Derby MTB Trip 2025

 

Well, we managed to herd some cats and assembled five of us for a flight from Brisbane to Tasmania for our now annual March mtbing trip. It was almost touch and go this year as cyclone Alfred hit Brisbane in the days before we were meant to leave. As it was, we only had power restored on the Sunday afternoon, then we flew out early Monday afternoon.

Arriving in Launceston with all of our bikes we grabbed two hire cars and hit the supermarket for a stock up. 

It was then on to Derby and our accommodation at the Lazy Queen Air BnB. 

Nice bush ummm....hedge. 

We were pretty beat so it was straight to bed. We will put the bikes together in the morning.

Once the bikes were together we pedaled the short distance to the shuttle pick up point.  No unnecessary pedalling uphill for us this trip! 

Up, Down, Around (UDA) shuttles was our company of choice.  We have found them to have the most regular uplifts during the day and the friendliest drivers.

After rain on the Monday afternoon the trails were in perfect condition - grippy as heck!

We did about six uplifts for the day with the last leading to a long pedal around the Dambusters trail to Troughty trail for the gun riders and Cuddles trail for Dan and I.

Dambusters 

Lunches were at the 2 Doors Down Cafe. It was a bit quiet for the first half of the week - which suited us just fine. 

Dinner at the Dorset Hotel finished a great first day.

Black Stump shuttle drop-off. 

Wednesday was more of the same until a thunderstorm decided to hit the town mid afternoon. 

Kingswall trail. 

 Dan and I retired to the pub for a cold one.......  

 

...while the others kept pedalling... and got their cold one in the form of a drenching. It also made the rock a tad slippery apparently.

It was a cold and gloomy walk to The Hub for dinner that night. Luckily it is only a 290 metre walk.

This necessitated some bike maintenance next day.

All good though as Derby trails handle the rain well and would be mint for the next day. 

Dinner tonight was at The Hub wood fired pizza place.  Great pizza washed down with excellent local Pinot Noir.  Mtbing does give you an appetite! 😉

There are some nice new accommodations in Derby these days. You don't necessarily need to opt for an old miners cottage.

More local riding was had on the Thursday before grabbing the big shuttle up to Blue Teir on the Friday for the trio of First 13, Blue Tier and Atlas trails.  

Blue Tier is like being on another planet.  The trail winds through mossy, tree fern lined gorgeous trail. (that I didn't photograph - apart from this growth on a tree fern.)

This was an epic day on the bikes with lunch at the self proclaimed "Worst Pub in Australia ", the Weldborough Hotel. There was a large group of dirt bikers in the parking area, who had also stopped in for lunch during their guided tour. That looked like fun too.

I think the monika for the pub came from a moto journo in another century - before mtbing brought tourists and money to the town via the Blue Tier/Atlas trail run because it is certainly an awesome little pub with great food and beers these days! There must have been fifty or sixty people enjoying the beer garden with us.

Though we were cursing the huge steak sandwich as we pedalled off down Atlas though, what with our now over-full stomachs! No photos were taken due to the discomfort and fatigue we were starting to feel.

That was soon forgotten however as we finished the day with a big downhill run into Cuddles trail and it's huge rock drop off, again. 😎

Photos don't do the drop on Cuddles any justice. That rock is at least 10 metres high and near vertical! It's an awesome feeling to ride it and survive! I'm pleased to say I rode it a couple of times this year - last year was a big NO.

Shane at the bottom of the drop. 

We rolled into town knackered but very satisfied. 

We rode the Saturday morning - because why not? -  and polished off a trail I hadn't ridden yet this trip, Roxanne, which was quite challenging but also much more fun than last year due to some new works on it's upper section.

Shane on Roxanne. 

Yep, Roxanne is rocks and rocks and rox.......anne... 

Will om Roxanne. 

All packed up we headed to Scottsdale for a beer at the Little Rivers Brewery. Unfortunately they didn't have a very extensive menu so it was off to the Scottsdale bakery, just up the road for a mighty fine pie.

We also called in to the Whiskey distillery which is located very conveniently at the airport in one of the old freight hangers. I'm not a whiskey drinker but it was interesting to look at the old aviation nostalgia on display.

And so it was soon time to check in and jump on our flight home. Almost five days of riding some of the best trails in the country had been a blast and I count myself lucky to do it with a great crew of mates who make travelling away a pleasant experience. We may have only covered 170km but they were all high quality mountain biking kilometres.

Cheers.

Cyclone Alfred

 As some of you might be aware, we recently had the first fully blown cyclone to hit Brisbane in fifty odd years. Cyclone Alfred wandered its way down from the tropics slowly heading east-south east until it got to the latitude of Brisbane, about 500km off the coast. Then it stalled for a day or so. Then began it's slow track west.

We had about a week of predictions/heads up that it WAS going to hit the coast somewhere around South East Queensland as a category 2 storm. 

