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29th-30th
January 2000
By Glenn
"Toasty" Martin
G'day All,
In January 2000 on the ISRA
forum I started bandying around the idea of having an
Aussie road trip. Thankfully Mark Jelic (one of
the head honchos of the ISRA forum) picked up the ball
and ran with it and a trip on the weekend of the 29th
and 30th of January was the result which he organised.
Now I’m not overly confident in my writing skills
so I deputised Mark to be my editor so if there is anything
good to say about this report tell me, If there is anything
bad, see Mark. <G>
We had six riders in total
that did the whole weekend and an extra two that rode
with us on Saturday until 2pm before they turned back.
The six for the whole weekend were: Mark Jelic
on "Stella" a Drag Star Classic
with more "crap" (Mark's words), uh, ultra
cool stuff than I have ever seen on a bike <G>;
Martin Squire on a very customised Drag
Star Custom (flamed tank and front fender, bob tail
rear fender, Jardine drags with HP+ baffles, scooped
out seat, waaaaay cool); Scott Paget on a stock
Drag Star Classic; Barry Goran on a Harley
Heritage Softail Classic and Un on a Virago
250. The two that just went for the day from
Canberra was René on his Royal Star and
Carita on her Drag Star Classic.
Oh, and me on my big, bad-ass Roadie!
 Mark,
Un and Scott started out from Sydney very early
in the morning and they actually met with a rider called
called Tony at McDonalds on his 1100 who only rode with
them for the ten minutes to Camden before bidding them
farewell. The guys then hooked up a couple of
hours later with Barry in Goulburn where Mark had to
make some impromptu repairs to his blinker assembly
that had come loose and scratched up his rear fender.
Damn Mark, I guess you are just going to have to get
that custom paint job after all. What a shame! <G>.
 The
day for myself, Martin, René and his wife Carita, started
out in Canberra at 10:00am waiting at McDonalds (see
a pattern here?) for the others who had got underway
at somewhere around 6:00am. Love my sleep-ins. They
showed up FINALLY (hehe) at 10:20am and much bacon and
egg McMuffins were had by all... huuuurhrhuhhgrhghghghg
bacon and eeeeegg mcmuffins...
This was the first time I
had met any of these people, let alone anyone I had
met over the Internet and I will tell you right now,
they are a great bunch. After all the introductions
and a bit of a late breakfast, I was VERY keen to get
on the road.
Day 1 - Leg 1 - Canberra
to Cooma – 114km’s/70miles
I can't remember exact distances
but it's about 100km's/62 miles from Canberra to Cooma
where we stopped to fill up. We did a fair bit
of filling up mainly for Un, whose Virago 250 only had
a 9 litre tank. Fairly unremarkable ride because
the road is a bit average and is a reported haven for
the police to hang out along. Martin took the
head of the pack and Mark road tail gunner. We actually
got into a good close staggered formation once in a
while and for those of you who have done it will know
what I mean when I say it was a lot of fun.
So when we reached Cooma
we stopped and everyone topped up mainly because Mark
didn’t want to fuel up again until we had come down
from Mt Kosciusko. Except for the guy on the Roadie
that is! Love my 20 litre tank so no fill up for
me. We decided there that René and his wife would
accompany us to Jindabyne, where we would have lunch
and then they would head back to Canberra.
Day 1 - Leg 2 - Cooma
to Jindabyne – 63km’s/40miles
Again not much of a notable
road but there was one big sweeping corner that my bike
saw and just had to conquer. (“Honest Your Honour. The
throttle twisted itself in my hand!”) I blazed
out of my position in forth place and overtook the guys
and surged ahead. Martin on his 650 tried to make
chase but there was a Holden Commodore (I think) going
at enough of a speed that Martin decided he probably
didn't have enough grunt to get around him safely. Me,
I blew him away. I got up around 150kmh/93mph with ease
and hung around there for a kilometre or two before
deciding I was going to be radar bait before too long
and eased it off some. Lucky, because not a minute later
I saw a police car come over the ridge in front of me.
*phew*.
