Some favourite shots from Cape York through Timor, Indo, Malaysia, Thailand and on...

[The Bigfella]

As those who have been to Riders Corner in the last week probably know, I'm in Chiang Mai at the moment, on my way to Laos. I'm riding a 2007 KTM 950 SER... Super Enduro.

I've got a full ride report elsewhere, well, as far as Mae Sot so far and I won't be reproducing that here, but I would like to bring together some of my favourite photos from the trip.

In summary, I left Sydney (home) on July 29th, 2011. The trip was organised on short notice. I was planning to "do" Cape York in August, then fly to Laos in January for the HCM Trail on a rental. A guy I'd done a few rides around Sydney with was going to do both rides and sent me an email "why don't we ride our bikes to Asia?" Three weeks later, I was on my way. He never made it to Cape York, but he caught up with me in Darwin and was on the next ship to East Timor.

I trailered the bike to a friend's place, 100km south of Cairns (picked up another guy with a DRZ 400 on the way) and five of us left there on August 1st for the Tip. So we had Ian (me) on the KTM 950 SER, Bernadette on a DRZ400, Gordon - DRZ 400, Peter, from Denmark on the Tenere he'd ridden to Oz from home and Brett on an ex-army 1991 Yammie XT600.

This is us after our first river crossing, the Daintree - at the start of the CREB Track.

Bernie had some difficulties on the CREB and drowned the DRZ in a creek. By the time we got her going, about 90 minutes, it was dark and we had to camp on the track. It rained. That was a problem. When it rained the following week, "they" helicoptered 17 people out of the CREB Track. We weren't into that and rode out. Everyone stacked... me five times, Bernie about 25, Brett about the same. Bernie broke and we packed her out in a 4WD that was going back to Cairns and hid her bike in the bush for later retrieval. By this stage, we'd done 7km in 24 hours.

Shit.... this is turning into a ride report....

Here's Bernie, about a kilometre before her shoulder gave out.

It was "rather steep" just over that point she's at, and I did a swan dive over the handlebars when I cartwheeled the KTM. Ouch. A few more ouches later we got clear of the CREB, minus Bernadette.

This is on Frenchman's Track - quite a steep rocky climb out and the water was up onto my headlights in one hole. There's a big crocodile just around the corner, so we're told... we spent 90 minutes swimming there while Brett dried out the XT

It wasn't just the Katoom that got stuck here. This is the Old Telegraph Track

Another spot on the Old Telegraph Track, where we got to wash the dust out

Dust?

Crashed WW2 bomber

The KTM was the only bike that didn't drown

.... but the fuel pump did shit itself 1,000km from the nearest bike shop. We re-routed the fuel pipes around the pump and that gave me a range of 210 km on the 15 litres that would gravity feed - and I also carried an 8 litre bladder... so I was fine... just carrying 15 litres of fuel in the bottom of the tank that I couldn't use.

Oh yeah... my brand new Garmin Montana 650 shit itself after one and a half days on the corrugations (an issue with the early ones and replaced - after an argument with Garmin). My Promoto Billet sidestand shit itself too - and the next 6,500km was done without a stand.

Four happy lads made it to the Tip... the northernmost part of mainland Australia

I'd had a zero kmh crash (stuck in a dusthole, fell about 3' and ripped a groin muscle, so I didn't enjoy the road south in all the sand. Back in Cairns, I did a service... check out that 3,000km air filter... and fitted a new fuel pump

and headed west by myself

.. more sand

As you know, Oz has some pretty big, nasty critters and the farmers don't muck around

 

[2wheels]

Good stuff Bigfella.
Almost made me homesick.

 

[Ally]

Wonderful Ian, thanks for sharing those pics.

I have never been there but I can taste the dust from here

Ally

 

[Satonic]

Thanks for sharing, now I'm 'following' your adventure on 2 forums

Cheers

 

[KTMphil]

Absolutely fantastic Ian, thanks for posting this!


You weren't joking, the water was up to the headlight.

 

[harrygps]

Great tourreport! I´ve made the capetrip a few years ago and I can remember many places on your pics. Cape York has many fantastic nature tracks. I love it.
Thanks and good luck.

 

[Midnitemapper]

Brilliant, always wanted to do that trip up to the cape, however I went south on my XL Falcon to Tasmania,
My trip up the coast was via the Great barrier reef, always wondered what that track North from P Douglas, would be like?
Keep those picks coming so us computer jockeys can have fun too.

 

[The Bigfella]

Thanks folks. I didn't set out to write this as a ride report... as that is covered elsewhere, and I'm having enough trouble getting that up to date. I thought I'd better give some context to the photos though.

To give some more context for folks who've seen my ratty looking bike... one of my concerns was that the Super Enduro has a reputation for breaking rear subframes. KTM's attitude has been... they weren't designed to have a rack fitted. The bit where racks bolt on has a hole in it... and 5kg loads have broken that piece off. So... I built a carbon/kevlar rack that transfers the load into the front part of the rear subframe. Here's the mould building under way

In the end, I ran out of time to finish it, but its worked. The actual rack came off the mould the night before I left. It never got the moulding defects filled, nor even trimmed properly, but its doing the job. It hasn't got a single bolt holding it on now... Sumatra saw to that, but it works. I'll build a decent looking one with some improvements based on experience when I get home. The rack had a 98kg guy on it the other night (along with me, up front, at my slimmed down 111kg and my friends girlfriend at 64kg in the middle)... so I think the concept is proven.

