Roger Vanstan is the founder of the Gippsland Central branch of the Ulysses Motorcycle Club. This successful organisation is involved in various civic events, including the annual Christmas Toy Run.

In 1997 I was still working as a flight instructor but coming towards the end of my career. I realised I was going to lose the adrenaline rush of flying and had a mad friend who was a motorcyclist. I thought that if he enjoyed it, perhaps I’d have a go, too. I was 60 years old and had never sat on a motorbike. I bought a little one and took it out to the aerodrome where I’d chug around the taxiways and runways after work at night, learning to ride.

Roger Vanstan

After getting my licence, I rode around a bit on my own and noticed that there were a lot of people like me and perhaps we needed a little bit of company. It would be nice to ride with somebody for security, friendship and whatever else. I found the Ulysses Club, I’m not sure how, and got in touch with them and found out a little bit about it and joined them. The Club started in Sydney and is a national body. Their motto is "Grow old disgracefully" and consists of motorcyclists over the age of 40. Once you join the national body, you can join any local group around Australia. I contacted all members with a 3844 postcode, we had a meeting and decided to form a branch here.

The Ulysses Club isn’t really a motorcycle club but rather a social club for motorcyclists. We’re not a charity organisation although we do work for some charitable organisations. The Club started in 1983 and there are now 30,000 active members throughout Australia with nine applications per day arriving for new memberships. The Club is very rich but their constitution is very strict about how they’re able to spend it. There are now small branches being formed

in South Africa, America, England, Canada and New Zealand. The local branches are left to themselves to work the way they want to while still keeping within the broad guidelines of the constitution of the national committee.

The name comes from the poem by Tennyson who wrote about the old Greek hero, Ulysses. The objective is to make a way for older motorcyclists to get together socially for companionship and to support one another as well as to show by example that motorcycling can be an enjoyable, practical and safe activity. We also like to draw to the attention of the public, the needs and views of older riders. The national organisation publish an award winning quarterly magazine called "Riding On". The national committee also produce a membership book with every member’s name, address and phone number, which is updated annually. This means that if you’re away from home and you get into strife, break down, are looking for accommodation, or are looking for a good ride somewhere and you don’t know about the area, or you just want companionship, you can look up this book of names and ring them up and say "Hey, can you tell me something about this?".

There is an Annual General Meeting held around March and that draws about 5,000-6,000 motorcyclists. Being old people we’re generally retired so we can head off a week early and a lot of people camp or fill up the boarding houses, hotels, motels and so on. The last A.G.M. was held in Canberra, before that Mudgee, and I once went to one at Mt Gambier that was estimated to bring $8 million in to the city, equivalent to 40 fulltime jobs. For this reason, councils that know about this are very active in pushing to get A.G.M.s to their localities because of the money they bring in. As soon as the locality of an A.G.M. is announced, three years in advance, accommodation in the area is booked within a week.

The national committee support the Arthritis Research Foundation to the extent that they are now financing two doctors in the research for arthritis. For a few years now, older rider training has been being subsidised by the national committee. They also subsidise first aid training. Our local group, Gippsland Central, based in Traralgon, has about 110 active members and covers an area from Drouin through to Maffra. We’ve just finished the Lions Club dinner where we go as a group and wait on tables. The week before that we conducted our toy run, which has been going for about 10 years now. We gave about $30,000 in food, toys and money, split evenly between the Salvation Army and St Vincent de Paul.

Motorbikes aren’t cheap, but they are fun and convenient. Our group meets every Saturday for a coffee and perhaps a quick ride in the afternoon, then once a month on a Sunday we go for a ride to Dargo or Welshpool or somewhere nice. It’s an organised ride with a ride leader. We have lunch and come home again. We don’t ride long distances like some branches and sometimes we’ll have an impromptu ride because somebody just calls up on the phone.

Christmas Entertainment by "The Andrews Sisters" - Mavis Fraser, Eileen Downey and Joan Oates