After seeing the boys in
blue, I dropped right off the juice to wait for the
guys to catch up. After going a while at about
80kmh/50mph they still hadn't showed up in my mirrors
so I dropped back even further and then even stopped.
How long had I been going at 150? [Yes,
we were wondering! –MJ] After another minute or
so I saw Martin crest the hill behind me and I took
off at the lead.
 At
this time we came around a bend on a hill and just off
to the right the world dropped away to one of the bluest
lakes you will ever see. Almost had me an accident
as we wound down the road looking at the lake, which
was beautiful. I saw a sign that said "Lookout"
(as in photo lookout) and indicated for everyone to
pull in. Once everyone was in, I and others noticed
that Mark wasn't there yet. After waiting a minute
or two I started to saddle up to go back until Martin
called to me and said Mark was probably taking pictures.
Unfortunately René had already taken off looking for
him. Felt bad about that, didn’t ya Mark? [Yep
– MJ] Sure enough, shortly after around the
corner came Mark and this was my introduction to Mark's
love affair with cameras. His motto (one of many
I am sure) is “You can never take too many photos!”
He’s not kidding!
When Mark stopped he pulled
out his two cameras, a normal film camera and a digital
camera and started merrily taking happy snaps. He
also got a couple of guys on bikes who had pulled up
before us to take a picture of us all with the lake
behind us. Left to right is Rene, Carita, Glenn,
Mark, Martin (big lad aint he?), Scott, Brian and Un
I can't remember what the
two guys were riding, possible a couple of old BMW’s,
but they went up and down our line of bikes quite a
few times and were very impressed. <G>
We then all got back in the
saddle and started for Jindabyne but Scott, who had
taken off first, stopped about a 100 metres down the
road and turned back. At lunch shortly after, we find
out he had forgotten his gloves, which had actually
fallen onto his back fender and were wedged down behind
the number-plate. Lucky!
We reached Jindabyne around
2pm and had lunch at a Chinese eatery where most of
us ordered schnitzel sandwiches with chips, only Mark
had some spicy Asian. (But he did eat it with a fork!)
We poured over a Yamaha accessories book Mark
had bought along and admired some ISRA patches before
we packed it up. We said our good-byes to René and Carita,
who were heading back to Canberra, and we started to
head up into the mountains... hills... whatever :-)
Day 1 - Leg 3 - Jindabyne
to Charlottes Pass – 40km’s/25miles
This is where it started
to get interesting. Once we had paid our entry
fee into the National Park ($6 per bike) we started
up the hill. In fact we had 40 kilometres/25 miles
of riding continuously UP hill. The countryside
was absolutely beautiful and the mountain road had lots
of nice twisties to it which everyone enjoyed. Only
problem was every once in a while we would come across
some road works and there would be patches of road with
very fine gravel across it, the same sort of gravel
that has the consistency of beach sand. I
am pretty sure all six of us had a “moment” going over
the wretched stuff. My Roadie with the tonnes
of torque to the back wheel definitely let go a couple
of times, but we weren’t exactly hammering it so all
was safe. [Try going over it one-handed while taking
a video clip! – MJ]
It truly is beautiful country
up there, through the winter it is buried underneath
metres of snow and through summer it's all green and
the air is fresh. Too fresh! We all noticed
that the temperature dropped quite a few notches as
we made our way up the mountain and I started seriously
wishing that I had packed the winter gloves for the
trip. Thankfully it didn’t get that bad but I
was happy to get out of the wind chill factor by the
time we made it to the top of the road which bought
us to “Charlottes Pass”.
 We
were now at over 2000 metres (over 6500 feet) and the
guys from Sydney (at sea level) in particular noticed
that their bikes were running a bit average. [Average?
I’d call it pretty crap actually. My bike in particular
was feeling it badly due to it already running pretty
rich. – MJ]
Mark had actually planned
on us walking up to the summit of Mount Kosciusko and
was very keen to do it, but after we found out it was
an 18Km/11miles round trip, and after Martin pointed
out that the average human walks an average of 6 Km/h.
(“Mark, that is a three hour walk.”) The realisation
struck Mark that the six of us weren’t exactly average
humans in average health, so we all decided to admire
it from afar. Thank goodness for that!
