So after the tree hugging experience and selling my IT 250 , I was bike less for a little while , but then one day in town , I saw a man riding a Yamaha IT like my old one around town and then later on I must’ve seen him at the service station and it was David Thompson He was riding an IT 465 and it was in pretty good condition.
We had a chat about it and I asked him if he wanted to sell it to me.
We talked about how much money he wanted and we agreed on the price , and I think I picked it up from his place that night.
The story of the bike goes like this that it used to belong to one of his mates a man called Peter Wilde and Peter had spend a lot of money on the motor in that bike and the matched exhaust system , and he had bought it up to race specs , and he built a nice strong powerful engine , and he later sold it to David , so then I took delivery and ownership of this bike.
It was full reg which is really good so I could ride around anywhere and I started riding it straight away , It was a weapon that had so much more power than I was used to, it was incredible.
You could sit on fourth or top gear and hit the gas at 80 km an hour and she was straight up in the air on her back wheel, it was such fun to ride and it was such a lot better a balanced machine also to ride than the old 250.
I rode it up the bush with all the time with different groups of guys and lots of trips away in different places and it never let me down. It was so much better balanced and had so much grunt as it actually had power all the way through from the bottom to the top into the power band. You could just screw it on if you want to and like I said the old 250 it was completely different and on flat out in the powerband or no power at all, there was nothing like that comparison and I never really came off it very hard or as often , but I don’t think I had much of a stack on that at all in the end, but I stopped riding then with the guys because I had got a girlfriend and things do change and your life changes with it as you do I’d ride down to her place on it when we first got together , and then we sort of quickly moved in together a little later on , so I’d stopped riding by then with the boys as well as I was just doing other things. The bike certainly went like a thunderclap and I loved it , and I rode around Wonthaggi with Dallas and Brownie one day , they both had the bigger IT490’s and we lined up the three bikes together on the bitumen in a straight line and let them rip , we were neck a neck untill top gear when my bike accelerated and just left them behind .
So in the end I hardly rode it except every now and then , it had also developed a fault that was a bit dangerous and I actually didn’t fix it because I didn’t really worry about it.
Sometimes as I was riding along and the back wheel would just lock up solid without me even touching the brake , so it was like trying to throw me straight over the front of the bike over the handlebars like a spear , so the back wheel was locked so I then worked out your just roll the bike backwards if it locked up again , as it did now and then and if I was going along fast on the road and it locked up , the bike would mostly slide out sideways and then come to a stop and I’d have to roll it backwards and away l go again ,
so the bike just sat out in the backyard for awhile at the house we lived in and funny enough one day
Garry Thompson ,Dave’s brother came up and asked me if I wanted to sell it and of course really I didn’t, as it was my pride and joy of what I owned at the time and it was the best bike that I had ever had I thought , and it meant a lot to me , but I think that because I had a family by then and my son Ben had been born and I think that we weren’t actually that flush with money , so I guess reluctantly the bike can go ,as the family is more important . So I thought at that time that I’m never gonna get another one ,it’s never gonna happen.
So I sold it to Tom Cat and then I thought that was the end of my riding career until one time a bit later on when things changed and in life opportunities come and go as you know and somewhere then things in my life did change.
Dallas rang me up or someone approached me letting me know that there was a new dirt bike club forming with a upcoming meeting so I started to look around town quickly for a new bike in my price range and I was lucky enough to come across a Yamaha TT 600.
This was a big heavy bike so not that ideal for up the bush in tight corners, but I wasn’t exactly a lightweight so the weight of the bike didn’t bother me, what did bother me was sometimes when you stalled it in the ride and even when you just went to start it , it could be a problem as you have to decompress it with a leaver you pull on the handlebars as it has that much compression because of the size of the motor and if you don’t get it perfectly right on the kickstart it wouldn’t start or it will kick back on your bottom of your foot so hard you nearly broke your ankle.
So on a hill it was difficult to restart.
So I went to the new club STAR first meeting .
Star stood for Southern Trail adventure riders .
Hey you see , why it was formed that at earlier times on rides in the bush there would be other groups you ran into with people you knew.
So in the end Joe Bolding and Dallas McKenzie threw around the idea of forming a riding club.
So at first meeting, Joe was voted in as the first inaugural president , Dallas McKenzie became vice president, I think Snowy or Barney Matthews became the secretary,
I didn’t become anything except maybe a pain in the arse for them .
We had meetings once a month where rides , equipment and ideas were discussed around the table at first at the early day meetings the numbers will probably about 10 people attending.
That quickly grew.
