2.
Ploughed Fields and Bridleways
With the test now under my belt I
had to think about getting some off-road experience on two wheels. Pete insisted on it: there were copious
emails from com.au demanding action.
John, the other Pom joining Pete and I in Australia, proved to be a
brilliant ferret. Or perhaps it was his
wife Stephanie? Anyway either John or
Steph found and arranged a one-day motocross course near Ipswich for the both
of us, to be followed by a trailbike course at St Albans. The motocross course was run by a great guy
named Geoff Mayes, who turned out to be one of those people gifted with passing
on the secret skills of their science.
He was wise in the way of dirt bikes, had the patience of a god, and I
am sure could choreograph machines so long as they had two wheels.
John and I met in the car park
for the first time. At just over
60-years John was a bit younger than me.
We were both grey panthers (a much more acceptable euphemism than old farts). At our time of life who you are and what
you’ve achieved is irrelevant. Status is
totally unimportant. Age is a great
leveller. It doesn’t matter whether
you’ve been a company director or a toilet attendant in your working life, if
you end up pompous and high-handed, unable to get on with your fellow men, then
you’re going to have a lonely last-quarter of your life.
Happily for me John was cheerful,
open, bright and easy to like. I hope I
came across the same way. We were going
to spend several weeks in each other’s company and it was important that we did
not take an instant dislike to each other.
‘Want a salmon sandwich?’ he
asked. ‘I’ve got more in the boot of the
car.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied, ‘I will.’
After the sandwich we looked at
the blackening sky thoughtfully, then went to meet Geoff Mayes, a greying
British motocross champion and an all-round expert on going fast on a dirt
bike. Geoff was remarkably
ordinary-looking for such a tough competitor, but then I had never met a
champion dirt bike rider before. I
quickly found that men associated with this daredevil sport, along with their
fellows the trailbikers, were generally a smiling affable bunch of guys who
just love what they do. They have no
need to show off or be anything but themselves.
They are the real stuff when it comes to a dangerous and difficult
sport.
Geoff greeted us warmly and
kitted us out with plastic greaves, chest and back protectors, elbow guards,
gloves, motocross helmets, thick boots, goggles, jackets and jeans. I could hardly walk, let alone ride a
motorcycle. I felt like one of those
knights who had to be winched into the saddle.
Ask me to tie my shoelace and I would have burst into tears.
‘All right?’ asked John, slapping
me on the shoulder. ‘I’m leaving my
glasses off.’
‘So am I,’ I said.
The motocross goggles tended to
crush glasses against one’s eyes and a blurred vision was better than having to
worry about adjusting things on one’s face every five minutes. It was important that we kept our hands free
for steering, breaking and accelerating.
We only had to look a few yards ahead in any case.
I stared at the track. It was this stony dirt strip that went round
and up and down like a switchback for about a kilometre, with hairpin-tight
curves and corners, and lonely drops into hidden gorges. I could see one steep hill that was almost a
vertical wall. I watched 16 and
18-year-olds hammering round this track on their bikes, taking the hills with
flying leaps on their growling machines.
My stomach flip-flopped. Only two
weeks before today I had been riding a 125cc scooter with L-plates on it. Now I was expected to imitate Evel
Knievel. Can I really do this? I thought.
At that moment it started to rain and the track turned to sludge.
John slapped me on the back
again. ‘Here we go,’ he said, and nudged
me towards my 250cc Kawasaki motocross bike, which being off-road I was allowed
to play with. One of Geoff Mayes’
assistants went with me. He was a
thick-set, solid older man who appeared to be fashioned from leather. Fred was as gentle as he was tough-looking,
but he was standing no nonsense from this effete writer. ‘You’ll do a few turns round that little
track over there,’ he said, ‘then on the top section of the big track, then finally
on the whole track.’
Will I? I thought. Will I really? I climbed into the saddle of the bike only to
find my short legs could not touch the ground.
Motocross bikes are extremely tall machines, due I guess to the springs,
whatever. My next problem was starting
the damn thing. The kick start handle
was halfway up the side of the bike and I could not get my leg high enough to
work it. Fred gave me a helping foot and
the bike coughed into action.
Geoff had given us a little
lecture before we started.