So a few happy snaps
later and a heart stopping moment where Marks camera
made a bid for freedom out of his pocket onto the ground
(no injuries to report), we started to head back to
the bikes to get going. Until someone noticed
that there was a great backdrop for pictures of everyone’s
bikes to be taken... The cameras, which never
quite made it back into Mark's saddlebags, came out
again as well paraded our bikes up for the shot.
We thought we had seen all
of Mark’s multi-media gadgetry, when out came the Digital
Video camera and he started making like Steven
Spielberg. Mark turned to us with a wicked gleam
in his eye. Uh, oh!
Day
1 – Leg 4 – Charlottes Pass to Lake Eucumbene – 104km’s/64miles
“You guys, on your
bikes. Me, video camera, side of the road, ride past…“
Oooooohhh boy. The plan was we follow Mark until
he found a point where it would look good for a ride
by. He would ride on ahead, get off the bike with video
camera in hand, signal us, and we would come tearing
down the mountain and he would get it all on tape. Sounds
good doesn’t it? Well it looked good too and here
we are tearing across a bridge, the look on Marks face
was priceless as we flew by. Like a kid at Christmas!
[It’s a sizey download and you’ll need QuickTime
4.x to view it, http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
but it is worth it! – MJ]
Download
the Video
After we all stopped a little
way beyond the bridge we waited for Mark to get saddled
up again and when we could see him coming we rode off.
I was riding in second last and after a short
while I could see Mark coming up from behind in my rear
view mirror and as he passed me I saw he was holding
the camera in one hand, filming! There was a little
confusion at this point as Scott decided to pull out
in front of Mark (didn’t see him) to go up beside Barry.
Thankfully nothing came from it except a few palpitations
on my part. [Watch the video, you’ll see. – MJ]
Mark continued filming here
and there as we went back down the mountain and we stopped
briefly in Perisher Valley to admire some of the video
footage Mark had taken which looked great. Un
was getting concerned about fuel so we decided to fill
at the next station we came to. When we stopped
to refuel we discussed if any of us would like to have
something to drink at Lake Eucumbene, would you believe
possibly, beer? There was some small talk on the
possibilities that the Holiday Park at the Lake may
not have any alcohol facilities and a phone call was
made to check. Horror of horrors, it was a lake
with no beer! [Thank goodness for cell phones! –
MJ] That would not do, so a small stop back
in Jindabyne was had to buy some sweet amber fluid.
Hey, we are Australians after all!
We were all feeling pretty
weary at this point, especially the guys from Sydney,
so the trip from Jindabyne to the lake was a quiet one,
except for the few questionable looks at Martin when
his map-reading abilities were in doubt. <G>
Wow Mark, when you choose
a place to stay for the night you got some amazing taste.
Martin, Mark and myself had a cabin between the
three of us. Barry had his own and Scott and Un
shared another one. From our cabin we had an uninterrupted
view to the lake and both Mark and myself had our fishing
rod fingers twitching. Unfortunately neither of
us strapped a rod to our bikes. [Next time! – MJ]
Dinner wasn’t bad until we
saw what the park manager was having, who joined us
for our meal. As we were tucking into our deep
fried battered fish, which was mighty fine at the end
of the day, he was cutting up some beautiful, fresh,
bacon-wrapped trout fillets that his son had caught
that day… Bastard! <G>
After dinner we sat up talking
for a while back at our cabin and had ourselves a few
cold ones. The talk mainly revolved around what
we wanted to do with our bikes and the exorbitant prices
we have to pay for accessories here in Australia, and
the general lack of them. Scott, Barry and Un
begged off early which left myself, Mark and Martin
to a few beers and a nice warm J&P Cycles catalogue
to thumb through before we called it a night.
Day 2 – Leg 5 – Lake
Eucumbene to Cooma – 61km’s/37miles
 It
was a bright and early start on Sunday morning getting
up at 7:00am. I was absolutely aghast to find
that Martin was up from 6am! He wanted to know
where it was written that he got to sleep in the same
room as a chainsaw… Mark. [<grin> - MJ]
I was forewarned of this problem by Mark himself
in an e-mail prior to the trip, so I had made sure I
wasn’t going to be in the same room as him :-) Martin
then told me he was joking, a little, and that he gets
up at that time everyday. I only have two words
to say about that and the second one is “crazy”.
