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.

Tenterfield Ride

A few mates from work and I have been trying to organise a ride for a while now. With all of us working for an airline it is worse than trying to herd cats, what with our rosters being all over the place! In the end it was only Hazo and myself able to line the two days off up to get out on the big chook chasers.

I had a rough plan that would take us down to Tenterfield for the night. It wasn’t looking too likely though as it had been raining pretty well continuosly for the preceding few weeks. Afternoon thunderstorms mainly in those weeks but the day prior to our ride and the morning of it was still raining solidly with a more set-in system. We decided to abandon our 0630am start and try for a 9am coffee/ride. Luckily, the heavens cleared up somewhat and we decided to head off…well, after trying to pair our comms systems for about twenty minutes! Grrr.

We had a good traffic free run until we got to an area by the name of Coulson. Several cars were stopped, watching the water flowing pretty quickly over the low level bridge and its approaches. Chatting to a bloke in a low riding ute he seemed to think the level (40cm/16in deep) had been pretty constant for the last forty minutes or so. 

Shit.

We watched a few trucks and 4wd utes drive through and it didn’t look too deep, especially on the right side but it was flowing strongly left to right.

We stood around for about 45 minutes trying to determine if the level was dropping or not. It seemed to be staying pretty constant, unfortunately. The alternative to get around this flooding was a one and a half hour backtrack which would get us to the intersection that was 200 metres over that bridge.

Hmmm. What to do?

Hazo decided “fcuk it”, jumped on and powered across. I thought “that’s easy” and followed…..and…..it was! All of the “if it’s flooded, forget it” advertising had dented our confidence in trusting our own judgment. 

Noted.

We topped up with fuel in Boonah just in case we came to any more road closures and needed to backtrack.

From Boonah we headed out Carneys Creek road then onto White Swamp road. The countryside was a lush green from all of the rain and the road presented minimal dust. It was near perfect riding conditions. We are glad we hadn’t pulled the pin on the ride.

We stopped at an outlook on White Swamp road just past Koreelah Creek campground to take in the view. 

The green! 

My god, was it green!

From here we flowed along, avoiding cattle on the unfenced road. The few floodways along here only had a trickle flowing over them and most weren’t slippery which was great. 😅

We turned back east at Old Koreelah to head into Woodenbong. I’ve always wanted to check out the Woodenbong Hotel because it doesn’t look like a pub. It looks like an old government/forestry style building and is actually quite inviting. 

Anyway, we broke the drought with a Tooheys Old. 😉

From there we rode the short but fun road to Urbenville, then out onto Paddy’s Flat road. We needed to stop for a rest break a few kilometres along the road, so checked out these cattle yards.

Paddy’s Flat road was in good condition and we didn’t really stop again until the Lunatic Hotel in Drake. The pub was in full swing with the locals, so a quick cold drink and we backtracked to Long Gully road which led into Rocky River road..

It was getting late so we kept motoring as Rocky River road is a looong, slow ride if you want to do it safely. We eventually stopped for a stretch about 25km out of Tenterfield.

Parking the bikes up at our digs in Tenterfield, we had a quick shower and walked down to the Royal Hotel for dinner and a beer. The Royal has decent food and a GREAT selection of craft beers on tap, mainly from Deepwater Brewing. Here we are enjoying a Brewdog Black Heart to cap off the night.😎

Just across the road is the old Tenterfield Saddler building. We spent a few minutes scanning the shopfront before wandering home for the night. It was so nice and cool up here on the range it made for a pleasant way to finish the night.

We were up early next morning, enjoying the cool, dry air. Did I mention that it’s been hot and very humid in Brisbane for the last six weeks? No? Well, it’s been horrible and at ~2500ft above sea level, Tenterfield is cool and dry.

 

Our digs. 

We headed out for a look at the airport, then took a newly sealed tourist loop road around to the Mt Mackenzie road where we turned right, out Gunyah road to take in the view from the Gunyah Road Lookout.

It is a magnificent view from here that is just a little harder to get to being along the dirt road, so nice and quiet….except for the rumble of the odd DX or 1090 v-twin.

Back into town we refuelled and went in search of some breakfast. We decided to try the little Potting Shed cafe’ on the main street. The coffee was good and the breakfast burrito wasn’t bad. Jon had a chat to the “Scalies” that had stopped in for a coffee. One rode bikes so was keen for a chat.

We tried to come up with a route home over our coffees. I was out of ideas until I recalled that I had a .gpx file in Gaia that traced the Rabbit Proof Fence (RPF) from Stanthorpe to Killarney.

Much faffing around followed as we tried to share the file onto my Garmin Zumo XT. I eventually got it on the gps but there was no way that the bloody thing was going to navigate the route.😡

 Why?

 If it was a cycling gps it would have loaded the file and Bob’s yer uncle, we would be set but noooo, these road based gps units need the .gpx converted/massaged in Garmin Basecamp before loading into the gps…..which you need a desktop computer to do….FFS!

We rode the road to Stanthorpe then faffed around some more trying to load the route. In the end Jon put the route on Gaia on his Quadlock mounted phone and we just followed the track with the little “you are here” arrow. Not ideal but it worked…..

The trail was pleasant, little used twin track through lush green paddocks. Beautiful riding and it would be totally suitable for a mountain bike ride too. One might need dropping at Stanthorpe and picking up at Killarney though. 😉

There was one section where we had to ride through a farm yard that had several dogs tied up…and one big white bastard that was loose and chased us. Not probs on the adv bike with boots but there must be a way to avoid this yard as it is clearly on the RPF track. It wouldn’t be nice on a mtb either. I would prefer to avoid it as I don’t like riding across private property any day.

There were a lot of gates. Seriously, a LOT! Lucky I had a speedy KTM rider that I couldn’t keep up with who had the gates open for me. There is a benefit to being slow!😏

Yeah, did I mention gates?

We followed the RPF along on the NSW side, looking at QLD just a few feet away. We soon came to Maryland National Park and entered through another gate. This led to a fun, fast blast along a twisting forest track. I almost ran over a four foot black snake but he luckily made it to the edge of the trail as I blasted by. We were descending for a while and I was thinking “there must be a creek at the bottom”. How would it be?

Well, it proved to be small and well lined with blue stone. It proved no problem to cross being little more than a drain. More fun ensued until we came to the eastern side of the National Park.

We followed some dirt then a bunch of sealed road into Killarney. The Killarney Hotel was a welcome break as it was proving to be quite a warm day. My RST suit gets hot above 23C, even with all of the vents opened. It is funny but I can tell when the temperature climbs through 23C because of this is when I start to become uncomfortable and look at the outside air temp gauge on the bike, and it is always 23C.

Because of this heat we decided to rehydrate with another cold Tooheys Old and one of the hotels “best steak sandwiches ever” (my rating, not theirs - they are seriously good!).

Leaving Killarney we climbed up over The Head Road to White Swamp Gate road then dropped back onto White Swamp road (in NSW)  and backtracked yesterday’s route into Boonah.

We pinned it home from Boonah as that last hour into town (or away from home) absolutely sux. I hate it with a passion. Traffic, incompetent drivers and more traffic. I think half of Victoria has moved up to South East Queensland and it appears to be the half that have no driving skills whatsoever…..

🙄

Arriving home I was quickly unpacked as were credit card camping and packing lightly. This definitely made the bikes much more fun to ride on the dirt. Not sure how many kilometres we did - under one thousand I’d say but we covered some awesome new ground, got to drink some very tasty beers and checked out a cool little country town. 

I’ll be up there a lot more in the future. 😉

Cheers.