‘Don’t lean over with the bike on
going round a corner, like you would on a road bike. Push it away from you, keep your body
upright. Sit as far up as near the
handlebars as possible - maintain your weight over the front wheel. When you take a hill, give it the gas going
up, but ease off the throttle on going over the top or you’ll find a lot of air
between the ground and the back wheel.
Open up the throttle on the straight, but throttle-back on entering a
corner. Halfway round the bend open the
throttle again. Left-hand bends, stick
out the left leg. Right-hand bends,
stick out the right leg. Now, off you
go!’
John and I went round the small
flat track rather timidly at first, then got braver by the minute. Soon we were both bored with playing on the
roundabout and went onto the top half of the big track. The mud was slippery but we managed to stay
on for several circuits. Then we got
bored with that and it was time for the big track. John went hurtling off, spraying mud and grit
into air. I followed a bit more cautiously.
Those first three times round the big track I almost came off on several
corners. God was gracious and somehow I
managed to stay in the saddle. But I
found it exhausting, mentally, probably because I was physically tense.
I halted after three
circuits.
‘I’ll stop now,’ I told Fred,
cheerfully, thinking I might as well quit while I was ahead. ‘I’ve got the hang of it. I’ve had enough practice.’
‘Oh no you haven’t,’ Fred
replied, quietly.
‘Yes, yes, I have,’ I
insisted. ‘I don’t need any more.’
‘Oh yes you do,’ said Fred,
firmly.
The rain was belting down. I was unhappy. I had mud in every orifice. My arms and legs ached. My head hammered.
‘Off you go, then,’ Fred
said. ‘Get a few more under your belt -
about twenty or so circuits, eh?’
Miserably, I did as I was told -
and of course after a few more circuits began to enjoy it. I can do this, I thought. I can
do this. I wasn’t burning up the track
like an eighteen-year-old, but I was taking every tight corner at a reasonable
speed and getting the hang of handling a bike that like a frisky colt wanted to
dance in the slippery mud on its own. It
was trying to throw me off, but I stuck to the saddle with determination,
roaring up the hills, leaping over the tops, and charging down the
gradients. Man and machine did not
exactly become one, but we certainly came to respect one another as
individuals. At the end of the day I
felt charged, exhilarated and a little more macho.
This feeling was soon knocked out
of me when John and I went on another course, this time at St Albans. We booked in for a day with Trailworld who
take potential dirt bikers out on a tour of the muddy lanes and green roads,
such as the Icknield Way, even across ploughed fields. Again the bikes were taller than fully-grown
race horses. High, heavy beasts that I
had great difficulty in getting my short leg over, let alone doing anything
once I was in the saddle. No one cared. No one said, ‘Ah, poor short-legged bugger,
let’s give the little bastard a hand.’
Once we had all the body armour and battle helmets in place they simply
jumped on their machines and roared away down the road.
I followed tentatively, not
having ridden a manual-geared machine for some 50 years. They had not changed a lot in that time. I had
trouble finding the right gear, stalled the thing several times, and grew very
frustrated with myself. The problem was
with my short legs: every time I stopped I simply fell over to one side. The bike was extremely heavy and it took all
my meagre strength to right it. My arms
grew more and more tired with every halt.
I was holding the others up and that made me and them unhappy. They wanted to be haring down green lanes
chucking up divots of mud. I wanted to
be home in bed.
I did start getting to grips with
the demon machine after several miles of tarmac. Then we turned off onto a bridleway,
footpath, or something of that nature.
Very narrow, very muddy (it had of course started to rain) and with a
startling number of solid looking trees lining the route. Everyone else let out a joyous shout
(including John) and tore off in a long line spraying the hedgerows with
sludge. I brought up the rear, along
with one of the biker-tutors, who kept urging me to ‘Get yer cheeks off the
saddle mate and stand up on the pegs’.
Flying down that lane was like
running a gauntlet. Overhanging branches
turned into whips, which lashed my face and body. The bends were hairpin and I kept expecting
to meet terrified old ladies walking their terriers around each corner. Mud everywhere, sometimes so deep it was up
to the wheel hubs. Water by the gallon,
spraying the county of Hertfordshire willy-nilly. John came off and damaged his chest. I came off but managed to land in mud, so
walked away unhurt. One of the other
riders, an ex-policeman, came off and broke his wrist. I was amazed that there were no fatalities at
the end of the day. And even more
amazing, they all enjoyed it! For
myself, it was the best experience of my life, and the worst. I had no desire to repeat it. Seven hours of battling through swamp and
bog, hemmed in on all sides by trees, with the occasional rock thrown in, is
not really my idea of fun.
