking him to join him in Australia for a season of racing and in 1983 Ken and Iain lived in Enoggera , Brisbane with a two-bike team running a Kawasaki Unitrack GPz750 , with which they won the Surfers Paradise Championship . It is bloody surprising that Ken ’ s recall is so good . A racing incident at the Lakeside Raceway saw him survive a crash that few others could have walked away from , let alone to seemingly bear no scars , nor loss of memory . He recalls … “ The old Lakeside Park track was very heavily cambered , and coming out of one corner was about a metre wide strip of water dribbling down the face , and across the track into a ditch . It wasn ’ t really a problem for quite a few laps . You just flew over it - barely acknowledging it was there , a micro-second - and gone . On this particular lap , for no reason at all , the bike just twitched on the water and flicked me sideways … I was skimming along the wall , made of these bales , thinking I was going to be alright , when the ‘ peg grabbed one of the bales and it flicked me out into the middle of the track . I was pretty stunned , barely conscious and feeling a bit bad , and I remember I lifted my head to see if anyone was coming , and the last thing I remember was seeing a bike coming right for me ”. The rider arriving at full noise was lower down , in a small dip , and hadn ’ t seen Ken go down , and as he came over the lip Ken ’ s head was directly in the bike ’ s path . Spectators described the impact : the bike slamming into Ken ’ s head . The impact and force firing him down , and his whole body rebounding up into the air , at least two metres high , like a rag doll . It was thought unsurvivable , and when Denise was raced to his side , the pool of blood coming out of his helmet was a metre in circumference . He was unconscious for 45 minutes and was taken by ambulance to hospital with his jaw broken in three places . Later he was told that his Arai helmet was responsible for saving his life and that anything less than that excellent piece of kit would have seen him dead .
But nothing was going to hold him back , and before long he was back racing - nothing would stand in the way of his long-term dream - competing in the Isle of Man TT races . By Easter of 1983 Ken and Denise were off to Bathurst . He waxes lyrical about the Bathurst track , and he adored the racing over the mountain ’ s notorious turns . During these adventures , Denise , fortunately a fully qualified nurse and studying midwifery , was always with him , helping , supporting , driving and doing lap timings . “ In those days at Bathurst there were no timing devices , the pit crew just set up chairs at the end of Conrod straight , and where your marker sat showed you your position . I loved it over the mountain , and I was a rookie , but I qualified high up in the start grid , but at that time , even if you won qualifying , as a rookie you had to start at the back . So there are 65 chairs lined up at the end of Conrod . Denise is sitting basically at the end of the row , 63 of 65 . After the race started ,
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