7,000 kilometers on a Big Single

There are easier ways of getting to Gladstone, Queensland than via South Australia. But what the hell, it’s all north when said and done.

Destination for the first evening was Broken bucket Tank near Yanac, far western Victoria. I pointed the front wheel due west out of Heathcote at about noon and figured I’d have the tent up before last light.

So help me, if I live to be a hundred I’ll never get used to not leaving on a bike trip from Melbourne, Being on a country highway 1.5 minutes from home is unnatural. St Arnaud, Minyip, Dimboola (almost a straight line), Nhill, Yanac. Broken Bucket is not only a great name, it is also a great place for road riders to camp and experience Victoria’s Big Desert Wilderness. The bitumen goes right to the door and it has hot water and a toilet. I believe there is a motorcycle rally held there each year.

Broken Bucket is also the start of the infamous Murrayville Track which crosses eighty-odd kilometers of compressed sand to arrive at (yes, you guessed it) Murrayville. And no, there is not a skerrick of bitumen on that section.

Early morning, second day, and I have my ‘desert experience’ as a Mallee Fowl struts slowly along through the campsite. I know it’s a Mallee Fowl ‘cos there is a drawing of one on the Parks and Wildlife information board. I thought they were timid and rarely seen, but this guy is cool as a cucumber.

The ‘Track’ has the ’40 km/h’ signs up and it’s a bit chopped up but what the hell, that’s why I’ve got the LC4 with me. Sorry! I forgot to introduce myself to the growing number of Club members who won’t know me or my bike. I’m Les Leahy dare I say it, an old member) and I persist in riding a KTM LC4 640cc single cylinder. That’s like ‘one’ cylinder, and I think the other bit stands for Liquid Cooled 4 valve.

Murrayville, pump the tyres up again to road pressure, over the S.A. border at Pinnaroo and north to Loxton on the Murray River. I take the top side of the Murray and keep a sharp lookout for minor roads around Morgan.

Morgan to Yunta is dead north but normally this means going via Peterborough or Broken Hill, both of which are hundreds of kilometers out of the way. I figured it was time I invented a shorter route and so headed in to Sampsons Well. Two property gates later I arrive at the homestead and was met by young Craig and his wife. Craig rides an XR650 Honda and is the full bottle on the best way to get to Yunta.

“Just go through these three gates, mate, and pick up the mail-run track ‘cos its got grids at all the property gates. Turn hard at Pine Valley and then you’re right for the next 200 kays to the highway.”

And you know what? Craig was spot on. The only occasion I have known a local to be accurate with directions.

I pulled into Yunta a little after dark and threw up the tent in the travellers compound. This is a rectangle of bare, stony ground right next to the highway, but its got a toilet block and running water. What more do I want? Next morning I did a ‘bush’ oil-change on the LC4.

Under normal conditions KTM assumes that you have an air-conditioned garage and a 6-way box of snap-on tools to do an oil-change. My ‘bush’ change is the best I can do, and it does renew about six tenths of the oil. Single cylinder motorcycles run on sumps of less than two litres of oil and you gotta look after it like crazy.

Straight across the highway and I am on 300 kays of gravel road headed for Arkaroola. This is one of the two sections where I need to fill my five litre jerry can and ride the first 140 kays with it in my back pack. This increases the fuel range from 360 km to 460 km.

The Arkaroola Road also rasps over half the tread depth off your new rear tyre; but hey, it’s a great way to view the Gammon Ranges! A turn at the top and I am headed to Leigh Creek.There’s not much left of the day but I decide to press on to Farina.

The S.A. Ranges Rally is held each year at Farina on the road to Marree and the beginning of the Birdsville Track. It’s a great place for a rally as the bitumen runs to within 25 km of the site and most can get in on a road bike. As soon as the black top ends it’s real spooky. Farina is a ghost town and you’d swear you were a thousand kilometers from nowhere. Unfortunately at that time of the year the desert is heating up in the day and cooling down at night. This causes aggravating winds to blow and with them comes the dust.