I did think, at the end of the
day, while I was driving home to Suffolk with my limbs aching and my eyes half-closed,
that the Australian Outback would not, could not, be as challenging as that day
on the dirt trails of Hertfordshire.
After all, it didn’t rain in the Outback, did it? No mud then.
And there were only bushes in the bush, weren’t there? No damn solid-trunked trees to worry about
then. And I would be riding a small
machine, one which would allow short-asses like me to touch the ground with
their toes on both sides at once.
Little did I know at the time
that there would be other obstacles, just as formidable, perhaps even more so,
out in Ozzie walkabout country, where the horizons are further away than
infinity.
True, we would get no rain.
I have known biblical deluges in
my time.
Once, on a backpacking holiday
with friends Rob and Sarah, the Malaysian rain came down in barrels. We were on a windowless bus crossing the
central jungle and came to a river where a bridge had been washed away. Night fell, black as the deepest cave. With torches we had to cross on bendy planks
that threatened to throw us into the swirling torrent below. Then, having escaped from a watery death we
reached the coast to take deck passage on a fishing boat to Tioman Island. When we arrived at the island’s jetty it was
still monsoon rain. It bleached our
skins and clothes. It washed our flight
tickets and passports clean of any ink.
Our backpacks were sodden lumps.
The A-frame huts on the campsite leaked.
It was the Ramadan month, so there was no fishing going on and
consequently very little to eat. Now, my
pal Rob is a big guy who likes his steak and ale. There was none of that. We stayed four days and then took a small
plane back to the mainland, having survived on banana porridge and Fanta
drinks. Only the magnificent Malaysian
trees and wildlife saved it from being an absolute disaster.
3.
Preparations
The official and rather posh
title of the 2008 postie bike challenge was:
Brisbane
to Cairns via the Gulf of Carpenteria
Previous years rides:
2002 and 2003 Brisbane to Darwin
2004 and 2005 Brisbane to Adelaide
2006 Brisbane to
Alice Springs
At the time of writing I received
an invitation to the newest route:
2009 Brisbane to
Melbourne
What I should have done before
jumping at the chance to ride through the Australian Outback was to look up the
history of the ride, starting with the 2002 run. If had done, I would have found out some
humbling facts which are only now evident to me while in the process of writing
my small account of the 2008 ride. You
will have noticed that this book is dedicated, among others, to the men who
acted as volunteer mechanics during our ride.
One of those men is simply referred to as ‘Lang’. Well Lang Kidby OAM, father of Kylie one of
the two organisers of the challenge, just happens to be an Australian hero,
though you wouldn’t have known it by the quiet way he went about fixing our
bikes when they went wrong, and nudging us on when we got stuck on the trail
and the several other duties he carried out.
Lang, along with his wife Bev,
are Australian adventurers and have organised and led many expeditions through
many countries, including Australian desert crossings, flights in antique
planes, reconstructing a replica of a 1919 Vickers Vimy bomber and flying it
from Australia to the UK, restoring a 1940 Dodge Army staff car and driving it
from Aqaba to Paris and most significant of all, recreating the 1907 Peking to
Paris motor race using restored cars from the period, Lang and Bev driving a
1907 ITALA. This man plotted the centre
of Australia and was the recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia. He has led military and civilian expeditions
through jungles and was an army pilot with the Aviation Corps for 14 years.
They don’t come any bigger or
more modest than Lang Kidby.
Lang and Hans Tholstrup (another
Aussie adventurer - the country is crawling with them) organised the first
Postie Bike Challenge in 2002, a job he has since handed over to his daughter
and her partner. He now travels with the
team as one of the mechs and helpers.
Looking up that first ride I came
up with a news report from ABC News Online, which might have made me wonder if
Pete was hauling me into something that was well out of my comfort zone:
Quote: The 2002 Postie Bike Challenge organised by adventurers Hans Tholstrup
and Lang Kidby has proven too challenging for some. The 4000 km charity ride split at Julia Creek
yesterday when more than a quarter of the 80 riders decided the dirt roads through the Gulf were too gruelling. So far 7 participants have withdrawn with
head injuries, broken collarbones and broken ankles. One of the riders says his experience as a
(real) postie has helped only slightly. Unquote.
