Adventure Film Festival

This entry is part 20 of 22 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #10

The Adventure Travel Film Festival Something for everyone, riders, including Nick Fletcher, came from all over.

The Adventure Travel Film Festival is difficult to describe, but it’s my favourite weekend of the year.

The loose concept of the event is various rugged traveller types make a film of their adventure, bring it to Bright in Victoria and show it.

But in its four short years it’s become so much more than this and is now a gathering of adventure riders, around-the-world travellers, dope-smoking hippies and the most comprehensive collection of men with beards this side of a Santa Claus convention. It’s a bikers’ heaven and has an informal trade show bolted on, with Greg from Kreiga (“Greg, do these come in blue?), Robin from Touratech (“Robin, is there somewhere on this tankbag I can store my moisturiser?”), Bob from Alpine Adventure Bike Tours (“Bob, can you make sure my GS doesn’t get dirty on this ride?”), and the Mitas tyres team (“Which will look cooler on Pitt Street? The E09 Dakar or the E10 Safari?”). You can also guarantee some wild and wacky vehicles will drop in unannounced. This year it was three enormous Unimog-type camper trucks.

Rupert Shaw (aka The Buffoon) is the instigator of the event, and given his planning (in)abilities I was looking forward to a series of near calamities.

Bright outlook

The festival is centred on Bright Brewery and features dozens of films, speakers and events each day at various locations around the town. Because of the sprawling nature of the festival it’s almost impossible to see everything. Furthermore, there’s always a bit of a pot luck involved. You might get the 80-year-old who climbed Everest with-out oxygen dressed as a stormtrooper or you might score the accountant from Ballarat with a riveting slide show on his stamp club’s trip to Bendigo.

With the bar completely packed by 7.00pm on Friday the key question for the festival had already been answered: apparently Rupert can organise a piss up in a brewery.

Bright was suffering horrific weather and with the rain smashing down the night screening was moved from the park to the Community Centre. Given that was a 400m walk I decided to stay in the pub with Steve Killela. Steve was in town to talk about his work travelling the world promoting peace.

Consequently, I woke up the following morning with a truly catastrophic hangover and a new sense of inadequacy about my life.

Christophe almighty

Adventure Rider Magazine had sponsored Christophe Barriere-Varju to talk about his Dakar experiences – he’s been four times. He presented Dream Racer, the film of his 2010 Dakar ride, and even bought his race bike along. For those that haven’t seen it, get on Christophe’s website and buy it. Highlights

include Christophe running out of money and being forced to be his own mechanic, not doing any training because he needed to work 20 hours a day to pay for the entry and finishing the Dakar with a black, balloon-sized lump full of blood where his tricep used to be.

It was slightly disconcerting talking to this amiable but clearly unhinged Australian/African. He comes across like your favourite uncle and it’s hard to imagine him as a world-class rallye rider and former motocross champion, but you gradually realise that his every working hour is devoted to getting back to Dakar. He told me he needed a new challenge and would be competing in the 2016 Dakar in a single-seater buggy. He’d just dropped a seven-litre V8 in the chassis and he hoped this would give it enough power.

Action

Although the festival is not specifically about motorcycling there were plenty of renowned motorcyclists to entertain us. Tex O’Grady spoke about his epic charity rides accompanied by his dog Bundy, who sits on his tank. Bundy looked like a hairy airbag and, given my riding capabilities, I would’ve gone through a dog a week if I’d tried to emulate Tex.

Brian and Shirley Rix were discussing their marathon trips including riding two-up around the world. Twice.

Saturday night was an open-air showing of Malaysia To UK, Ed March’s hysterical film on riding a pizza-delivery bike halfway around the world. It was a high-spirited crowd who got to watch Ed’s antics. Those antics included attaching a pair of machine guns to his bike and firing them, riding down the highway with a full-sized Christmas tree, including decorations, strapped upright to the back, attempting to marry his bike and participating in some hard core, off-road riding with an unsuspecting hitchhiker on the back. After the film I retired injured from what looked like being a lively night at the brewery.

