Just to steal some other people's photos - as I rode up and back alone (the Melbourne mob proceeded me by a day in both directions) my photos are rather self-centered. Here are some of the others on the trip:
At the Coombah Roadhouse, with the Chair of Despair (COD):
And Sophie Whiptank, rider of the COD:
Norm, whom you've met on this blog before, when I joined him and Don on my SR500, who is Mr Fix-it for us sorry lads on stupid bikes:
Ant, founder of the club and blower-upper of bikes. In desperation he took a 250 Suzuki to Broken Hill. The gear box blew on the way back.
Don, after taking drugs?
Fred, the 79yo who rode his English Royal Enfield, a 500 Meteor, from Taree. Fred got his first Royal Enfield 65 years ago.
At Gus' production-line multiple-shed mini-Triumph-restoration factory:
On the Saturday before I arrived:
There's a few rallies coming up on the calendar. First of all, I believe I might be riding my Bullet with these lads into the Mallee soon on a semi-informal rally. And then there's the AGM a few hundred kms away, for which again the Bullet will hit the road. But two weeks before that the SR500 Club has its annual Rally in Bethanga, for which I might also ride the Bullet just to be stupid (it's a W650 task, really) following this regular's lead - a bike whose owner spends his time on it attending rallies up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia:
"I think then that the golden age must have been before this, in the earliest days of the country [...] the only place I have known since I left the cradle. There is no country where it is easier to imagine some lost pattern of life, a mythology of vanished gods, than this most ancient of lands, where the skeletons of tress extend their bleached arms in the sun, and giant lizards cling to their trunks."
I stretched my body over two thousand kilometers of this emptiness and mythology. From Melbourne, though Nyah, to Broken Hill. Days of coldness and gradual change. A winter-coloured meditation.
Friday I faced the rain that never came, and from Bendigo onwards made for Nyah under rainbows and chilled sunlight.
That was the first day. On the second I had five hundred kilometers to cover. After hugging the river for two hundred of these, I turned my face northwards into the desert.
I've not been to Broken Hill before. A thousand kilometers north of my home, I've often stared at the map, wanting to stand in that great stretch of desert and experience the nothingness. Winter is an easy time to do so, for I remember the fear, travelling across the Hay Plains in high summer, of breaking down in that intense heat. So when my motorcycle club - The Royal Enfield Club of Australia - decided to hold their winter rally in Broken Hill, it was an easy decision to go. And so on the second day I rode through this desert.
Sometimes I stopped and just listened to the empty space.
Sometimes I would stop by a lake.
But mostly I just pushed on and on, as the day died around me.
Despite almost colliding with an emu I made it safely to Broken Hill and to the members of the club.
On the Sunday we rode out to Menindee. We were led by a local club member, Gus, on his Triumph.
Gus led us to Menindee, over one hundred kilometers away, at 80kph. I was riding my fast Kawasaki W650, so that was an exercise in patience.
We had lunch at the Menindee pub, where Burke and Wills once stayed, and where I photographed a man and his riding companion.
The group at the Menindee numbered five bikes.
This included an Australian-made Carberry Royal Enfield v-twin:
And Gus' Triumph, which was no model in particular, but something that he had built out of boxes of bits: "For example, I have a big box of gears so I just pulled out gears and mixed and matched them until a had a set. I don't know their origins."
I spent Sunday evening with a friend from work who was in Broken Hill on separate business. We played pool at the Workingmen's Club.
On Monday I rode back to Nyah through the desert again. Although I spoke above of emptiness, the lesson of this trip was that that claim is more fantasy than reality. The desert road is three hundred kilometers of constant change and beauty. The straights are no more than two kilometers long before there is a turn, but most of the time the road twists and turns and and rises and falls constantly, and around every corner is a different vista. It was a fascinating ride.
My return to Nyah was done under a sunlit sky. I lay on the tank and sped, spreading my body again through time, space, and a cold, beautiful evening.
Marlon and I have been enjoying winter night rides of late. Tonight we did a 120km loop out to Yarra Glen. It was very dark and cold, it was raining heavily, and the fog was thick. And we had a great time. After passing some particularly large (for this area) kangaroos I slowed down to 45kph in some stretches. We arrived at Yarra Glen at 10PM and had coffee at the pub.
It was a lot of fun. The twisting roads there and back had a romantic aura as our headlights beamed into the dense fog. I was a little anxious at times due to the slippery road surface, the kangaroos, and the fact that my front tyre is balding, but I rode with all the caution and skill appropriate to the conditions. Knowing that beyond this there was nothing more I could do to secure my fate, I engaged in my usual motorcycling 'spiritual practice' of:
(i) responding to any negative or challenging situation in a spirit of acceptance, while
(ii) giving attention - despite the awareness also of the negative - to what is good in the experience, to what is unique, wonderful, worthy of gratitude, pleasant. Or, where it is hard to find these, to the gift simply of the opportunity to affirm in action and spirit that I am bigger than the fears or set-backs I encounter.
So while, because my bike felt slippery and I feared collision with a roo, I felt some anxiety about the present moment as I rode along, at the same time I chose to give attention to the beauty, the mystic romanticism, of this moment of being on my motorcycle in a quiet place in a a magic mist.
Today was a reminder of those old epic rides which I used to do - long distances and twelve hours on the bike. Which is fitting, as this blog turned four years old last week and it deserved an apt celebration. Marlon and I decided to ride to New South Wales for coffee.