I’m glad I didn’t see this
article before my ride, knowing we were also going on the dirt roads through the
Gulf. It probably wouldn’t have stopped
me going, but it would have made me that much more nervous. I’m also glad I didn’t then know Lang’s
amazing history. I would have pestered
him like a Melbourne fly and annoyed the hell out of him. I did manage to annoy his daughter. I had failed to get two of the ride t-shirts
at the outset and Kylie ordered me some more.
I asked her one too many times whether they had arrived. Kylie had a lot more to worry about than
items of clothing for a 67 year old hack.
In August, a month before the
ride, Pete sent me a list of the things I would need. However, everything had to go into a
soldier’s kitbag. It wasn’t a big kitbag
and it had to hold a tent, air bed, pump and sleeping bag, as well as the
following items:
sunnies (Strine for sunglasses)
bandanna (to prevent choking on red dust)
thongs (Strine for flip-flops)
calculator
head torch
2 fibre t-shirts
light shoes
bathers
washable long trousers
light socks
swiss army knife
camping towel
camping pillow (mistake, didn’t work)
soap
pens
notebook
camera
spare batteries
toothbrush and paste
Vaseline (oh the relief after a day in the saddle!)
camera and spare battery/charger
sandals
sunscreen
paracetamol
ear plugs (against snorers, of which there were many)
washing powder and pegs
water camel (threw this away after the first day)
cap
mobile phone (turned out to be useless in the Outback - no
coverage)
jeans
jumper
It was, as you might imagine, a
hellava struggle to get it all in. I saw
guys jumping on their bags to get the stuff to stay put. Fortunately the zips were strong and once you
wrestled the contents to the ground, you zipped up the bag quickly before
everything kicked out again and sprayed the campsite with underwear and
toothbrushes.
On the first day of September,
Annette and I boarded a Royal Brunei flight for Brisbane, Australia. There were two stop-offs, one of an hour at
Dubai where we were supposed to disembark and buy buckets of gold jewellery. The other was for three hours at Brunei,
which had an airport lounge not much bigger than my kitchen. The economy flight was tedious and
uncomfortable. We have done it several
times before and each time it seems longer and more unbearable. Always, just as I manage to fall asleep in a
contorted sideways knot, the guy behind stands using the back of my seat to
pull himself upright, thereby joggling me instantly awake. I usually glare at him, but find he’s lost
somewhere in his own head and has no idea that I live on the periphery of his
world. The only thing I can say about
modern aeroplane flights to Oz is that they’re probably better than the old
three months at sea playing deck quoits and canasta until one is sick of one’s
neighbours, sick of the colour green, and sick of being sick during the occasional
storm.
Even short voyages by sea are to
be avoided.
Annette and I were once on our
way to Rhodes, when there was a terrible a storm in the Med. We were on board a Greek car ferry which had
been a French battleship during WW1. The
vessel was still painted navy grey and all the embossed metal signs above doors
and gangways were still in French. Our
new Volkswagen beetle was strapped to the deck as the world began to rise and
heave all around us.
The kids were still young then -
Chantelle 6, and Richard 8 - and we had a cabin in the depths of the ship
adjacent to an empty hold. Someone had
forgotten to batten down a giant crane hook dangling on a chain as thick as my
thigh. The hook itself was the size of a
railway truck. It swung back and forth
in the storm clanging monstrously on the side of our cabin, knocking the kids
out of their bunks. We were not en-suite
and every time someone wanted to go the toilet (which was fairly often, given
the conditions) they had to accurately time their run across the void which was
the ship’s hold, or become a fly-smudge on one of the iron walls of the
vessel.
We thought we were going to die
during that storm, which lasted for 24 hours.
Every time the ship’s bow went down under the water, we were convinced it
would never rise again. I vowed then
that I would only ever get on another boat in a dire emergency.