F’n warranty claim

Sunday morning the Alpine Adventure Motorcycle Tours team took a huge crowd on a half-day tour of the area for free! By all accounts this was an outstanding morning and (most) people kept their bikes right side up. I took an early ride with a friend so I could get back in time to watch Ron Fellowes talk about his ride from Nepal to Belgium. Ron is 75, and he did the trip on a 102-year-old FN motorcycle with a single gear, no real brakes (he used his feet) and tyres that would detach themselves from the wheels on a regular basis. Meanwhile, his wife Lynn was making the same trip on public transport. The purpose of the trip was to return to the original FN factory. When he arrived he was asked why he had made the trip and his classic response was, “I had a warranty issue”.

Dune Buffoon

Many of the highlights of the Festival were those unexpected little gems that genuinely surprised you.

The short film on the prissy London 20-something girl who travelled to the Amazon to live with an indigenous tribe and got roped into a naked marriage ceremony was a classic. The Ride was also pretty special, covering four paraplegic former dirtbikers crossing The Simpson on quads.

Sunday night was capped off by a pig roast in a beautiful spot under Mt Buffalo.

This gave us a chance to catch up with a number of the speakers again. Ron Fellowes is a genuinely amazing human being and the only person I know who makes his own spark plug. For that matter he’s also the only person who makes his own pistons, gearboxes, hubs…you get the picture.

As the party got a little lively later in the evening Christophe turned out to be a man of many talents, including the ability to hold onto a live electric fence longer than anyone else and bend his fingers back to touch the back of his hand. He finally invited us to come up and visit him at Port Stephens so we could ride the sand dunes at night. This was like a red rag to a bull for Rupert who commented, “Sand dunes at night racing a Dakar legend? Can I bring my 1980 Ténéré?”

You can look forward to reading about it here.

Melbourne to Bright crew

Hard as nails

Victorian motorcyclists are the hardest in the world. Fact.

We may not be the fastest, we certainly aren’t the best-dressed, but there’s no doubt we are the hardest. So while the New South Wales contingent riding to the Adventure Travel Film Festival allowed a leisurely four days to ride the 1000km to the festival, the Victorian team had just 24 hours to cover 500 full-on, mountain kilometres.

To be fair to the NSW crew, they did need to ensure they finished each day in time to polish their GSs, read some poetry and give each other a sensual massage. Nevertheless, it was disappointing to see just two Victorians taking on the challenge. I assume the other Victorian riders were tied up cage fighting or wrestling bears.

Given that we ended up facing 30+ degree temperatures, neck-deep river crossings, bushfires, monsoonal rain and snow all on the same day, cage fighting would have been a safer choice.

Tree hugger

A text on Thursday told me my companion for the ride would be Jayson and he’d meet me at 8.00pm at a campsite in Bunyip State Forest.

Clearly Melbourne to Bright in one day was not hard enough for Jayson. He decided to precede it with an overnight economy flight from Perth and a day putting his KTM690 back together.

As he pulled into the campsite just outside Gembrook I realised I already knew him. Both of us had ridden together for part of the 2013 APC Rally – the one that was held underwater.

Given I now knew he could really ride we changed the route to take in some steeper climbs, more terrifying descents and even deeper rivers.

Chatting to Jayson that night we soon established that he is a living legend.

He’s ridden over 14,000km on his fully kitted 690, including riding the 7000km of the APC Rally, and has never dropped it – not that he’s adverse to a crash or two on his WR450F. Just on 18 months ago he hit a tree, breaking his femur and most of his vertebrae. “I think I fell asleep on the bike,” he mused.

Err…right!
As I say, a living legend.

Koala shagger

We had the campsite to ourselves on a crisp, clear, starlit night.

After a few beers I was soon fast asleep, only to be interrupted by two koalas having what I assume was very vocal koala sex. I woke early feeling poorly rested. Jayson woke with a wistful look in his eyes. By 6.45am we were on the road for an epic days’ riding.