We didn't panic buy like many...well, not food or toilet paper....

I did move the uninsured bikes out of my shed into the much safer garage that is located under our house. Track bikes and Lucy's Z650.

 It was a bit surreal here in Brisbane as I watched the predicted track maps and as Alfred got closer and closer. 

Doesn't look like much on the radar!

The winds were strong though.

Apart from some windy periods (maybe up to 30 knot gusts) it wasn’t very cloudy. In fact we had plenty of dead calm and sunny conditions.

Not so for the Gold Coast and northern NSW though. They were on the southern side of the approaching cyclone and were hammered with high winds and torrential rain for about two days - while we were still enjoying sunshine - and there were many power losses due to trees across the power lines and the beach erosion on the Gold Coast was significant.

Friday afternoon and with it predicted to hit us Friday night I put the drone up to have a look around. Looking south east towards the Gold Coast it looked very dark. Normally we can see the high rise buildings on the Gold Coast just to the left of Mt Stayplton and its white dot of a weather radar on top.(centre right of photo)

Looking east towards the Redlands (Redland Bay/Victoria Point etc) it definitely looked close! It was just moving sooo slowly at between 4 and 7km/h. I couldn't go very high as the wind aloft was obviously a lot stronger than on the ground. I could here the drone motors surging hard to hold position, then I got a strong wind/land immediately warning. Things were hotting up!

Getting real now!!

Things got real on the Friday night when the winds really started kicking up a gear. I have a huuuge (30m/100ft) iron bark gum tree (eucalypt) that is less than 20m from the back corner of the house. I was pleased that with the direction of the wind, if it did come down it would go down across the neighbour’s back yard (and not their house or mine!)

The offending tree looks small here but is huuge! The wind was coming from the bottom of the photo, thankfully. 

Another angle of said tree. 

I went to bed that night to the sound of howling wind gusts and rain on the roof. Waking at about 5am Saturday it was strangely dead calm. A couple of hours after that the wind picked up again and the rain teemed down. I think we had the eye pass over and now we were getting the winds from the other side of the cyclone. Luckily again, the wind was almost an easterly which IF that big gum tree came down, it would lay just on the bottom side of my shed. 

I just had a few small branches down. Nothing thicker than say, your arm but plenty of small stuff.

Saturday afternoon we sat on the deck watching the wind in the forest behind home as the rain teemed down. We watched a couple of huge gum trees (eucalypts) come crashing down in the neighbour’s backyards! Luckily the wind was blowing them away from their houses so only a couple of fences were flattened.

Late Saturday afternoon we lost power. Bummer, as I had taken my generator down to a friends place in Redland Bay who had lost power on Friday night. I couldn’t go ask for it back now! As it was we got power back 20 hours later on Sunday afternoon whereas they lost it for three days so their need was much greater than mine. I just told the kids not to open the fridges or freezer at all - well, except very briefly to grab dinner Saturday night which was a simple affair of bbq sausages in bread, cooked on the bbq. Desert was individual puddings, heated up in water boiled on the little portable camp stove.

 Having all the camping gear made the inconvenience of no power a non event. The main issue was having no internet and hence no news of what was going on during the day around South East QLD. That was a great reminder that all of this electronic media is useless without electricity. Something to ponder....

Considering the wind and amount of rain we had it was surprising to see that only one house in our street had a tree on the roof. Our houses are all surrounded by trees! In other streets around here there were quite a few trees down across roads but they had already been cleared by SES volunteers.

Going for a walk around the house on the Sunday I was almost landed on by a Rainbow Lorikeet. I stood still under a branch and it came down, hanging upside down, within reach, just looking at me.

Just prior to his acrobatics. 

It then landed on the ground and hopped around me and between my legs! I called Will to bring some parrot food out and we placed some on the garden bench and stood back. The Lorikeet and his mate came straight down to feed on the seed. The poor things were pretty knackered from the wind and rain and it was a very cool interaction with these storm survivors and otherwise wild birds.

While there was clearly a lot of damage in places from trees coming down on houses and power lines, beaches eroded and general flooding across the city, the ~ 4 million residents in the path of Alfred got off pretty lightly. Thankfully it was only a Cat 2, not the Cat 4 or 5 they get in North Queensland!

 I’ve got to say I’d be happy to wait another fifty odd years for the next one to hit here!

Cheers.

Accessorising For Adventure

With an upcoming adventure ride at the planning stage I have been collecting a few more accessories to help make the Desert X more suited to the task. 

I have been a bit stumped by the DX’s fuel tank and its ability to accomodate a tank bag. I loved the Givi clip on tank bag that I had on my Africa Twin but with the offset fuel cap on the DX, Givi don’t make a bag for the Ducati…..and I hate strap on tank bags because they look ugly and the straps will cause abrasions to the paintwork - especially on an adv bike.

However, tied into this dilemma is my desire to be able to mount my drone controller, safely, somewhere on the handlebars or tank/tank bag. 