On arrival at Brisbane, we took a
taxi to our accommodation, the local Quaker Meeting House. Annette and I are Quakers and we are much
more comfortable in a bed-and-breakfast environment than in a luxury
hotel. It’s not that we scorn luxury, or
consider it decadent, but would much rather be in a room with breathable,
unrecycled air. We both find the
atmosphere in modern hotels oppressive and though the breakfasts are enough to
feed one for the whole day, there is a kind of suppressed panic in the dining
room as people form in small bunches around the multi-slice toaster to
anxiously watch their personal bit of bread disappearing inside the machine, terrified
they will be unable to identify it when it drops out as toast into the tray
beneath.
The Brisbane Quaker Meeting House
was on the steepest hill I’ve ever seen covered in tarmac. Walking down it was a frightening
experience. One felt it would be so easy
to lean forward, then topple the rest of the way down that sheer black
surface. The house itself though was in
a beautiful forested garden. It was the
Aussie Spring and we woke the next morning to a chorus of bell birds, butcher
birds and kookaburras. The latter of
course do not have melodic calls, but certainly the bell bird with its
flute-like chimes and the butcher birds with their variety of warbled notes
were gentle alarm clocks.
We had a free day so we went into
Brisbane proper, walked along Queen Street and Elizabeth Street, and visited
the Brisbane’s City Hall, with its wonderful clock tower. Brisbane is named after Sir Thomas Brisbane,
an 18th Century general. He
was one of those rugged soldiers who probably asked for a posting to a rugged land. His military career is in the Guinness Book
Of Records as being the longest. Our Tom
apparently served 70 years in the army and he was famous for having slept six
nights in continental winter snows with nothing but his cloak to keep him
warm. Each morning he found himself
frozen hard to the ground, while around him in the night many common soldiers
had died with the cold. They don’t make
generals like that these days, though when I was in Aden during violent times,
I did hear of a general who put up with chilly air-conditioning without a
murmur of complaint.
After City Hall, we visited the
United Church, just off Albert Street, where a Japanese couple was getting
married. We sat in a pew at the back and
watched the ceremony. The church was
empty. There were no guests, no
attendees. Just the wedding couple. They went the whole hog with music, a choir
singing, she in full white wedding dress, he in tuxedo and top hat. A photographer, of course. But no friends or relatives. When we asked the registrar after it was all
over, what was happening, she told us it was a common occurrence. They married in Japan then came to Australia
to have another wedding, simply to gather photographs and videos of the ceremony. It was then I remembered seeing the same
thing in Venice. There an Asian couple
had changed clothes behind a billboard, he had set up a camera on the steps of
a church with St Mark’s Square in the background, and they had then posed in
their wedding kit for a series of self-taken photos.
How strange this world has become
since my grandparents shuffled off their mortal coils.
While in Brisbane we went to stay
with Dave and Doreen, great friends of my brother. They showed us the Glasshouse Mountains, so
called because one of the first Poms, Captain Cook, thought they looked like
the glass-blowing factories of Northern England. Dave and Doreen’s house is actually owned by
a dog called Chewbacca, a lovely border collie.
Chewbacca lets the couple live there free of rent. Chewbacca actually wanted
one of those Queenslander dwellings that look like the southern USA mansion in Gone With The Wind, but he had to settle
for a less expensive single-storey ranch-style dwelling.
Next, we went north, to Noosa
Heads for the day. Richard Branson was a
frequent visitor at Noosa, where he used to go running early morning. The story is that he liked a cold fruit juice
after his run and finding no juice bar open at that time of the morning he
purchased one of his own which he opened at six in the morning.
On the 4th day we went
back to Brisbane. I dressed in my biker gear - big boots, armoured jacket, knee
guards, motocross jeans, reinforced gloves and big black motocross helmet - and
went to find the rallying point for the bikers.
We had been told it was at the Exhibition Grounds. Annette and I lugged my army-style kitbag
through streets broad and narrow, going from one Exhibition site to
another. In Brisbane they cover a vast
area and I was looking for a garage or hangar of sorts big enough to house
fifty motorbikes and their riders.
Eventually I rang Dan on the mobile and he guided me along a street I
had passed twice already. What hope did
I stand in the Outback?
I met Pete and John just entering
the building.
‘You found it then?’ said
Pete. ‘Didn’t get lost?’
‘What, me?’ I laughed gaily. ‘I’m a walking compass.’