I built a carbon/kevlar twin light setup too

... back to the photos. Some more from Oz

My last over-nighter before leaving was a trip down to the Snowy Mountains for the Alpine Rally

That rally is organised by a friend of mine, Henning, who is somewhere in Laos, building schools, last I heard. He's got an R75/5 with well over 300,000 miles on the clock.

Back on Cape York... a bit of video of the Frenchman's Track

[video=youtube_share;wfS0Pp8sovY]http://youtu.be/wfS0Pp8sovY[/video]

... and if I've done this right, here's some one-handed video (sorry, bit shaky) of closing on an Abrahms at 185.

[video=youtube_share;xzGwnKHa4bM]http://youtu.be/xzGwnKHa4bM[/video]

I had to dash out in a hurry when I did the first post yesterday... and missed some Cape York photos I wanted to include. We did maybe 100 creek and river crossings up on the Cape

We camped at some interesting locations

It isn't just the dust that you remember... its also the corrugations

When I scooted across to Darwin to get the bike on the boat to Timor-Leste, the most I did in one day was 855km. I froze at night when I camped out.... I'd forgotten about the centre of Oz being cold in winter and I'm only carrying a 600gm sleeping bag. Up into the Northern Territory and back into croc country. This one was pretty tame and I was feeding it sausages. Its only about 2.4m long

Then, after a bit of "fun" when I went to stay with a former workmate who's gone nutty now (literally) and is doing 45 cones and a bottle of vodka a day, I got myself off to Dili. I teamed up with 2 Poms who had a bike on the same boat and we explored a bit while we waited the 9 days or so for the bikes to come in.

That's a couple of engines from WW2 Japanese planes...

... more later.

 

[2wheels]

Good stuff Bigfella; looking forward to what's coming.

It isn't just the dust that you remember... its also the corrugations

And the 'roos that bound out in front of you.
And the unpredictable cattle that are too stupid to run in the correct direction i.e. away from you!

 

[The Bigfella]

Things that bound out in front of you eh? Like wild pigs....

I nearly cleaned up an eagle at about 150 kph. I didn't see him feeding on some road kill in a shadow from a tree and when he took off I had to duck under him.

Just to backtrack to Cape York again... because I found another location with photos... it wasn't all dust. I fell off here in the wet clay... the big Katoom lofted its front wheel and I ended up with each wheel in a different rut. I haven't weighed it, but loaded up and with a full tank of fuel (30 litres)... she had to be well over 250kg. There wasn't any saving it. This one hurt... my knee was saved by my knee brace, but I carried the swollen shin for the next four months.

Yet another creek... with some guidance around a deep hole

I gave Peter a ride on the Katoom. This is a creek exit on the Old Telegraph Track

I think he wants a Super Enduro. He reckons its like a grunty 250 to ride

If you ever get a chance, the Cape is worth it

A couple of guys died on chook chasers on the road past this lookout while we were up there. They were on a supported ride, sent their support track down the track to King Billy's Landing to see what the road was like. They decided to go in before the truck came out... and they went in hard. They met the truck on a crest and went through the windscreen. Someone, who shan't be named rang my house after hearing about it and asked one of my kids if I was in the group of riders where the guys had been killed. My missus got home to some rather upset kids, but was able to tell them she'd just checked my SPOT tracker and I was moving (we had no phone reception up there).

In Darwin, I was able to get some reinforcement done to my broken sidestand. It lasted until just south of Tak in Thailand. Its now been rebuilt in steel.

Its a bit lonely in outback Oz at times

... and I even saw tumbleweed.

Now... back to Timor-Leste. Talking to the co-owner of the backpackers in Dili, Dan, he told us that he gets abou a bike a month coming through. Obviously there's other places to stay, but Dili being a big UN / NGO place of interest, prices are sky high elsewhere. He reckons most folks don't do much riding around Timor-Leste. They either arrive in Dili from Asia... straight up the road from Kupang, or, when they grab their bikes off the ship, they've been waiting around in Dili for 8-10 days and off they go... to Kupang.

Well, we did some riding (and before we got the bikes, some driving) around. Its great. We took it a tad easier than we would in a place with decent medical facilities, but we still had some fun

I got mobbed everywhere. These kids came running out of a school

When you see three guys with metal spears and machetes do you stop for a photo? Yeah, no worries

Mountain roads

Some mountain ponies, with the guys trying to race us

You can't trust the roads here at all... you can fly around a corner like this and discover the road's gone...

There's been very little maintenance done since the Indonesians left about 12 years ago

I don't think you'd get away with having an assistant taxi driver in Oz

One enduring memory from there is the women carrying water.... long distances too

Some Aussie soldiers. One of the guys in their company had been murdered about an hour before this, but we hadn't got the news then. His death will go down as a road accident... but his truck was run off the road by a police vehicle with no lights on... and the word on the street was that it was deliberate.

Lots of freedom fighters graves

It got cold up in the mountains

We gave a helping hand to a Youth Development Centre and funded their internet connection for them

 

[2wheels]

Great photo here Bigfella.

 

[Midnitemapper]

More great pics, and that bad ass KTM, wow,

not sure about that whimpy Sheeepskin tho...

 

[The Bigfella]

Mate... I've done up to 12 1/2 hours on that damn KTM seat. Wouldn't have happened without Baabaara on the seat. Up on the Cape and through Oz, when I was camping, I had my arse on her all day and my head on her all night.

 

[2wheels]

I had my arse on her all day and my head on her all night.

Could be a heavy metal song title Bigfella.