Without a tank bag I have been running a Lone Wolf bar bag which is actually very handy for small items and charging electronics from the bike.

But it rules out any electronics mounted on the bars. So, despite my misgivings - and this has been almost two years in coming - I bit the bullet on a tank bag. It even has straps! What helped was a 30% discount in the post Xmas sales. Now I will be able to carry the drone ( and other electronics) in the tank bag and mount the controller on the handlebars. I have an idea involving a Quad lock there…but more on that another time.

I went with a Giant Loop Fandango. Clearly, it won’t work with the bar bag in place but the bar bag won’t be needed with a tank bag.

The Desert X has a special axle nut on the rear and as such, I rushed in when I first bought the bike and grabbed a special tool/socket to fit it very early on. While it fit, I also had to pack a suitable 1/2 inch driver. Add to this the fact that the rear axle torque spec is 180nM so a big, heavy bar is required. I decided to splash out on the Eastbound all in one kit. It contains all of the tools needed to to remove the front and rear wheels, all contained in two small, easily packable satchels. It has a lightweight,  three piece bar so I can ditch the old school boat anchor of a bar that I have been carrying around. 

With a fair chance of hitting some sandy roads I decided to add an actual functional steering stabiliser to the DX. (the std Ducati one is as useful as a screen door on a submarine🙄)  Steering stabilisers are one of those things you don’t need until you need one. I had a Scott damper on my Africa Twin. They are nice. They are also expensive being American made. Our South Pacific Peso is pretty weak against the US dollar so the Scott was off the list.

I decided to go with the Australian made MSC item. It gets good reviews, is locally manufactured and is, importantly, fairly priced.

The damper is very easy to fit.... well,  it would have been if they included the correct length bolts for the anchor peg mount. 

The problem could have been that the mount is a bit low,  or that they forgot to include some washers to space it upwards a few millimetres as the peg was only about half seated in the slot in the damper (see photo).

So,  I put three 6mm washers(4mm would have been better but I didn't have any) under each leg and it seemed to fix the issue. 

The damper is very compact and unobtrusive.  It also seems to work extremely well,  unlike the simple screen door closer that is the genuine damper. 🙄

The only issue might be that the damper anchor mount looks to block the forward bolt that holds the tank on - this might prove to be a major pain in the arse when it comes time to clean the air filter. Time will tell....

In the mean time it looks to be a million times better than the genuine item which, as you can see,  does absolutely nothing. 

Now for some route planning. I just need to get my desk top computer back up and running as it is simply too painful to edit gpx and look at maps on a mobile device. 

Cheers.

My Favourite Photos Of 2024 - A Photo Challenge

My brother over at Road To Nowhere has decided to resurrect an old blogging challenge of  "show us your best photos of 2024" or something like that. 

Well, mine are all taken with a phone camera so aren't up to the standard of his. Following are equally my "best" photos and the ones that mean the most to me. 

This was 2024....

I spent a lot of time looking out the window at work (as usual) and I like this photo for several reasons. Firstly it is how I see it most days and secondly it is pretty much in focus inside and out.  No mean feat when trying to take a photo through those thick windows.

  

 

 The next is from a day out driving through Condamine Gorge with a couple of mates.  There are 14 creek crossings on this track and this is Dan tackling one of them. It is always fun driving your car through water and even better with good friends. 

The next is me on my new track bike, a GSXR750, at Morgan Park Raceway during our winter.  I decided I needed a dedicated track bike now that Will is doing a lot of track days on his Daytona as I am keen to join him but don't want to thrash the old R1.

Lucy and I did a looong road trip to pick up her new motorcycle early in 2024.  Here she is sitting on the bow plane of the ex Australian Navy submarine HMAS Otway in Holbrook, NSW.

 It is HUUGE!

The following photo was from my first ride on the newly opened Northern Rivers Rail Trail with the elusive OM. We have an - as in only one - annual ride somewhere and this was our 2024 ride. 

The next photo was taken from the deck of our accommodation in Maydena after a great day of mountain biking with mates.  It was a cool night with a million stars beginning to show themselves as the sun retreated below the horizon. 

The following was a cool,  misty, midweek day at the range. One of the few I managed in 2024.

I love this next photo of Steve and I on track at Motegi in Japan. We had a great trip and I hope we can do it again soon. 

The next pic was of our floating home during a holiday on the River Murray near Morgan in South Australia.

Shane doing what Shane does on one of our regular ride routes. It was certainly a wet start to 2024.

This photo was taken on the drive to a track day at Warwick. Winter sunsets in south east QLD are epic.

Ripping the trails in Derby, Tasmania on our annual mountain bike trip. Derby is a special place. Go if you haven’t been before. 😉

I’ve seen more than my fair share of sunrises and sunsets. Some were voluntary, most were at work. Sometimes it isn’t a bad view.

Well, that was 2024. I hope you had a good one and let’s look forward to 2025.