We entered a warehouse humming
with people, some in motorcycle gear, others in street clothes. There were lots of beards about, several of
them quite long, mostly grey and grizzly.
Most of the people in the room were men between the ages of 25 and 75,
but I was surprised by the number of them in their 40’s and 50’s. They were all roaming around identical bright
red motorcycles, which peppered the floor looking clean and shiny. These roadsters were being inspected and
appraised by their new owners. To some
of those owners these small postie bikes were tiddlers, but to me they were
mean machines.
The dominant accent that echoed
around this hollow room was naturally Australian. Some people knew each other, but most did
not, and the beginnings of camaraderie were emerging as strangers spoke to each
other about the coming enterprise:
‘Hi, I’m Dave. Up from Sydney. You?’
‘Bill - you up for this?’
‘Hope so. Been looking forward to it.’
‘Me too.’
All very gentle and
tentative. Later they would be greeting
each other in the mornings with a slap on the shoulder and something like:
‘Bill, you crusty old
bastard. There’s a rumour you came in
last yesterday.’
‘Not a chance, mate. The day you don’t cough on my dust ain’t
arrived yet.’
‘Yeah, right.’
I went to meet the organiser, Dan
Gridley.
Dan was a man of good build, neat
of dress, and you could tell he had an underlying seam of toughness. Kylie, his partner and helper, was pretty and
a very good organiser. Dan showed me my
bike, Number 21 in red figures on the headlamp, and left me to learn from
others how to pack the milk crate which would carry essentials like petrol,
water, food and other bits and pieces.
The crate fitted on the back of the bike and Pete had made covers for
all three crates. He had also brought
elastic ties to keep the lid down on rough ground. In fact, I was being babied quite a lot:
something that would soon change.
Dan gave us our briefing for
Sunday’s departure.
‘I want you here, ready to leave
at 7 o’clock tomorrow morning. We’ll all
leave the city together. There was going
to be a police escort, but they’re busy with road runs and other events . .
.’ He then told us how a normal day
would go once we were out of the city.
‘We usually rise about 5.30 am, pack up our tents and then have
breakfast. The night before you will
have checked your bike for any problems, filled your spare gas tank with fuel,
lubricated your chains and made sure there’s no slack there, and checked your
oil levels.
‘Departure is around seven every
morning, after a daily briefing. The
first to leave will be the marker truck, which will tie coloured tape to key
points along the route, so you’ll know where and when to make a turn. Your bags will be carried by the repair
truck, and a sweeper truck will follow behind all the riders, helping those in
trouble. You’ll be expected to do your
own repairs where possible. Tools can be
borrowed from the repair truck. If you
can’t do it, because it’s too technical or you need muscle assistance, Richard,
Lang, Andy or Mick will be there to help or take over. When you arrive at the campsite in the
evening - usually a town showground or rodeo ground - the first thing you’ll do
is check your bike for potential problems, oil and lube, and refuel. Then put up your one-man tents and finally,
get a beer.
‘Any questions?’
I had no idea what to ask, so I
said nothing.
My bike looked young and fresh,
despite having 30-odd thousand kilometres on the clock. As postie bikes they all looked exactly alike
of course. Little robust-looking Honda
110s, designed for ‘commercial and agricultural use’. The ‘X’ model, which we were using, had a
reliable four-stroke engine and was simple and undemanding. Although it had 4-speed gearbox, it was what
we call in England a ‘semi-automatic’.
There was no clutch. You crunched
through the gears from neutral upwards, 1 through to 4, and so on, down
again. We were given a lesson in
first-line maintenance by Richard, Mick and Andy, three of the mechanics who
were to accompany us. Checking the oil
level and tyre pressures every day was a must.
Watching for looseness of chain and any nuts and bolts was also
important. Pretty trivial stuff, I
thought.
(That was until we were hammering
along the wild trails of untamed Northern Queensland. Two-hundred or so kilometres of brick-hard
corrugated track, rugged enough to shake loose the teeth of saltwater croc,
soon changed my mind about ‘trivialities’.)
‘These’ll save you some cramped
fingers,’ Pete said, giving me some soft grips for the handlebars. ‘After steering for seven hours, your fingers
will be like claws on those hard grips.’
I duly cut away the hard grips
and replaced them with soft spongy ones that did indeed make my life a lot
easier on the trail.
