Highlands 30^th June 2002

Ben Warden - CBR929RR (leader) Pete Weyermayr - CBR929RR

Liz Oliver - CBR919RR Rob Langer – BMW R1150S

Graham and Beryl – GTR1000 Darryl Chivers – BMW R1100S (rear rider)

When Pete and I turned up at Whittlesea, Ben and Darryl were there already, along with a couple I hadn’t met before – Graham and Beryl on a GTR1000. Soon Rob turned up and headed straight for the coffee. In Ben’s pre ride talk he mentioned that he would like to explore a few new roads that were shown as dirt on the map, but may have been sealed since then. Did anyone mind a bit of dirt? Graham wasn’t too keen on getting his bike dirty, but other than that there were no concerns. Darryl offered to go rear rider as he was still getting used to his newish BMW.

We left Whittlesea via the standard route – Kinglake West, Flowerdale and Strath Creek. The roads were a bit wet and had diesel spread over them in places, but this didn’t seem to cause anyone any problems. Just out of Tyaak we turned off to Reedy Creek. This was to be the first of our ‘explorations’ for the day, and as it turned out probably the most interesting, if not the most successful. Just out of Reedy Creek the road turned to dirt as shown on the map. It didn’t seem too bad at first but it got narrower and muddier the further we went. After the river crossing (I kid you not, although it was a really small river and we made Ben go first), we came to a fork in the road. We sent Rob on his trusty BMW on a scouting mission to see whether the road ahead got better or worse. He came back with a big grin and suggested we turn around and head out. We backtracked and carried on to Broadford for morning tea at the bakery.

After morning tea we headed north to Seymour and turned off onto the Highlands road through to Caveat. The road started off wide and sweeping and gradually got narrower. After Caveat we went ‘exploring’ north towards Terip Terip over some hard packed dirt roads, with lots of short stops along the way to look at the map. Just about every time we stopped Darryl would start muttering, “Surrounded by good roads and we keep doing the crap ones….” Ben swears there was only 11 kms of dirt but it seemed like a lot more. A couple of kms back on the bitumen and we turned right to Gobur. From there it was 11 kms of fast road toYarck. We headed down the Maroondah Highway, turning off just before Alexandra on a road towards Fawcett. This road turned to dirt after about 10 kms so we backtracked once again, and carried on to Alexandra for a well deserved lunch.

We parked our bikes next to, but not too close to a ratty looking Z1000 (just in case it spontaneously combusted). The carbs were red with petrol from years of leaking, more oil outside the motor than in, and twin shocks caked with crusty oil from old leaks. When the owner rode away it took about 300 metres before it would start running on three cylinders. We never heard the fourth. What a shitter!

While we ate lunch Graham pondered on how he could get more ground clearance. The GTR two-up was grinding out a fair bit on some of the roads. However, he was horrified at the price of after-market shocks, so the bike may stay the way it is. He wouldn’t mind a VTR1000, but after I took Beryl on the back of the Blade returning from the toilets at Broadford, I don’t think a sportier bike is an option either. It’s no armchair.

After lunch we went about 3 kms down Maroondah Highway and turned off on the Molesworth Road. This was my favourite road for the day – high speed corners just following on from each other, left, right, left, right….. Great! From Molesworth we cruised to Yea on the highway and then picked up the pace again to Flowerdale. A little bit past Flowerdale we all flew by a police bike coming the other way. You could almost see him mentally calculating our speed in his head… We carried on knowing that to slow down would not be a good option. He did turn around and caught up to Darryl who was sitting at a more sensible speed. He tailed Darryl (who deliberately slowed to a snails pace), almost all of the way to Whittlesea until the cop spotted another couple of bikes going the other way, and turned around to annoy them.

The ride broke up at Whittlesea at about 4 pm after 320 kms. Thanks to Ben for taking us on some ‘interesting’ roads and Darryl for going rear rider and playing decoy with the police bike.

Liz Oliver (Honda CBR919)