For the days leading up to the June long weekend, it poured with rain. Not a little, a lot. Three and a half inches at Dergholm!
I was ride coordinator for this trip, and had a couple of phone calls checking if it was still on, you'd almost think that we were Australian Summer Motorcycle Trail Riders Association!
Friday morning I loaded up the bike in the rain, all the while thinking that maybe it was just a little bit crazy to be going in this weather, which was forcast to get only slightly better for the weekend.
However, once we were off, after 30 km, the rain cleared around Callington, and at Murray Bridge they were having dust storms! :-O
The rain came and went for the rest of the four hour trip, including when I stopped to drop the wife & kids with the inlaws, and had to get the suitcase etc out of the ute (of course).
The rest of the trip to Dergholm was wet on and off, but uneventful. I picked up the key from the local pub, and headed out to the campsite.
After opening up the gate, and the facilities, I put up the tent quickly while it wasn't raining.
Just as I finished getting the tent up,Skip turned up with his family and started setting up his tent, more rain rolled in to drench the campsite, which already had puddles all over the place!
John turned up next, as did my parents, who helped get a fire started with the wet wood, as well as supplying some hedgehog (for all, as there was a severe lack of cake) & pasties (for me ;-). Much appreciated!
During the course of the night, a few more people turned up, giving us 13 riders for the ride.
The rain continued off and on during the night, but the wind had almost totally gone.
Dawn on Saturday was overcast, but dry enough. After some breakfast, everybody got geared up, most with jackets, some with handbags!
After a short trip up the road and through the farmers property, we hit the first challenge. Well, its not actually a challenge if you take the bridge, but going through the creek itself saw Slater drop the WR in the mud. Nice start :-)
We continued through to the trails, which early on consisted of the really grassy "Death Valley", which was surrounded on all sides by pine trees.
Dave was leading, and set a hard task of climbing back out of the valley up between the pine trees, but some had trouble. Daniel in particular was cursing that he didn't put the new rear tire on before the ride.
Daniel & Mark J turned to go back up the side of the valley in the grass, and even there, Daniel had trouble. He really should have fitted that rear. Unfortunately, this was only the start of what would become a bad weekend for him.
While that was going on, Dave set the second challenge, up an even steeper section between the pine trees! Matt headed right after him on the DRZ, but got stuck pretty early on. Julian followed and gave a different route a try, but didn't make it. Mark E came over on the big CRE500 and grunted right up there. I tried and couldn't make it. Then Rob came on the XR650 to give it a go, but couldn't get up.
Julian tried a couple more times before he and I decided to go back to where the others were and go up from there.
Matt & Rob stayed and tried to bully their bikes up. Meanwhile the rest of us headed up to find Dave the easy way ;-)
Once we got there, the decision was made to go back down, and around the grassy way where Mark J and Daniel were. So we all headed back down (the hard way). Matt couldn't believe it, as he and Rob had finally got the DRZ up to the top, and here we were making him turn around. I think Rob was happy though.
Back around we went, up the grassy slope, not too hard if your rear tyre was ok. Mark E jumped on Robs XR650 for him and tried to go up the hill, but no go, so he scooted it around to the top of the grassy slope for him.
Mark E jumped on behind Dave to go around and get the CRE500, but the slope was soo steep that they were going down sideways with both wheels locked up! Dave called for Mark E to bail. He didn't need much encouragement, as they were headed right for a tree! What he did need was something to push off from! No footpegs or anything makes disembarking from a rapidly accellerating bike a little tricky Mark E was heard to exclaim later.
Luckily Dave managed to get it slightly back under control after Mark E had bailed, and straightened it out enough to miss the tree. Dave was very happy that there wasn't a ledge down the botton near the creek, or he'd have come off. Dave doesn't like to come off, but then, who does.
Once everybody had gathered there, we went around to the top where Dave and Mark J had been waiting. Matt was there, looking decidedly worse for wear, after he decided to continue up, rather than ruin all his good work and go back down again.
On the way to regrouping Skip had a little trouble clearing some logs on the 520. Julian did a fantastic impression of someone who wanted to go over the bars while crossing a small log, just managing to gather it back together, but apparently thats how he always does it, and he's used to it :-D
Dave continued to lead on, with lots more log crossings. One particularly big one meant that everyone had to get off, and push the bikes over, with typical Amtra teamwork going great guns.
However, Julian put another log below it, and decided to jump over! :-O We all thought he was slightly crazy, considering that fallen pine trees are almost as slippery as Gorilla Snot! Especially when the bark has been removed by 10 or so other bikes being dragged across. However, he pulled it off neatly, only dropping the bike after the logs rather than crash into a tree on the other side, which in my book is fair enough.
Off we went again, and at the next re-grouping, it was discovered that Skip had lost his brand new Oakley goggles. He wasn't too impressed with the goggles, as they kept fogging or something, so didn't seem to worried, but he went for a look for them with Mark J, but didn't find any. Rumour has it that some big Roo had picked them up, and was last seen looking for some gloves to match. :-)
Lunch was at the Dergholm pub, who performed the same excellent job they do every year when a dozen or so South Australian Yobbo's arrive wanting petrol, pies & pasties.