Kick-starting my lovely 21 for
the first time, she sounded, as another rider remarked, like a cross between a
lawn mower and portable generator. The
sort of noise that causes the dead to spin in their graves. Spanish youths use similar machines to ride
up and down the same stretch of road carrying half-a-dozen of their mates on
the frame and mudguards, while holiday-makers vainly attempt to rest.
On the back of the bike was a
plastic milk crate. Pete had made me a
cover for it and had provided some elastic retainers to keep it on. In our milk crates we would carry 5 litres of
fuel, 2 litres of water, sandwiches, a thick book of maps covering the vast and
seemingly empty interior of a continent (most of the pages looked blank to me)
and ‘personal materials’.
My personal items consisted of
two toilet rolls, a packet of cleansing wipes, imodium tablets, and dehydration
powders (blackcurrant flavour). Add to
these essentials a brass naval compass and it can be seen that my major fears
were divided equally between loose bowels and getting lost in the
wilderness.
As it happened the former was to
become reality and the latter was to remain a harrowing nightmare.
When I was 12 years of age I got
lost, with another boy scout, for two days in a South Arabian desert. The maps given to us were later proved to be
faulty. Such experiences don’t leave
your mind, even after 55 years. Horrific
tales, which we have all heard, of people wandering away from their car to take
a pee in the Outback, never to be seen again, haunted my early thoughts on the
trip. I was almost persuaded into
purchasing a hand-gps system. I had
visions of myself drinking the petrol out of my fuel tank while the mystical
landscape of the Aborigines swam around me distorted by heatwaves. In the end cost got the better of my
fears. I settled for a good
compass. I figured a gps would only tell
me where I was, i.e. lost in the Outback.
By the end of the day, armed with
information and items to stay alive and moving on two wheels, I went back to my
Quaker accommodation somewhat uneasy with my inexperience. Would I manage to ride this sturdy little machine
without falling off? Would I manage to
travel the hinterland of Australia without getting lost? Would I manage to complete the trip without
getting ‘crook’?
The answer to all these questions
was actually, ‘No’.
*
Here’s a few statistics for the
bike nerds amongst you, on the Honda CT-110 Postie Bike, so that you are fully
aware of what our multi-national bums were about to sit astride.
Dry Weight: 89.5 kg (197 lb)
Engine Oil: 1.1 L (1.2 US qt)
Fuel Tank: 5.5 L (1.4 US gal)
Fuel Reserve: 0.8 L
(0.2 US gal)
Forks: 140 ml (4.7 oz)
Bore & Stroke: 53 mm x49.5 mm (2.047 x 1.948 in)
Compression Ratio 8.5:1
Displacement: 105.1 cm3 (6.39 cu.in)
Spark Plug: D8EA (NGK)
Spark Plug Gap: 0.6 - 0.7 mm (0.024-0.028 in)
Ignition: CDI
Points Gap: 0.3-0.4 mm (0.012-0.016 in)
Valve Clearance: 0.05 mm (0.002 in) both
Idle Speed: 1,500 + or - 100 rpm
Output Power 7.5 HP(DIN) @ 7,500 rpm
Clutch: Wet plate (semi-automatic
or crunch gear)
Gear Box: 4-speed
Stroke: 4-stroke
Top Speed 85 kph
Soichiro Honda set up the Honda
company in October 1945. The war had not
long been over and he used military 2-stroke motors that he purchase
cheap. When they ran out he designed his
own 50cc engine. In 1958 he released the
C100 Super Cub, a 4-stroke, overhead valve motor, with a centrifugal clutch and
3-speed gearbox. 70cc and 90cc versions
followed a bit later. Honda has since
sold close to 40 million of these bikes, which includes the Postie Bike, one of
the toughest machines on the road. I was
soon to learn that the CT-110 needed to be a robust worker, to deal with
conditions out in the wilds of Australia.
Corrugated roads, thick bull dust, heat, up to 8 continual hours a day
at almost top speed, rocks, gravel, sand and a novice rider - all these my
little bike took in its stride - and never once did it falter or even look like
giving up.
So, there were 50 of these
magnificent little colts with a rider on each one of them, but the organisers
were carrying 6 spare bikes on one of the three trucks, just in case. It turned out they knew what they were doing,
naturally, because I think they eventually used all six.