The phone went off with a horrible racket at an ungodly hour, this had better be good I thought. Richard Dean Anderson was on the other end, being a rude bastard as usual “ Well, your obviously not on the fucking road are ya?”

I very politely tell him I’ve been up since the crack of noon. His wobbly boot crew are on the road, which is cool by me as they have much further to travel than me.

I wander out to the bike only to find no one has done any packing for me, the booze still sitting there (the deal I had to get it to Monto fell through) and the bike needed fuel.

First things first though, I needed to find a way to get that booze to Monto as promised, which meant now strapping it to the back of the bike. Normally no drama at all, cept I didn’t have anything to strap the booze too. With a shed full of junk, surely I could find something…

Some 12mm SHS box, a pipe bender and a pack of zippy ties later I had a rack to strap the hot booze to. Hot booze… after some scrounging through all the junk in the shed I came up with a hard esky big enough to fit a carton in, best I could do, didn’t have any soft coolers which would have been great. Oh well, I’ll just have to put up with lumping a hard esky around all weekend, a positively awe inspiring thought. Not.

After finally getting my shit sorted and packed, it was off in a meandering fashion down to Biloela for lunch, ice to chill the booze and than down towards Monto before pulling into a side road that leads to a lookout for an afternoon nanny nap. As one gets older, nanny naps are an important part of life.

I finally make it into Monto to find the Prime Minister there and we soon tired of waiting for the Brisbane stragglers and started having a few beers in the driver reviver rest area. Thinking of the children we were!

The PM also gave me a bottle of bundy reserve for my Barfday. About the only thing I got from anyone. Except Frog, He gave a stout predator miniature and a model bike. Frog’s a legend!

Getting a camping spot at the caravan park was a saga, Dennis Hopper proved a formidable opponent, but we finally won out and settled down with more beer before the Brisbane mob finally arrived.

The night proved entertaining, and what happens on tour, stays on tour.

Except this, Not sure what was going on here…

Me being a true explorer, in my night wanderings I stumbled across an extremely rare and dangerous creature. A WingenessSpottedQuoll. Rare and more dangerous than a Tasmanian Devil, and tougher than a South African Honey Badger.

I was lucky to survive such an encounter.

After getting my free coffee at breakfast, we set off for the Cania Gorge, picturesque place with many walking tracks to some awesome scenery. We found out that the road we intended to use was cut, so an alternative route was made ( we later figured that we had been lied to about the road we wanted to take).

We arrived in Thangool just in time for rum o’clock time ( 10am) and a confirmation of what roads we should take next. From Thangool it was onwards to Kroombit Dam which I’ve never seen over the spillway before and than to Lochenbar Station where we were advised about the National Horse Trail which of course we never took because it may not have been legal for motorcycles to do so.

A few creek crossings later, The PM decided it was to much water for the BMTroubleU, and turned around and took another way to Many Peaks. He shoulda punted across it, it was the last water hole, although the hill climbs we had to climb might have beat the BM.

A mad pommy bastard who rides a KTM 950

The Prime Minister’s Stallion

Father and Son

That big pommy bastard Nic who never stopped laughing

Buzz, a deadest legend who swept all weekend and had the best view of all my Notrider entries

Richard Dean Anderson, I’ll carve that grin off with a skinning knife one day, if I can ever catch the plick.

After leaving the creeks behind us, it was onto the shallow climbs they told me. Well… glad they were shallow! It was here that I started my Notrider application

Photo: Buzz?

Anyhow, after trudging up and down many many more of these, I came across what appeared to be the last climb before we started the run to the crash site. By this time I was a little over these climbs, so had a little rest, cleaned my glasses and watered a tree before setting off up to the top and eventually onto where the rest were waiting.

(they got to wait a lot… many many times in fact…)

Eventually we got to the crash site, walk around, and it’s no surprise that it laid undiscovered for such a long time, it really is a remote hard to access place at the best of times.

After leaving the crash site we headed on up and back towards the main entry, but not before coming across a Pajero bogged in a small bog hole. Grey Nomad. Like the Useless Club, they have no idea. Only bit of recovery gear he had was a snatch strap, but he had nothing in order to hook it up, absolutely nothing at all. No wonder places get shut because of stupid idiots like this bloke getting into trouble and dying etc.

Anyhow, some other 4wd’s arrived and we promptly left him and mrs tea and scones to their care.

DICKHEAD….

We got to a place called the lookout, but by this time it had started raining and a foggy mist had descended making visibility rather limited, and the clay road rather interesting.

Once out of that crap and out of the rain my 3rd entry into the Notrider club reared it’s ugly head, a decreasing radius down hill left hander where upon I did a nice 180 degree turn and laid the bike down in such a style that I was given a 10 out of 10 for sheer eleance.

Me on the other hand, wasn’t impressed, I was getting a little tired and a stupid little mistake occurred and put me on the deck.

Eventually Many Peaks came into view, camp set and drinks consumed. Dinner there as usual, was tops. A long but good day, put in situations way out of my league with the only solution was to knuckle down and get it done.