After that we headed towards the sunken harvester in the peat swamp, encountering quite a few large puddles on the way. I discovered that my right boot has developed a hole which lets puddle water in extremely quickly!
However, along the way Daniel heard quite a loud noise from the WR400 gearbox, and the back wheel locked up. Its a 99 model (I think), and thus the worst was immediately assumed, as there is a problem with the gear selector that can sometimes select two gears at once if its worn. Apparently it was fixed in the 2000 models, and the go is to replace it with the 200 model selector.
Anyway, a tow was arranged for Daniel, with Mark J taking him back to the camp, which was only 15 minutes away, then returning for the rest of the ride. Daniel however, was out.
We continued on some flowing trails, and some nice sandy sections around some pines before returning to the camp for dinner.
Some of us went to the Dergholm pub for dinner, having a nice steak, and even cheesecake or chocolate sundae for desert.
Dinner discussion was initiated by me asking about how often Mark E's big CRE500 fires. Was it on every P'ting, or more or less. What about four strokes. Do they fire on every revolution? How many revolutions does the CRE500 idle at? Does John's 520 have more snap than the new 525's? Does it have more hit than Tim's 380, or is the 520 all Whoosh? What about the CRE500? John's 490? Whoosh, Grunt, pting, snap. Which has it got?
OK, there might have been a little alchohol involved over dinner, but it all made sense to us!
Sunday dawned quite brightly, with the sun shining, and no wind. Not a jacket day some said. Me, I went for the spray jacket after the exertions of the previous day.
By the time we headed off however, it was quite drizzly again, and it looked like those who had opted for the handbags had done the right thing.
After some consultation with Dave, I led off the ride to give Dave a break from hunting down the Roo's at the pointy end. He's taken quite a dislike to the big buggers.
We headed off roughly in the direction of long lead, with me getting confused a couple of times, and hitting a couple of dead ends. It would have been easier if the sun was out to navigate by, but I dont think it would have made a huge difference, as I wasn't very experienced in the region.
But we eventually got to Long Lead, where I led the guys off around the Enduro track there, which takes about 30-60 minutes to ride around. Its quite challenging, and tight, so the bigger bikes would have been a handful, but all the guys seemed to enjoy it, although there was quite a rest stop at the finish.
While resting, some bike swapping and test riding went on. I had to try John's 520 to see whether the snap was scary, or was it the whoosh that got you. I'm still undecided on all those, but did discover that coming of a screamer like the WR250F, it would take a while to get used to the big 520.
Matt had a go on the WR250F as well as on Mark E's CRE500.
lunch was next at the Casterton top shop, where they looked after us grandly, with chicken, chips, pasties & pies. While in there getting lunch, Dave spotted the neopolitan cake, which he was immediately tempted with, but decided not to have. However after we all finished, he snuck back in and got it on a plate for us all to "lard up" on. Mark J had a couple of bits, but don't tell his cheese ;-)
After lunch we headed out and found some great fast flowing twin track that had obviously been used by motorcycles a lot before, with whoops starting to develop into some corners, but it was damn good fun.
Then we continued along the river track for a while before crossing a creek in the same spot as last year, but going the other way.
We continued along through the forest on more great trails, some that were quite overgrown, and obviously hadn't been used for some time. Some that had multiple logs across them just trying to catch people out.
While working our way back to the camp, we encountered a weird muddy track section that sucked the power out of the bike like a V8 on 4 cylinders. Goopy, gloppy mud that nobody wanted to get filled in with, or fall off in. Luckily none did.
Dave and Russell were riding side by side at one stage when a Roo hopped out between them, and they both hit it! Neighter of them got full contact thankfully, or the deck would have been hit.
Next we hit some Gorilla Snot sections (green moss on hard dirt road), which saw Mark E drop the big CRE500 because he thought about touching the front brake.
Finally we were almost to the camp when I hit a greasy log in some grass and came crashing down myself, just missing testing my helmet impact strength on a stump in the ground!
We returned to camp about 15 minutes before dusk, just in time to get the gear off, the bikes parked, and some dinner cooking before it became fully dark.
Lots of talk aroudn the fire that night about who roosted who with what, where etc. The usual stuff.
Next morning we all got up, had breakfast and packed up. I headed off early to drop off some slabs of beer to the local farmers who had been kind enough to let us ride through their properties.
On the way I encountered about 20 assorted size Roos in a paddock, but they hopped away as I drove slowly past. I sped up a bit then, thinking they were all gone when sproing out hopped a big bugger from the bushes. Despite locking up the Rodeo, I could see that were were in for a bump. Crunch. straight into the bull bar. A quick check of the rear vision mirror showed the Roo up, and hopping off, none the worse for wear.
Well, I thought, thats tested out the bull bar, and i'd much rather hit it in this than on the bike! No damage was done, but my heart was going faster than during the whole weekend on the bike!
After that I headed home, picking up the family from the inlaws and heading back to Adelaide after a fantastic weekend of riding, talking bikes and camping.
Pictures from the ride are in the gallery section on the Amtra SA website, under 2003/Dergholm.
A big thanks to Dave for leading on the Saturday, and for helping me out quite a few times on the Sunday when I was not sure where the *&%$% we were.