When we staggered out onto
our little balcony we found that we were met by a couple
of “locals”. [Every Australian has them in their
yard, you know. – MJ]
We were back on the road
by our pre-planned time of 8:00am and on our way to
Cooma for breakfast. Before we got there though
we were to be treated once more to “Jelic Cam”. Our
intrepid and fearless leader once again mapped out a
ride-by with us in formation, and him coming up from
behind on his bike. It was a lot of fun <g>.
It was along a long quiet
stretch of road when again my Roadie decided that it
had some excess carbon to blow out (honest) and away
we galloped. I was slightly concerned that someone
else would also see this same piece of road and have
their pony decide to break away but fortunately no one
did. I got my Road Star up to 175kmh/110mph and
she just wouldn’t go any faster so while I was tearing
along I added a new breather system to my list of accessories
that I need to buy. Ok, I’ll admit it, it was
already on my list. Now it’s just higher :-) After
I brought the bike back to a more reasonable speed I
noticed in my mirrors Mark’s driving lights coming up
FAST! I let him have his moment of glory, but
boy were those pipes loud on the way by. <G>
As we came into Cooma we
were treated to more Jelic Cam but this time it was
with a twist. As Mark went by us while we were
riding in formation, he would track each one of us for
a few seconds with the camera. THEN, we he got
ahead of us, up pops the camera pointing back over his
shoulder! THEN! He records our entire trip
into and through Cooma, through roundabouts and into
our destination for breakfast, those mighty golden arches
(did I say I like bacon and egg McMuffins?), with the
camera alternating between pointing ahead and pointing
over his shoulder back at us!
Day 2 – Leg 6 – Cooma
to Batemans Bay – 199km’s/123miles
More beautiful Australian
countryside was on offer for this last leg of riders
as the main group. We were taken from cattle grazing
countryside through a small range that was almost tropical
in it’s surrounds, back into some more grazing country
that was lush and green and down to the coast where
the mighty Pacific Ocean greeted us.
Over the range we were spoiled
by some tight twisties that were a lot of fun and much
board scraping was had by all. At its peak we
pulled over to admire the view from a Lookout and also
took a picture of a visiting tourist, who actually thought
we wanted a picture of her in the group, as opposed
to her taking a picture of the group itself. [What
a nut-bag! Remember how she couldn’t operate the damn
thing and we had to guide her on taking the photo! <grin>
- MJ] While we were stopped on the range
we worked out our next fuel stop as most of the guys
hadn’t filled up since the day before after we came
back down from Mt Kosciusko. (Except for Un, who filled
up that morning in Cooma. You need a bigger bike, Un!
<G>).
As we started away from the
lookout, Mark said he was going to take the lead, as
this tight windy road was too good to pass up. I made
sure I was right behind him. We fair tore down
the road to the roar of V-Twins with mainly 1st to 3
rd gear riding. Mark displayed a curious almost trail-bike
rider style of form, taking his foot of the board that
was going to scrape. [Apparently called “Flat-tracking”.
– MJ] The sacrificial scratch plate on my Roadie’s boards
took a fair pounding as well, but that’s what they are
there for aren’t they… Aren’t they?… Well?
Once we came down from the
range proper Mark and I surged ahead to about 145kmh/90mph
for a short while on the straight road until Mark saw
the flash of police lights on an oncoming car. Mark
came off the juice real fast to the tune of his engine screaming
through the baffles, (It does have baffles doesn’t it,
Mark? <G>) with me pulling up in a hurry behind
him wondering what the hell he was doing. Mark
actually confided to me later that what he actually
saw was a white sedan in the distance that had a push-bike
mounted to the back of the sedan on a bike carrier.