We paid membership fees with the idea that that would pay for safety equipment and the running cost of the club , possibly subsidies sometimes on more expensive rides and also pay the club day-to-day expenses.
We went from hacking around in the bush to well organised club, the club supplied fluorescent jackets for the lead and the sweep tail rider and two way radios for communication.
They were clearly easy to see in the bush. STAR also brought a good first aid backpack with a lot of equipment in it in case of an emergency , STAR also bought a hand held GPS to help navigate our way around in the bush tracks.
It also had a star website where photos and ride reports , upcoming events and a contact for each member was available.
Somehow I was in charge of the website to build it and you put on the detail. It’s not up and running now but I believe that the STAR club still is.
Joe and Dallas with the input and suggestions of members planned and executed plenty of club ride days for the members totally professionally done ,
it takes a lot more organising and planning when taking a large group of people away together to ride in the forest. We also had a few regular annual rides we did every year and I believe that they still do them. Those rides included Rawson to Woodspoint. annual Dargo rides., The Black Spur. To name a few .
So I did lots of rides up the bush on the TT 600 without too much drama. honestly I fell off pretty regularly and when you come off sometimes you get a bit sore and the bruises can be bad but it’s just good fun.
The thing with a TT is it’s a heavy weight when you fall over picking it back up on the hill and trying to start it can be frustrating Sometimes the easiest way is to turn around and roll start it back down the hill, turn around at the bottom and have another go.
So I did quite a few rides with the TT .
As time went on Suzuki released a DRZ 400 with electric start as to compete against the fancy European KTM’s
I sorta cringed when someone in front of me fell off and just pressed a button to restart , but soon one day another club members WR 400 came up for sale so I bought that and sold the TT 600 regrettably because l actually liked that bike, by this time I had already collected all the safety gear that I hadn’t had earlier, like a chest plate , elbow pads knee guards proper riding pants with padded inserts and stuff so I was much better equipped to actually fall off now than ever before.
The WR 400 was also a pretty quick bike and being a late model it was the the best engineered and handling bike that I’ve ever ridden with ample power and a YZ ignition timing curve , and I don’t think I could really ever use it to full potential out in the bush but I could on the road and because it was full registration as well so I could ride her around town.
So on one of these trips away we’re all going to Marygig to ride clear Hills track at Mount Buller up to the site of Craig‘s Hut,
Craig’s Hut is famous for a scene out of the man from the snowy River movie, and our accommodation was in a town at the foothills in the motel at Marygig ,
I think there was about 15 of us on the ride and when we got there in the morning we all got dressed and ready to go.
Everything was organised , and as usual we had our fearless leader Joe riding out in front and we hit the tracks , I’ve never ridden or seen such big rough stone tracks anywhere before. It was rough tough riding and we rode a few tracks before making our way on to Craig’s hut for lunch.
The thing is, those tracks were a lot wider than some of the tracks in the Strezleckies
So you were constantly dodging four-wheel-drive vehicles . It was also very dusty and pretty warm for most of the ride.
We probably did roughly on a ride day on average you could say 120 k’s for the day so by the time we get back to the car park or the motel in this case.
You really have earned a drink by then as riding is definitely thirsty work , so we all get showered and changed. We had a100 m walk up and across the road to the Pub for a few beers and a counter meal.
Because it’s Saturday night the locals also file in at the Pub , and we always have a really good time ,and maybe some of us have a few too many beers by the time the Pub closes ,
we’ll this particular night it will be the only time that the club actually ever got into a bit of trouble and when we all got back to the motel from the pub
it had veranda all the way round the building with all these big chunky veranda posts , and we seem usually to be a bit partial to the odd wrestling match now and then , and I was just walking along the Veranda and back to my room , when someone shoved me from behind head first into the veranda post , it shook the motel , so I turned around and wrestled with that person and others then started joining in , and for some reason it got a little out of hand, and everyone was wrestling and rooms were getting a little messy and apparently we were also a little bit too noisy ,so the other guests said to the manager and for some reason I got up really early like 5 am. They had a pool outdoors and I thought I’d go for a bit of a dip. It wasn’t actually very nice and if it was a tiny bit colder it would have been ice , so by breakfast time. and after Joe had spoken to the manager, he told us all that apparently we now had to find alternative accommodation for the night. as we had been kicked out of the motel.
Hmm , bugger .
I can’t remember what we did for the rest of the trip, but that was the only time there was any trouble on any star club rides.
But I do have other interesting stories from other rides. It’ll come up with later.
I think the first one is a bit Christmassy, and it’s called Santa sleigh.
Cheers
Curlyg