Ride Reports

[Paul Smith]

With the event over the work was all done – NOT ! One of the conditions of the event (specified by DEC – WA equivalent of DSE) was that we removed all of the signage from the course.

Carl and I returned with a young bloke called Steve on the Monday and removed all of the arrows from Section 1, including all of the enduro loops. The number of arrows on the course meant that it took most of the day to fill our bags in then had to come back to the property to unload them. Knowing we had a good ride coming on the Wednesday (at North Bannister) we decided that it would be best to call it a day. I was thinking about coming back for more arrow pulling on Tuesday when commonsense got the better part of me and I had a days rest.

Wednesdays ride at North Bannister was great. Dave picked up Carl and I from Carls place in his truck and we headed off on the 200km journey. We basically headed toward Perth then headed for the hills as we got to the metropolitan fringe then headed south east until we got to the area and met up with Dave’s mate Odin. The place is a hoot to ride with narrow trails everywhere. For some reason the 4wd’s rarely ever touch this place, the result is some excellent flowing tracks somewhere between what you’d find at Stradbroke and Mirboo. We did a morning and arvo loop and had a great time, although Odin skipped the after lunch bits. The riding was really good and with many of the tracks being narrow tracks we knew we were not going to run into 4wd’s so we upped the pace a bit more. Dave and Carl knew this place well and with so much of it being narrow it really suited their 250 4T’s.

Here is a couple of pics and a movie of some of the interesting bits.






The next day Carl and I pulled arrows from the 3rd section of the Capel loop. Leaving section 2 for James to finish off.

I’d love to day I spent the next few days relaxing or riding but I spent then fixing a problem with the back yard at my home in Bunbury. It turns out Bunnings do as well out of me on the West Coast as they do on the East Coast.






We managed to book one more ride in with Rick from MAWA near Mornington. I’ve ridden this area once before with Carl some years back and it never fails to impress. When we turned up we thought we heard Rick coming and were quite surprised to see Steve (who had ridden with us at Capel the previous week) there with a mate. A couple of other blokes turned up, then Hamish followed shortly after by a grumpy Rick who had managed to make a donation to the policemans ball on the trip down. We asked if policemen actually have balls, nobody could reply with a straight answer. Anyway, we decided that we’d ride as a group of 8 and after a few minutes we managed to almost split the group up and get lost. So we got our act together and found a volunteer tailman and ran the cornerman system and it worked pretty well considering the rest of the guys have hardly if ever used it.

We rode some great narrow and 4wd tracks and Carl clearly knew this area really well as he managed to find a lot of very overgrown tracks which have not been ridden on for a long time – excellent! The rain that started coming in was not too cold although the locals didn’t seem to think much of it. Those WA boys are a bit gun shy of the cold. I shudder to think what they would thik of the high country snow.

In the afternoon we were fortunate enough to find a freshly marked loop that was a real hoot. For once we managed to find some good hills which I really enjoyed, what I enjoyed most was watching Carl go flying past me then splat into the mud in an erosion mound on a huge downhill. There is always a measure of I told you so in situations like that. We found a few dead ends and a pile of new tracks but we had an absolute hoot for the day. Rick even took my bike back to Perth for me (and washed it) so I could get it to the freight depot.

Here is what happened to young Steve when he zigged (he should have zagged!), then his mate having a few issues on his XR250 on a hill. What you can’t see is Hamish ,Carl, Rick, and I (read the old bastards) yelling out words of encouragement from the top of the hill.




I finished off making the repairs to the house and washed and packed all my gear ready for shipping back to Vic and headed off to Perth knowing that without doubt I’d had the best holiday I’ve had in many years.

For me there were two things that stood out while riding in WA.

Pea Gravel. There are sections of pea gravel in most riding areas in the Southwest of WA some are small others last for 5 km or so. This stuff is basically orange ball bearings. As you come up to a corner you turn the bars and nothing happens you can quickly lose confidence. The only way to ride this stuff is to stand up, get on the power and drift the back end of the bike. Something a bit similar to how we ride our greasy clay.

Whoops. I’ve ridden some whooped out stuff in VIC that was a reasonable heads up for what to expect in WA. What was surprising was the depth of the whoops in places in WA. If you stopped with your wheels in the ruts you could bottom the bike just sitting on it and sometimes it didn’t even take a backside on the seat to do that. The fluffy sand really gets chewed out in some places so you have to be prepared to gun it and try and skip across the top not even backing off for changes of direction. Having not had a background in MX this was new to me but have to get the hang of it quickly as you either do it of get sea sick and eventually lose the front and high side if you just keep rolling over them.

Special thanks go to Jeremy, Carl, Dave and the rest The Ironstone Adventure Riding Club (www.iarc.com.au), Yamaha Australia, James at Busselton Yamaha, MAWA and all sponsors for their support of the Capel 200 and to all of the people who I had the opportunity to ride with while catching up with old and new friends..