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Hello everyone this story was an extract from on one of the star club rides. It was on one of our annual rides from Rawson to Woods Point . 

Woods point is in the middle of nowhere.  

 It’s quaint little  mining town , with a creek running through the lower reaches , the town arrived when they had the gold rush up there many years as there’s the odd mine and tunnel in amongst hunters huts and cabins that are scattered all through the bush , and there’s also another tavern I think up high on the bluff but I have never been there ,

Woods point has got one main street with a few houses and buildings in it. It’s also got the local Pub located at the bottom and I think the  actual original hotel is gone and a more modern one is now in its place , and at the top of the main street there’s a general store that originally was opened on site in 1862 by 

Henry Wood and then directly across from over the road from that is the general stores service station , it’s kinda like a service station out of the 40s with old pumps and lots of old antique stuff. It’s quite a nice place.

The store was opened to service the needs of the Morning Star gold reef and  Woods point was born. 

Whenever we ride into  Woods point we always stayed in the pub in the Commercial Hotel in its accommodation and the pub was back then run by the owner who is an older man, Don , he was a good bloke and we always had fantastic social nights  there, but we found that when you ate there you had to be careful with what you said to the waitress she was a big tall middle aged country lass , that once turned nasty when one of us said something and she wrongly thought that they were complaining about the food, she smashed a plate down hard on the table and everyone in the dining room was silent for a second and she soon realised that she was mistaken and she had heard it wrong.

The publican Don is a fantastic host and a good sport because even earlier on our first trip there , after the bar had shut  we’ve all gone upstairs up to the rooms and I think that it was Smell and I in a massive pillow fight in our room I think with Carrie trying to stay out of the way hiding behind his bed and we’re right into it , 

I was near the door and the door opened and I thought it was one of the other blokes coming in so I went to hit the person as they came in as hard as I could and I saw at the very last second that it was the publican Don , 

he took one look at me smiled and said , it’s late , do you think you can quieten it down a bit Curly ? 

So I think at a later date  on this one particular trip around 20 of us left Rawson for the ride over , 

I like this ride because it wasn’t too technical , I was riding my WR and it was pretty well smooth sandy loam type of tracks it was fast and great going and a hell of a lot of fun, so we rode tracks all day with the usual thrills and spills along the way, the odd puncture that slows us up during the day and we eventually get there , to the creek at the bottom of Woods point and we all then roll as quietly as we can into Woods points main St  around 5 o’clock and we all park the bikes outside in the fenced yard at the pub and before even having a shower and changing , 

I usually always have a couple of beers. 

If I ever missed a trip, to the Commercial Hotel the publican  Don would ask everyone where I was?

So , hot and dusty and pretty thirsty im going into the bar , where Don would look up and smile when he saw me and then hand me a free beer and a welcoming hand shake because that’s the way he rolls and just what you did in the country pubs , he knew that we were good for business and he enjoyed having us, even though he was going to be kept up pretty darn late , I’d have a couple of quick beers and chat to him and head upstairs to have a nice hot shower and get changed , and then go back down to the pub for tea. 

Woods point even though isolated and a tiny town it had a full time police officer stationed there, 

I met him a few times. He was also a good bloke and he lived in the house behind the Pub sometimes when we arrived, he just soon turned up at the pub to say hi just so we remembered he was there.

So we had a fantastic dinner and l thanked the kitchen staff and l went into the bar to relax and socialise. Like at every other social meeting place in strange towns on a Saturday night , the locals just like clockwork began to arrive.

The door opened at some stage and the bar was already pretty full and I noticed a really scruffy man with a full on bushy beard arrived , he was roughly in his 50s and he came into the bar. I got talking to him and he told me he lived about 40 km away on his own deep in the bush and that he only came to town once or twice a month, or if he had to. 

So as the night progressed I was pretty relaxed, and at some stage that same man said something to me and I turned around and called him Santa Claus , as he actually looked like Santa, so that’s what I called him for the rest of the night. 

At one stage later on he cracked the shits and said to me listen , if you call me Santa one more time I’m gonna flip my shit. I looked straight back at him and said loudly don’t be like that Santa, 

the bar erupted with laughter and then everyone else started calling him Santa , and we all kept on socialising. 

Around that time I think there was lots of crackers available on the black market like penny bangers and waterproof crackers and all sorts of things , someone always had bits and pieces of them deep in their pocket and actually crackers do sound really good deep out in the bush because of the echoes that they create are just massive.

