Ride Report
Rawson - Licola
13th April

After only getting phone calls on Friday about my ride on Saturday, I allready cancelled it Thursday night
and planed to go on mats ride.
Note: If you are planning on going on a ride plan ahead let the ride leader know if you are coming 4-5 days ahead at least.


We got to Rawson about 8:00 where we met some of the other guys
with the sky looking black we geared up just in time to put the bags in the
cars before they got wet.
Standing in the rain we waited for two more guys to come, about 5 min they
roll in with a mighty crash.
The drz had popped the inner tie-down off the trailer and flipped off the
side and was getting dragged for a couple of meters till they stopped.
We all ran over to help pick it up to find the Speedo smashed and the handle
bars on a 90deg angle:-(

In the end there was 9 of us riding, we took off down to the bridge
headed up Mormon town track to find tree after tree down.
By the end of the track we were well brushed up on our log crossing skills

there’s some video that will be at the meeting of some of the events getting
around/over the trees.

One we had a regroup we headed off to deep creek one
pulled over on the hill to get some more footage but everyone sailed straight up
back on the bike again we got to deep creek 4, Straight to the top first go
at this stage it was a Yamaha hill with the 2 wr450's at the top
next peter up on the cr250, followed by lots of crashing buy a number of people

check out the video at the meeting for this one

Once a number of people went round the soft way we continued on, With the group flowing very
smoothly we racked up the kms quickly.

If you haven’t ridden over to Licola then its a must there’s some great rocky hills
knarly down hills with the best ski jumps, just don’t look down the cliff on your right :-)

we got to the Macalister river, it was only about half a foot deep compared to last
time i was there it was over my waist.

We headed into Licola to just miss the last of the meat pies from the over cooker
so microwave pies and sausage rolls it was.
After a bit of rain we headed off it drizzled for about 4ks up the road then it cleared
just enough to keep the dust away and make the clay nice and slick

with lots of skating on the clay and some aerial maneuvers from peter over the jumps
we waked up about 50km fairly quick, We got to the end of army track where Steve
had a flat front tyre
he had it fixed in no time at all and we were off again, I was at the first corner
where i waited and a few didn’t come i went back 20m around the corner to find lintons bike
had stopped. We sent Rowen ahead to let ride leader know what going on and we got stuck into
diagnosing the bike for the fault
found it had no spark after checking the fuses we bypassed the ignition switch
still no spark, Pulled the globe out of the stop light to find no power at all to
the coil and other wires coming out of the magneto.
So we made the decision to leave Linton and the bike and go get the car
we split up into 2 groups damo and Adam went the road back and the rest of us went
via the track.

With the pace turned up to make up some time, peter was really pushing he had no headlight
we got to Mormon town track then it was dark.
In and out over the logs we all made it threw in one piece and no one got lost
when we got back to the cars we just missed the others by about 5 minuets

we went into the pub had some huge meals i swear they get bigger every time we go there
took a fairly long time for damo and Linton to get back, long enough for all of us to
have gorn and Rowen left out with the bikes because the pub has closed
i think it was about 9:30 when they got back

Great ride thanks matt for putting it on ill be back to do it again

Matt WR450 (Ride Leader)
Rowen Smith WR450
David Smith WR450 (Written + Video)
Ray WR426
Linton DR200
Damien Smith DR250
Dino DRZ400 (car park fatality)
Steve CRF450
Peter CR250
Adam KTM300