Lava run

I was invited by some guys to join a run that would eventually find it's way close to my home town, organised by the Wild Dog Creek SC from Melbourne and the geared and classic clubs were invited to attend, the final group ended up at 19 scooters and 20 people representing I think nine scooter clubs, I heard someone say anyway. The plan was to ride out from Melbourne and around the south west district of Victoria which , as it turns out, is the third largest Lava plain in the world, I know, exciting stuff.
I arranged to meet the group outside of a small farming town called Cressy, halfway between Colac and Ballarat, as is almost always the case the fuel stops and such took a little longer and I ended up riding half way to Shelford and caught them on the road. The first three pics show me loaded up ready to go, parked up halfway to Shelford near a classic example of a volcanic rock wall, the local farmers had to pick up all these rocks over many years to make the land usable, grazing mainly, some cropping too, so they decided to use them to keep the cows in, these fences/walls are scattered around the countryside in the district and will outlive anyone living here today. Third pic down is the group in the distance, I fell in just in front of the tail end charlie and the fresh country air I had to myself became a plume of 2T, lovely. The old DR177 held its own, I still couldn't quite keep up with the 200s though, but it didn't matter, the ride was superb anyway, rolling countryside, old farm houses and wineries, stone churches and cows, plenty of cows, this is dairy country BTW, the group was separated by one minor breakdown and me overshooting a corner and testing my off road skills, You can see my spare fuel tank on the centre floor mat in the first pics, well I had it occy strapped around both sides of the stand legs this meant that the stand hung down a bit, coming into this corner I could have slowed down a bit but didn't and as I leant into it, the stand scraped the ground. I knew then that 1- I was going too fast and 2- I was going to run out of road and would need to bail, mind you it was a one lane country road, gravel on both sides. First thing that went through my head was " fucks sake don't drop it....or hit that tree" I clutched in and put my feet down, straightened up, braked as best I could and aimed at where I wanted to go, twenty metres later after coming to a stop next to the tree and having endured shrubs, branches on the ground, eyeing off the barbed wire fence to my left, a fucking foot to my left, the two riders behind me stopped, "you OK?" yep I said laughing and feeling like an idiot " scoot OK?" apart from a branch stuck up in the front wheel guard "yeah I think so" "nice recovery" "thanks" and off we went......
 After a regroup at a small place called Lismore, pic 4, we headed off again to the highlight of the ride, Mt Elephant, seen in pic 5, a dormant volcano standing proud on the otherwise flat landscape, the community group had opened it up for us to see and ferried us up on the back of a ute, it was fascinating to hear about the history and the view was spectacular, pic 6 & 7 are at the base of the Mount, after this we stopped for a late lunch at Camperdown and on to our overnight venue, Gellibrand, we all stayed in the caravan park in cabins, two guys braved the frost and camped, dinner was at the local pub and was followed by tall stories, two stroke tuning talk, the differences in skinhead scenes around the globe, pool and what decent music anyone could find on the jukebox, oh and it goes without saying, beer flowed, wine was quaffed and laughter filled to small room.
In the morning we headed into Colac for Breakfast and after having the local paper come and take some photos and ask a few questions, the guys waved and bid farewell and continued on home to Melbourne, I went home, kissed the kids and the missus and went out to the shed to finish putting the 200 engine, last post, together. I have clocked over the 9000kms mark as wee in the last week, on the way to the Club brekkie in Geelong in fact, that's over 4500km on the DR. Bottom pic isin the morning getting ready to leave and of course my new front rack, a freeby, from one of the WDCSC guys, I put the word out and he had one he didn't want, score.

 

Here's the front of the local paper the following day, Chris from Melbourne on the left, Sharon from Hobart on the right and my front and centre, grossly mis-quoted as well, the drug bust had nothing to do with us, but was obviously more important than a bunch of classic scooters gracing the town and giving it some class, albeit for a short time.