The very next weekend is a get-together (not a rally) of serious outback riders who gather at Tiboobura in far north-west New South Wales. Doing Farina and Tib. in consecutive weekends seems like a great idea, but unfortunately there is just too much time in between to hang around in the desert.

Sunday morning I rode back to Lyndhurst and topped up with fuel and water. Cameron Corner is 440 km up the Strzelecki Track so out came the plastic jerrycan again. Like most of the roads around this neck of the woods, the Strzelecki has been gouged out of the landscape for the big trucks to use. To see the landscape for the first time is amazing. To ride these roads a second time is soul destroying. And if you catch Cameron Corner road after cattle mustering, it will be bike destroying too. These multi-trailer cattle trucks create massive corrugations that will rip your racks and panniers off.

I pulled the pin at Fort Grey and made camp for the night. Fort Grey was the northern-most depot for Charles Sturt’s expeditions as there can be water here at times. Like about once every 10 years.

I’m a real Charles Sturt fan and put the sleeping bag out on a concrete table to look up at the same night sky that he and his men would have looked at 150 years ago. Sturt would not have had the myriad of communication satellites zotting across the blackness like I did.

Next morning I took the ‘middle Track’ across to Olive Downs, rather than crash and bang down the main road. Don’t ride the middle Track with anything less than an LC8, or an LC8, but it is wonderfully sympathetic to the dunes and scrub of the landscape.

Tibooburra is a favourite of mine, but there is not a stick of shade in the summer. Early Tuesday morning I was in at the Corner Country store doing another bush oil-change into a giant Milo tin. Jeez, you’re lucky to buy engine oil out here with vaguely suitable viscosity. Look for the stuff that says “mixes with other brands of oil.”

From first light there had been haze everywhere. The sun looked like the moon. Yep, dust. Fortunately I’d decided not to wait for the Tobooburra get-together but would use the extra time to ride to Queensland. With time up my sleeve I opted to sit it out at my camp at Dead Horse Gap.

By 10am there was sand pelting through the air. I had a shelter shed roof (no walls) and a medium sized disused water tank. By crouching on he leeward side of the tank I managed to fill in time by reading a week-old copy of ‘The Australian’; but only if I folded it down to A4 size.

By 11am the flies had attacked and I retaliated with my fly net that I always carry. The wind just got worse. My tent was full of sand and dirt.

By 3pm the flies could no longer fly and an emu that tried to walk across the paddock got blown off its feet. This was bad … and I’d had enough. With extreme difficulty I packed up my tent and the rest of my dirt filled gear and at 7pm I reluctantly fired up the LC4 (hope the air filter is doing its job) and rode the 5 kays into town.

They wanted $30 for a very ordinary room at the pub. But I wasn’t arguing. That night I cleaned and sorted out my disheveled gear; cleaned and re-oiled the air filter and was ready for when the sandstorm finished. Next morning the wind was still blowing but the air was clear. I was on the bike and gone.

The Warri Gate is fifty-something kilometrers north of Tib. Yes, there is a gate. A big one, several metres high. It’s part of the Dog (dingo) Fence. From here cattle trucks drive into Omicron Station and from the north trucks drive into the Gas and Oil Field at Santos. Between is about 90 kays of road that God forgot. And so has the Queensland Department of Main Roads. Every vestige of track was covered with sand from the day before, and every sign of human habitation indicated and any prior residents had packed up and left in 1940. Ooo-eee scary.

I gave the LC4 a pat on the tank and begged it not to break down out here. That morning I travelled 250 km and didn’t see another vehicle.

By Noccundra Pub the bitumen had recommenced. Even though Queensland is my state of birth, there is much of it that I have never ridden through on a motorbike. By heading north to Eromanga and onto Quilpie I was passing through Channel Country. Basically this is a giant flood plain with storm water grooves etched into it from when it really dumps down. This must be the flattest landscape in the world. Not one pebble intrudes above the flatness of the earth. God’s spirit-level could not detect any deviation from the horizontal.

The camping ground at Quilpie was a little beauty with a camp kitchen for us poor souls without caravans. Barbeque, stainless steel bench and sink, microwave, table, plastic chairs, concrete floor, the lot. I had the whole joint to myself.

