Joy and the Bantam Part 1      

Early life and travels, start of the world tour.

By Ashley Blair

The first of a six-part series recounting the incredible story of New Zealand midwife Joy McKean who rode a 150cc Bantam Major around the world - alone. 

Homemade panniers, homemade sleeping bag, no stove, no tent (but a groundsheet), slept under the stars (except in India and Sri Lanka) no helmet, rode in a tweed skirt and travelled through 32 countries covering 54,000 miles. 

Joy McKean had an unconventional childhood on a farm at Rangiwahia 40 miles north of Feilding in the Manawatu, New Zealand. Her mother had no medicine in the house and neither she nor her children ever visited a doctor but there was an extensive library of nature cures in the house. Raw food was the basis of their diet and Joy became a life-long vegetarian. Her real name was Naomi Margaret McKean but she was, “Always called Joy because I was a joy compared to my overactive brother”. 

Joy had what she later called “haphazard schooling” with only three years formal education from age 14 when she was a boarder at the Seventh Day Adventist School at Longburn,near Palmerston North. There she had a good grounding in English, anatomy, physiology and music but missed out on mathematics and science although she later took Hemmingway Correspondence courses in maths and Latin.

When she was 18 Joy left New Zealand with a round-the-world ticket from her mother. Her older brother Rawhiti accompanied her and they visited relatives in the United States and Canada before arriving at Southampton on the Empress of Britain in September 1937. The Second World War meant she could not safely travel further and she was down to her last three pence when she started working as domestic help for a family. On 29 January 1941 she began four years nursing training at University College Hospital, London enduring the Blitz in the process. She found the 12 hours on and 12 hours off with only one day off a month hard going. On 23 June 1944 she became a State Registered Nurse and then qualified as a midwife at Simpson Memorial Hospital, Edinburgh. During her training in London Joy bought a Rudge-Whitworth bicycle for five pounds nineteen shillings and six pence and used the Rudge to explore much of the United Kingdom and Ireland. She rode from Edinburgh to London through snow to take up a job as a District Midwife at Plaistow Maternity Hospital in East London. This was a very challenging area to work in following the war. Some homes had sacks over bomb shattered windows and there were babies kept warm with beer bottles filled with hot water.