It is with great sadness that we have to report that Street Machine’s longest-serving contributor, Noel Tuckey (aka William Porker) passed away on February 19, at age 86. Noel penned his first Dirty Stuff column for SM way back in the October-November 1985 issue, and he stayed at it all the way up until his final yarn just two issues back in the February 2026 mag – a colossal 40-year innings.

Noel’s wife Jan played a crucial role in getting Noel’s words to print each month, for which we are eternally grateful. She is also the best qualified person to provide an overview of Noel’s incredible life, which we now bring to you here:

Noel was born in Wau, Papua New Guinea on Boxing Day 1939. He used to say that on the day he was born, the doctor took one look at him and said, “Wow!” So they named the town of Wau after him! 

With the world at war, Noel was evacuated from PNG at nine months old, travelling to Australia by ship with his mother and two siblings. His father stayed in PNG. A member of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, he later joined the Australian forces and was killed by a sniper in 1944. 

The hospital that Noel was born in was deliberately set alight to stop the Japanese from taking it over and obtaining records, so his birth wasn’t registered in Australia for many years. This caused no end of problems when he wanted to travel overseas. Even though he did national service and paid money to the taxation department for years, he was a nonperson. They would let him out of the country, but didn’t want to let him back in. After many days of camping at the immigration office, he was finally given an Australian citizenship certificate, and a passport could then be issued. 

After schooling in NSW, Noel took up a mechanical apprenticeship and his love of cars, engines and historic car mateship started from there. He worked for car dealerships, mainly in Queensland, firstly in parts and warranty, then as a service adviser and workshop manager. From this experience he wrote his first article under the byline ‘George Ambrose’ for the July 1976 issue of Wheels titled “One Day in Hell”. 

He later started writing for Street Machine as well, with his first Dirty Stuff column appearing in the Nov/Dec 1985 issue under the name of William Porker. 

Noel drove many cars on roads, hillclimbs, and racing circuits over his mechanical and writing years. He raced at Surfers Paradise, Lakeside, Amaroo, Sandown, Eastern Creek, Mallala; car owners were only too willing to let him drive. Some of the cars he fondly remembered were the Giocattolo of Barry Lock and Paul Halstead, Terry Hook’s Lola T70, and Dick Johnson’s Sierra. He once drove a drag sedan on the Surfers Paradise strip and reckoned it was the best 10-second facelift you can get. 

His favourite car to drive was the Super Squalo Ferrari owned by the Gilltrap family. Noel, George Gilltrap and a few of Noel’s good mates restored the Ferrari for a demo run at the 1975 Surfers Paradise Grand Prix. Because the car was a bit of a crowd pleaser, Noel drove it for six years for demos at grand prix meetings, including the Adelaide street circuit. 

Noel was driving at Sandown, when an exiting car was leaving the circuit at the wrong point, which caused him to spin into the Armco, damaging the rear body work and causing a leak in the rear aluminium fuel tanks. He was devastated at the damage and was wondering what George was going to say. George smiled and said, “We will fix it.” And they did, over a few hours, and it was ready for the next race the next morning. 

Noel restored, built and raced cars of his own. He rebuilt the Jack Wright Ford Special and the Dennis Curren Ford V8 monoposto special, which was called the Crumpet Car because the front crossmember was drilled full of holes. He also restored a Rochdale-bodied coupe called the Mustard Special. It came out from the UK with Andrew Mustard, who was the engineer with the Bluebird land speed record attempt. 

When Noel stepped away from racing, he kept building engines for Formula Junior drivers to go into their Lynx, Brabham, Lotus, Renmax and Gemini race cars. Noel never actually stopped driving cars, he just went at a slower pace. He restored and drove in local vintage car rallies in his 1938 DKW tourer. Not content with just one DKW, he purchased another 1938 model, this time a sedan, which is still parked beside the tourer. It didn’t reach its final assembly. 

Noel not only liked writing about cars, but had a soft spot for the Tasmanian Tiger, so set about writing a novel called Thylacine Man, which was published in 2008. He always believed the Tassie Tiger would someday be discovered again. Noel was married to Jan just short of 50 years. 

Noel worked with so many editors over the years – Phil Scott, Peter Robinson, Geoff Seddon, Simon Telford, Andrew Broadley and more – across multiple Australian and overseas magazines. He was grateful they gave him a go. In the early years, when there was no staff photographer available because of distance or the magazine budget didn’t stretch that far, Noel did his own photography. Setting himself up with a Nikon outfit, he taught himself the finer art of photography, like not taking a shot with a palm tree growing out of the roof of a street machine! 

He will be missed, not only by his family, but all those he helped along the way.  R.I.P.  William Porker, George Ambrose, Joe Conrod, Noel Tuckey.