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Dunno who these blokes are…
Annie Seel – look at her height in relation to the bike!
Dave waiting at the time control
The after the trouble-free refuel the riders headed off and service crews headed through a place called Sandstone to a mine near Leinster for the service. This took a couple of hours and by the time Dave arrived they were about to close the final stage for the day. They told him as he went in to the service that he was one of the last bikes and that they would close the stage after he and a few others went through. This is Dave at the service at about 4 in the afternoon, still 170km to go to get to Leonora!
Dave and a couple of others were the last on the stage. Fortunately they shortened the stage but Dave and Darren ended up riding in the dark and got to Leonora at 7pm after 12 hours in the saddle and only 28 minutes of rest in the entire day! I was getting quite worried when Dave was so late back and was damn relieved to see him! It turned out that Darren had to share Dave’s headlight as his had failed. Not such a problem except that Dave’s headlight is about 2 candlepower!
Thank goodness the Husky is a low maintenance bike. I changed the air filter and gave it a quick once-over before we hit the swags.
Ok, Day 3 was Mount Magnet to Leonora, and worked out at over 700km of riding for the competitors! Talk about a biggest day, try backing up for one of these after two days of riding beforehand and then having another 4 to go after that!
Rod Faggoter was out early in the first stage. He got back in the race but was out of the running for a place. Seemed like a nice bloke too.
The stages on Day 3 were fast, open and pretty much classic Safari riding. The stages were all long, often with sizeable transport sections between. This was the first of the dirt roads for service crews, and it was a pretty poor one to start on. Service crews had about 520km to drive for the day. It was a fairly huge day in all!
The start of a long day
Mt Magnet pub
My view for the morning. Gotta love 50 vehicles all travelling on the one dirt road. The dust was horrendous!
At the first refuel point
Dave
Then I hot-footed it to Mount Magnet and got set up for a service. Big one tonight with air filter, oil + filter change.
Ben Grabham coming in on the rear rim
The time control
I had time for a bit of sightseeing before the first riders came in
Day 2 started fairly early with a transport of about 120km. It would have been freezing on the bikes. I slipped into town and fuelled up before heading to the first refuel – bad move! I was late to the refuel and Dave went to a servo and filled up. In the meantime I arrived and as he came back through he got a shock to see me there. After that I was careful to make sure I arrived in good time for refuels and services.
So I trucked on to the Yalgoo service.
Dave telling Darren’s crew the bad news
Then it was through to Geraldton for the bivouac
I had a crap nights sleep with the Chinese crew working on their cars all hours of the night. We ducked out to get fuel and the amount on the bowser from the guy before us was $695. Apparently there had been a heap of car competitors in getting fuel, and all of them were getting about this amount. Big dollars!
Day 1 was mostly transport, with about 100km of selectives. The selectives themselves were soft beach sand and Dave found it tough going. There were a few DNF’s – one of them was Darren on the Husky 450 with a broken chain and no spare master link. The transport section leading up to the first refuel point was badly timed and the competitors had to scoot along at 130km/h to make it in time.
Dave about to leave
My view
Refuel 1
The first riders coming in
That’s it for now, Day 1 tomorrow…
Just for TB…
All the Central West NSW lads
The star, Ben Grabham
The Hummer
Nicely presented and prepared
Sad
Just going to re-post these in smaller batches as they appear not to display very well at the moment…
Prologue
The next item on the agenda was the ceremonial start and Safari show – waiting around in a park for 4 hours while the general public displayed a total lack of interest or knowledge. Then the guys got to ride through the archway into the Perth night and the event was officially under way.
The following morning was the prologue, which was about 16km of timed riding to determine the starting order. It was about 70km from bivouac and most bikes rode down, although some stuck the bikes on trailers. Dave figured he had paid to ride the entire safari and he was gonna ride it ALL!
It was dewy as anything early in the morning, and Dave headed away at about 8. The directions for spectators and crew to the spectator point were crap – not for the last time during the event. I tracked it down and managed to snap a few photos of the bikes in action.
At this stage of the game I had not sussed out the camera properly so most of the action ones are a touch blurry. They get better!
Dave
At the spectator point
Wild man Anthony Bakker
Darren Johnson on the Mad Max Husky TE450!
Dave
Token XR (L model)
Johnny G on the TTR250 – tough and fast, both the bloke and the bike
Mark McConnell
Dave
This guy looked totally out of control
WTF?
Darren’s Husky at the spectator point
Mark’s DRZ