The route we’d selected was almost entirely off-road and took us through Neerim, past Woods Point and down to Licola for fuel and a pie. The plan was then to head off to towards Dargo via the infamous Billy Goat Track before turning north towards Bright on the Tea Tree Track.

Having started in beautifully cool, misty conditions, the day soon heated up into the low 30s and we were both sweating like Rolf Harris at a Year 7 social.

It was relatively easy riding until Licola, where we met the first of what was to be 45 riders in an organised group riding to Bright from Dargo via Jamieson.

As we headed away from Licola we had the pleasure of meeting the entire group coming the other way. I’d like to thank the four riders who kept to their side of the road. I won’t be thanking the 26 who were ‘taking the racing line’, the 12 who were looking at their GPS and the one moron who was standing up looking backwards so he could film the bloke behind with his GoPro. I assume he was on a day trip from Sydney.

Declare defeat

I’d ridden this once before and it was more than a little dodgy. This is the sort of terrain that would have had the New South Wales riders forming a self-help group, then declaring defeat and heading home to tuck into a nice bit of William Blake.

We descended on what I remembered as a series of big rock ledges interspersed by steep, loose rocky slopes. As I’m a completely hopeless rider I expected to be using my usual descent technique of sliding down on my face underneath my DRZ. Fortunately, the track had been recently graded, and while still steep and loose it was a lot more straightforward this time.

However, a clutch that was permanently stuck on was more than a little distracting.

The problem required a clutch disassembly at the bottom, and while this didn’t identify the problem it did seem to fix it.

We then met the Wonnangatta River, with a crossing deep enough to drown a New South Welshman. We dispatched it with style and panache and were soon climbing onto the Tea Tree Track. After a short detour down what I maintain is the most beautiful track in Victoria (and therefore the world) we bumped into a CFA crew coming the other way. We knew there was a bushfire near Mt Selwyn so I flagged them down and asked for advice. They told me to head south to Wonnangatta as they thought the fires were still burning. As I waved off the CFA crew Jayson pulled alongside, just in time for me to give him the good news.

“No problems,” I offered. “Just keep the throttle pinned and remember you’re a Victorian.”

Ice age

As we started to descend the track we could see the ridgeline ahead covered in black clouds being hammered by lightning. It was 3.00pm and we knew that by now the New South Wales crew would be giving each other a gentle rub down after discussing Samuel Coleridge’s use of metaphor in his romantic ballads.

Meanwhile, we still had 100km, two mountains and the mother of all storms to ride through before we could get stuck into 10 pints of lager and a pub fight.

Climbing to Mt Selwyn we were no longer worried about raging bushfires as the temperatures had dropped towards freezing and rain had reduced visibility to a few metres. Furthermore, the track was now bordered by snow and navigating the erosion humps required use of a periscope.

Consequently it was a wet, cold but triumphant Victorian team that arrived at the Bright Brewery to find Kurt and the New South Wales Team showered, refreshed and smelling rather suspiciously of essential oils.

The NSW crew

Being sponsors of the film festival, there were big plans for the AdvRiderMag folks to cruise on down from NSW to Bright and suck up the glory.

The editor was dumped from the team when Triumph scheduled the release of the new Tiger 800XCx at the same time. The publisher and contributor Ken Dark forged on anyway, tagging up with Darin Rowley on the way.

Everything was going well until the publisher stopped to relieve himself, asking the others to wait. As he stood there, his dignity waving gently in the breeze, the other two roared off, leaving him with his future in his own hands…so to speak.

Here’s Ken’s side of the story…

“The gist of the story is this…

“I pulled up to remove a loose mirror. Kurt pulled up alongside and said he was going for a piss. He was being a bit precious and didn’t want anyone staring at his equipment, so he took off along the route to find a better spot, which he found in behind some trees – bike and all.