Next morning I got up early and washed the bike. It had earned it! From here to the Queensland coast is about as far as from here to Melbourne. It’s a big state when you are used to Victoria. And this is the land of wooden houses on stilts, with big verandahs. Just like when I was a kid. Nothing has changed.

At Charleville I was having a couple of Yoghurts out the front of the supermarket as one does) when a Yamaha TT600R went past with the touring gear attached. This is a big chook chaser like mine. “Nicely set-up”, I thought as it trundled by.

On the way to Mitchell the same bike had pulled in to a roadside café. “Better check this bloke out.” You could have knocked me down with a feather when it turned out he was a pom, riding around Queensland on holidays. The Yam and all the gear was hired from a bike shop in Lismore in north-eastern NSW. He’d never even ridden anything bigger than a 250cc trail bike before.

Bugger me. A bike shop that actually knew something about outback touring.

Roma looked like a tourist rip-off, so I took a dirt road to Taroom, only another 187 km. Jeez, this is a big state. Arriving after dark, it took me a while to track down the camping ground. It was one of those little shire council ones where the lady with the house closest to the grounds acts as caretaker. “How much for one night, unpowered?” “$2.20”, the elderly lady replied. This would have to be some kind of record for the cheapest camping ground in Australia. I threw the sleeping bag on top of a big wooden picnic bench and was soon rewarded with one of the longest shooting stars I’ve ever seen. For about 2.5 seconds it just ripped across the blackness of the night sky.

Theodore, Banana (yes, you read correctly, Banana), Biloela, Gladstone couldn’t be far now. I was pretty much done for. Queensland bitumen roads seem to have a join in them every 15 metres and it slaps through the stiff suspension something chronic. By now the vibration in the bars made them feel at least 60 mm in diameter, and I was praying for a dirt road to soften the ride. There it was! Ambrose, 27 km, and dirt.

A couple of days holiday with minimum bike riding had me feeling almost human again. I took the rural road at the foothills of the Great Dividing Range. Monto, Mundubbera, Nanango. Great sounding names and excellent riding. Before I new it, I was approaching Brisbane.

Visiting my aging relatives won’t interest you at all, so we’ll press the fast forward button and find me early one morning leaving the hinterland of the Gold Coast. My disintegrating memory of south-east Queensland was still capable enough to get me onto the road to Coomera, Mt Tamborine and eventually Beaudesert. If I told you how beautiful this countryside is to ride, you’d jump on your motorcycles and never come back.

Over the border at Mt Lindsay and the ‘highway’ of the same name. This is the only road in Australia that has not changed one iota in the last 20 years. Woodenbong, Legume, Wilsons Downfall, Boonoo Boonoo. The road is as remote and strange as the place names are. From here I headed for Inverell to go west as quickly as possible. Bingara and what used to be my favourite, all time dirt range road brings me out at Narrabri. Yep, you guessed it. They rolled that one down rock hard as well and stuffed it, in the name of progress.

Next morning out of Narrabri, I go onto automatic pilot as I’ve ridden the Newell Highway so many times, over so many years. Gilgandra, Dubbo, Parkes and another ‘bush’ oil-change in there just for good measure. By late afternoon I am in Jerilderie and plan to call it a day on the border. Then a very strange thing happens. A sign comes up ‘D 68’. A little later another sign ‘D 54’. But I am not supposed to be going to ‘D’, I’m going to ‘F’ and I should be there by now. Yep, right again. Wrong road.

I was about seven years old the first time I took a wrong road. As luck would have it, Deniliquin would take me nicely west and position me directly above Echuca and one hour south to Heathcote.

As night descended I pulled into a great little spot at Conargo and pitched the tent. Perhaps I had become like a homing pigeon and my internal radar had taken over.

With no deadlines, I drifted across the Victorian border next morning and headed home via Bendigo and Kyneton. Kyneton? Yes, that is where my KTM dealer has his shop and I booked the LC4 in for a well earned service and told the guys how it had gone so well. One blown tail-light globe in 7,000 kilometers. Not bad. Now, about that vibration. How can I overcome that?

Les Leahy (KTM LC4)