I heard a few let off outside earlier. 

So it’s winding down last drinks are ordered at the bar , Don has had a big shift some people had already left but there was still a few of us stragglers. 

So  soon we are all heading up to bed after closing time and because I was a smoker back then ,

I stepped out on the balcony for a fag before bed , with a can of beer in hand and my cigarettes , I could hear someone talking out there and when I got out to the front balcony section near the road there was two blokes there and they were just chatting away about the ride and they pointed out Santa’s  car to me that we could see , it was parked just up the road about 20 m 30 m away from where we were.  

Santa had crashed out in it so he didn’t drink drive and It looked like it was a fair bit of a wreck of a car and it looked to me like it was well and truely absolutely , not well maintained at all. 

We had a laugh about Santa earlier in the pub and then one of the blokes disappeared for a minute. 

I rolled a smoke quite relaxed and happy and in the next minute the bloke was back and in the next second I saw what he had in his hand and what I recognised as a boat  flare. 

I’ve never seen a flare  set off alight ever before and before I could say anything, he had pulled off the protective cover and struck the cap on the end of the flare and it had ignition and in a few seconds ,it started to flare up and soon in no time at all it was in the crispy cold night air it was a super bright , loud roaring massive red hot flame coming out off the handle. 

He then just took quick aim and he threw it off the top of the veranda up the road towards  the car saying that this is a present for Santa’s sleigh. 

I couldn’t believe it.

It landed just on the right hand side of Santa sleigh and just a metre passed the front wheel , with a two ft red coloured hot flame coming out of it . 

It made the whole area near it like daylight its brightness was that intense . 

I instantly felt a sigh of relief, but that relief feeling did not last very long at all, as to my absolute horror. I watched the flare start slowly rolling backwards down the hill , It also rolled sideways as it went , and of course it headed straight to the underneath of the front of Santa’s sleigh , and it finally stopped   , and where it landed the flame end was facing up against the inside of Santas right hand front wheel , with the flame burning red and hot against the inside of the tyre and for a second I thought I may be going to be soon running down there to drag him out , if the sleigh caught fire because there was probably heaps of fuel leaks underneath the engine. , do I prayed it was a diesel. 

Boat flares.  burn for one minute and in a situation like that , a minute is such a long time. 

But it didn’t even last a minute as , soon there was a bit of thick black smoke around and the smell of burning rubber in the air 

Fortunately, the flare didn’t roll any further but in the next instant that the flare  had sat there and it had burnt and melted right through the inside of Santa’s slays front tire.

The explosion and the noise that that made at 2 am on a dead silent night was so massive.  It was like a bomb . 

Santa’s sleigh instantly dropped the rhf rim down on to the road , as the tyre was now flat and the flare blew out onto the road still burning and with all that commotion and noise in about half a minute later Santa got out of his sleigh drunk and half dressed and he was standing in the haze of thick rubber smoke going absolutely crazy ,

but what was he gonna do ?

In the morning after we all got up, we found out that Santa had gone to see the policeman but I’m not sure if he was at home at the time  because he didn’t come and see us , but then something that Santa did next , to me is the really the crazy bit and that I couldn’t quite understand., 

Santa had to go to the general store to try and borrow a car jack that fitted his sleigh. Because he had to change his runner on the front of his sleigh and couldn’t lift it. 

He lived in the bush and didn’t have or carry a jack. 

It doesn’t make any sense at all . 

So we all fueled  up at the shop where lots of the blokes were still calling that man Santa outside the shop and he was super grumpy and hungover. 

And at the petrol station there the petrol bowser  is that ancient it’s still in pre-decimal currency so the store man has to use a calculator at the counter of the shop and convert the gallons over to litres so you can pay your fuel bill. 

It’s not like a regular servo that you can fill up at as the owner told me he goes to Maffra with 44gallon drums and fills them there and takes them back to his servo , so he only tops people up to get out of there as a kind community service. 

But he filled all of our bikes . 

It’s now time for us all  to have another great ride through the bush and another good thing is all of us got home safely in one piece  in the end.

For some reason I always seemed to ride better after a social night 

Ps 

I have to say that . 

A little bit later on that year I was a bit grumpy myself with Santa , for not actually leaving me a Christmas present  under my Christmas tree. 

So remember boys and girls to always be careful with matches and flares. 

And also carry a jack, 

And luckily 

For Even  Santa 

Christmas was saved.

For another year

Cheers

Curlyg