“Darin and I just rode past. Kurt cracked the shits because we left him in the woods with all the nasty creatures. He rang my phone twice in quick succession. The first was just a mild rebuke for leaving him in the bush all by himself. The second was pissed-off Kurt in full swing – something like, ‘You blokes went past at 100 miles per hour and just took off. You didn’t stop and wait (remember he was hiding behind the bush). I’ve ridden down the road looking for you, I have no idea where you are, so f%@* you! I’ll just go home!’

“He actually got within about five kilometres of the turn before he figured we must’ve turned off somewhere. He turned around and went back.”

This, claims Ken with his delightfully earthy turn of phrase, is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

We’ll bring you the publisher’s side of the story when he moderates his language enough for a family magazine lik this one.

The Sunday morning crowd

What better occasion and excuse for a ride than the Adventure Travel Film Festival being hosted in Bright?

We knew there’d be a bunch of adventure riders in town so Alpine Adventure Bike Tours invited them all to a Sunday-morning half-day loop.

We arrived at our meeting point a bit early to grab a much-needed coffee and pie for breakfast. We really had no idea of numbers and wondered if the rain over the previous 24 hours might deter any interest, but we had just under 30 riders roll in, and it was an interesting collection of bikes. BMWs and – perhaps surprisingly – DR650s dominated.

Four sexy lady riders joined us. They’re coming to join you fellas – look out!

A quick riders’ briefing from Bob Bondeson checked everyone was good with the corner- man system and the ride began, heading to conquer the first lookout – Mt Porepunkah.

A couple of kangaroos popped out just as we hit the dirt. I managed to dodge the first (thankfully he swerved to miss me too), but the second ’roo bounced off my leg. Thankfully I stayed upright and Skippy hopped away.

Pants man

The rain had made conditions perfect – there was no dust!

We arrived at the first of three lookouts where I watched and listened to riders compare notes about their bikes, their ride to this point and the view around us. Cameras were snapping left right and centre. I must say a huge thanks to Darin from Adventure Motorcycle Equipment who provided me with all of his photos. He was a great fella and a very impressive rider. I’m told he had his knee down in the twisty bits at one stage. That’s not a bad effort on a DR650.

After a hustle along from our lead rider and sweep, we set off again.

The next leg took us back down through some beautiful forest and on to the tar for about five kilometres, to then return to dirt and up into the pines at Myrtleford. At this point it was important to turn off whatever sophistication came with the bikes – traction control was a bit of an issue on the rougher surface, not to mention a few steeper climbs.

ABS wasn’t too helpful here either.

We decided to have a ‘chicken’ and a ‘rooster’ line at one point as we weren’t sure if the climb and then descent would be for everyone. We wanted to give riders the choice.

Not too surprisingly, most riders went straight up and back down the other side and loved it. I led five riders around the chicken line and we joined back up on the other side of the hill and headed up to our second lookout where we had 360-degree views across the Alpine region. More happy snaps were taken, more riders compared notes about modifications and some bike swapping was negotiated for the next leg.

One of the riders had lost a bag between stops and was keen to track it down. There were some pricey adventure pants in the bag, apparently. After Bob had sold them back to him (not really, but he tried) we set off again.

Flat out

We descended back through the pines, taking in some more amazing views and got back on the black twisty bits up to Stanley and across to Murmungee lookout. This spot is just amazing. The pictures don’t do it justice at all.

We’d had a few riders drop off along the way due to other commitments, but we got the gang together for a group shot – with smiles all around.

To finish the morning off we ventured back through the Stanley State Forest and pulled up at Lupo’s Kiln Café for some lunch and a cold beer. It’s thirsty work this adventure riding.

I thought we’d finished up without incident, but not quite. Bob had a flat rear tyre.

He limped his bike back into town escorted by a GS1200 with its hazards on – thanks Cam, you’re a gem!

Thanks to everyone that came along for the ride. Based on the feedback everyone enjoyed themselves, got to see some beautiful spots and had a laugh along the way.

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