The flash he saw was the sun sparkling off the
safety reflector on the bike’s wheel that was spinning
in the air. *Sheesh!* [Scared the crap
out of me, let me tell ya! – MJ]
After letting everyone catch
up at an intersection where we had to make sure we were
all going the right way the troupe was on the road again,
for a little bit. We were now on a nice stretch
of highway that rolled through the countryside with
big sweeping bends. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t
resist. Bidding the others farewell over my shoulder
I took off into the wild green yonder. After cruising
for a while at speed I noticed that Mark had followed
me and was in my mirrors at 150kmh/94mph. That
suited me just fine. The road swept through these
beautiful big bends with the boards touching down occasionally
and the 1600cc V-Twin singing its song in my ears. The
scenery passed by in a blur and I was a man at one with
his machine with Mark following just behind. It
was fantastic.
It was also very stupid because
we rode like that for about 5 to 10 minutes and we could
have been real radar bait but hey, we didn’t get a ticket
and even if we did I don’t think you could have wiped
the smile off my face. Well maybe you could have
because the ticket would have been AUD $1000+ [And
automatic cancellation of license! –MJ], but we
didn’t get one so it’s a moot point. <G>
Mark and I pulled up at the
nominated fuel station after our little jaunt and we
were joined by Barry on his Harley shortly after. After
refuelling we stood around chewing the fat and reminiscing
that great bit of road we had just conquered in the
name of all bike-kind while we waited for the others.
We waited for the others for a very long time
and again the question was asked, “How fast were we
going? We couldn’t have been going that fast,
could we?” After close to 20 minutes I could hear
Martin’s bike coming up the road so I went out to make
sure he could see us and pull in. “Where the hell
have ya been?”, asked Mark.
“Where the hell
have you been?”, replied Martin.
“We have
been waiting here for you guys like we said.”, I told
Martin.
“Yeah, well you are waiting at the
wrong petrol station, you missed it.”, said Martin.
Whoops. So petrol signs are a little
hard to see at that speed.
Back on the road again we
reached the coast and were treating to the smell of
the sea breeze and caught glimpses of the ocean through
the trees. We reached Batemans Bay around 2pm
in time for lunch and I directed the guys to a great
fish and chip place for a bite to eat. We parked
in the street with all the bikes in a row and guess
what appeared. Yep, Mark’s cameras. Mark started
filming the bikes in a slow arc with the video and had
pretty much turned full away from the bikes and was
still filming. “Mark, what the hell are you pointing
the camera at? Oh, I see.” Well we are on
the coast, in summer and Australian women are very beautiful!
Did I mention here is a man who loves his technology?
[For a second there I thought you’d call me a pervert!
<G> - MJ]
Day 2 – Leg 7 – Batemans
Bay to Home – 152km’s/94miles For Canberra - 280km’s/173miles
for Sydney
Batemans Bay was where Martin
and myself were going to part with the others. We
bid the guys farewell with promises of doing this again
next year as well as taking another ride in the near
future. The trip for Martin and myself back home
was quite uneventful and the traffic was a little heavy
as everyone else was heading home from the weekend too.
Martin and I left each other just short of Canberra
for our respective homes, very weary and in much need
of a beer.
Mark and the others rode
back to Sydney via the coast stopping at Wollongong
for a refuel and Mark discovering the batteries in his
camera finally giving out and he packed it away for
good. The ride back to Sydney was fine although
the clouds did build up quite ominously but thankfully
never produced. They farewelled Scott and Un at
the south of Sydney and Mark went back to Barry’s house
for a coffee. (I think they probably had a beer
or two <G>) [No, I seriously needed a coffee!
Thanks, Barry. –MJ]
The Final Results
I now have some great new
friends and not only that, I now have some great new
riding buddies. This trip for me was the first
one I have done as part of a group like this for that
sort of distance. If you haven’t done anything
similar get out there and do it as soon as you can,
you wont regret it, unless you get to bunk with Mark
“The Chainsaw” Jelic. [Leave it out! –MJ]
According to my Odometer,
Martin and I did over 750km’s/466miles. With the
extra ride for the others from Sydney they would have
done close to if not more than 1000km’s/621miles for
the weekend.
All of us had a GREAT time
and I will close with the words that for some reason
I remember the most, from Scott.
“Why didn’t I buy a bike
years ago?”
Glenn
"Toasty" Martin
ISRA#
1420
23rd February 2000
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