It was a sunny winter's day, saturating the State, as we rode it's length, in soft water colours.
At Echuca a rider in alongside us. "He's got an old Triumph", I thought. When I walked up to it I saw that it was a W650! That's a convincing trick that Kawasaki played, confusing even owners of the bike!
Marlon and I sat on the banks of the Murray River and watched the life go past:
We took some back roads down to Bendigo, via Mitiamo. The light of the closing day was wonderful.
My mate sold his fantastic Yamaha SR500 recently and bought a big twin. Unlike me, he chose a (new) Triumph Bonneville. Tonight we went for a night ride so I could try it out. Tomorrow I will add some ride impressions to this post.
Fee and I rode to Bendigo this weekend on the W650. The bike was, as usual, in fine form, purring along like an old Trumpie as I tested its rev range. We had a great time on Saturday through the single-lane twists and turns of the Burke and Wills Track. At Redesdale we stopped for tea.
Poor Fee was dressed in literally half a dozen layers, including my very manly armoured jacket. Just after this photo was taken a dozen older riders pulled in and bailed us up for ten minutes - people are in love with my bike; which is fine with me...I am too!
Today we spent the day in wandering the suburbs of Bendigo then returned to Melbourne via Maldon and Castlemaine. Fee had not seen Maldon before. I took her to Tarrengower Tower, which she did not enjoy climbing
to look over Maldon
and the spectacular 360 degree view. Mind you, it was also very, very cold so we did not quite relish 'the moment' as we might have on a different day.
We stayed with my aunty and her husband. My aunty has been researching our family tree, and has found three newspaper articles about my great-grandfather and great-grandmother in my mother's father's line: Frederick and Nellie. I have the scans of the newspaper but they are hard to read. Here is a transcription:
From 1905 -
MOTORIST FINED.
Before Hooper and Yager, J.P.’s, at the Fitzroy court on
Wednesday, Frederick J. Clarke was proceeded against for having driven a
motor-car at a greater speed than allowed by the local by-law.
Constable Exe**** said:- On August 2* the defendant drove a
motor-car along Queen’s-parade, Clifton Hill, at a speed of 12 miles an hour. The by-law sets the maximum speed for
motor-cars at eight miles an hour.
The defendant was fined */* **** *** ******.
From 1933-
BABY NEGLECTED
Mother Sent to Gaol
Nellie Clarke, aged 37 years, David street, Carlton, was charged at the Carlton Court with having, on September 20th, caused her child Raymond, aged seven months to be neglected, such neglect appearing likely to result in causing bodily suffering or permanent injury to the health of the child. She was also charged with having used indecent language in a public place and with having assaulted Plain clothes Constable F. J. Adam in the execution of his duty.
Constable Adam said that on September 30 he saw Mrs. Clarke lying very drunk on a bed. The child was being nursed by a drunk** man. Mrs Beattie, an inspector for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, took the baby and Mrs. Clarke followed her and witness to the street. She used indecent language and threw rubbish in witness's face. She kicked skin off his legs, split his lip, and threw a brick at him.
A previous sentence of imprisonment for two months for having neglected a child at Fitzroy was admitted by Mrs. Clarke. She was fined£2, with 7/6 cost, on the charge of indecent language, and £2 for having assulted Constable Adam. In each case default Was imprisonment for 14 days. On the charge of neglect she was sentenced to Imprisonment for three months.
From 1940-
MAN ACQUITTED OF ASSAULT
Domestic Quarrel
After a woman had given evidence in the Criminal Court yesterday, in a case in which her husband had been charged with having assaulted her, occasioning actual bodily harm, the Jury, at the direction of Mr Justice Gavan Duffy, brought in a verdict of not guilty and theman was discharged.
The accused was Frederick James Clarke, of Greensborough. The doctor who treated Mrs Clarke stated that her injuries required 30 stitches.
Mr Book, KC., in opening the Crown case, said that the wife had received her injuries in a brawl with her husband. After some words she attacked him with a toasting fork. The wife received severe injuries about the head and neck, and cuts behind the left ear. Under a mattress in a bedroom at the house, two pocket knives were found and there was blood on one of them. There was also blood on the handle of a bread knife.
Mrs Clarke said that her husband came home about 2.30 pm. She said, “You drunken --- where have you been?” He replied, “Shut up or I will choke you.” She ran at him with a toasting fork, and lunged at him. He picked up a knife to defend himself. She denied that 30stitches had been inserted in her wounds, and said that the stitches numbered only a dozen and one.
When another witness entered the witness-box His Honour said that he did not wish to hear any more evidence. In addressing the Jury he said that some-times wives were difficult creatures both at home and abroad. The jury would have observed that the wife did not want to say anything that would reflect on her husband In the circumstances the best thing would be to find the accused not guilty.
Without leaving the box the foreman announced that that was the unanimous verdict of the Jury.
In discharging the accused His Honour said that he should go home and treat his wife better after the way she had treated him in the witness box.
I enjoyed another fine wintry day on my Bullet. Again I was warm and dry. Again I putted along the hills north and east of Melbourne.
At Healesville I had numerous people come up and look at the bike. Three separate strangers stood about and chatted as I geared up and rode off. The bike attracts a lot of friendly interest.
I spent the homeward journey gazing into a wonderful sunset.
