The Nolan Rally has been run and done and all who attended had a great time. John T perhaps a bit less than others.
The setup this year was at one of the Kendalls camp grounds, just a quick blast up Rubicon Rd from the Taggerty-Thornton Rd. This meant for the first time that we'd be free from having to ride any bitumen.
We had the usual dignitaries there from the DSE and the Eildon Police and the emergency service. And ADMCC had the noise meter set up to test the aftermarket exhaust pipes of those silly enough to waste money on them.
The start line set up was not as well organised as previous years with all of the lines getting a little mixed up. Thankfully the guys sorted it out themselves and got into a decent order. Basically they did not have the room to organise the 50 + lines of 10 bikes.
So after about 2km of gravel road we went left and left again and started to climb our way up a nice yellow and white loamy clay track up the Rubicon hills. A strange thing happened....the higher we got the wetter and sloppier the ground got. Around the corner at the top of the hill and yet more hills covered with the dreaded red slimy clay and festooned with rocks.
The rocks were obviously too much for some of the gumbies and I went past them in third while they revved, sweated and sweared themselves into a lather, back wheels spinning and going nowhere. In fact this wasn't a hill it was a gentle slope and these people stuck on this slope were obviously running stupid tyre pressures....
I think I passed three bikes in the first 10 minutes then thirty in the next 10 minutes. I wasn't riding that well, these guys were just really bad. Some of the guys that I came up behind were less willing to let me past - a few blasts with the air horn sorted that!
It was after I went passed the third BMW that was laying on the ground that I realised what had happened. AMTRA had been put on row 8, 9 & 10, the industry freebies had been put up on the front rows. Seeing all these new, near new or demo bikes littered all over the track was bringing tears to my eyes...but I pushed on. Some time later I found out that these guys were running 25 to 30 PSI - must've let the car mechanics do the tyre pressures?
Just over the top I went past one of the Pete's who had taken a left around the mellee when I'd taken a right. The red stuff up the top was very, very slick with throttle control being the absolute order of the day. I found myself regularly drifting front and back wheels as I negotiated bog hole after bog hole without so much as getting a wet boot !
The first loop had a fair amount of road in it linking up the tracks and we managed to cover the 70 or so km in about 2 hours. Back at the cars I caught up with the other Pete who'd started a row in front and got back on the same minute. What had me wondering was where was John T and Charles. I grabbed a sanger, some snakes and some fruit when John came in at a sedate pace.
I went over to see what was happening and found saw Charles and John checking out John's Husky. Apparently it got fed up with carrying him down the road, promptly spat him off. The resulting off left John fine and his bike appeared barely damaged. Closer inspection revealed the reason for John's string of four letter dialogue - a busted throttle assembly. This meant John would have to settle for Bench racing for the rest of the day. Bugger !
We had any early lunch, ignored our minute and headed out passing Peter D on his way in. He'd stopped for a ciggie and lost a few more minutes there. There you go kiddies smoking makes you ride slower as well !
The second loop had the same route all the way to the top of Herbs Rd but a straight on instead of a hard right found me going down a long slimy red clay track that had lots of off camber slimy nasties. We ended up crossing the Eildon to Jamo road and heading down Sims and Gap track coming out at O'Tools flat.
After crossing the main road we took a right down what didn't look like a anything more than a goat track but opened up into a slimy single track that had you going wherever the bike wanted to go. Regardless of how much I tried I couldn't get much more than cursory input into the direction that I was going. After a couple of scarey moments involving roots, logs at obscure angles immediately after blind corners I popped out onto 15 mile track only to be advised that the road here was two way. I needn't have worried though as we were foisted down Homestead track after about one km.
Now the last time I went down that track it was an awful mess of rocks roots and bog holes. Quite a bit of the track had been fixed (presumably dozed) and now some sections were actually fast - scary fast !!!
Having a bit of knowledge of the area I figured that they'd be pointing us down paddock track with it's little old wooden bridge and short sharp rocky climbs. As I climbed the first I noticed a couple of ADMCC crew there to assist those in need. I changed up to third gear and as I added a fist full of revs they all took a step back. Fortunately it all went well and I crested that one easily with a lot of running speed for the next short climb with a bit more bravado I selected fourth and was utterly amazed how the bike lofted the front end and roared its way to the top.
After that we went back down some of the major tracks in the area until we were pointed down a track that looked like it had been cut only days before. As it weaved its way across the hillside with only a slight decline a sign along the track revealed that it was Kokoda Track! A good name as this was wet, narrow, slippery, overgrown and very steep on the down side. In the map it shows as old tramway.
When we popped out the end of that we did a hard right and faced a downhill of some considerable (underpants filling) steepness. I managed to garb a moment of sanity here and stopped for a look, instead of throwing caution to the wind. Good thing too, because I popped the front up and rode across all the ruts to take the nice smooth(ish) line to the bottom. Had Charles done the same he'd probably have been happier so I found out Later.
When we got back we checked for good stories and loaded up the bikes. As it was only 2.30pm we decided that we'd eat our meals, leave and wash our bikes and be home before dinner. We did and Peter R, John T, Jason E and Charles S and myself passed our raffle tickets to Peter D.
Much later we found out Phil had had some mechanical troubles and was running a but late. When he got back and he and Peter loaded their bikes they had enough time to head to the raffle with a fist full of tickets. They won and oil pack (Peter D) and some Grips and bike cleaner (Phil).
We had a great day and apart from John's busted throttle assembly which left him snoozing in the car we all did both loops and had a great day. If you've never done it try the Nolan Rally it's a great days riding some great tracks and only an hour and a bit from Melbourne.
