Industry Player: Peter Payne

This entry is part 5 of 22 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #2

Those who’ve been around a while know Peter Payne as one of Australian motorcycling’s quietly spoken true gentleman.

Having recently returned from a long stint with Yamaha in New Zealand, we caught up with the bloke who made our jaws drop by taking the Super Ténéré through terrain we thought was challenging on a WRF. Not only does he take the bike through that terrain, he does it in a very tidy, unflustered and commanding fashion. He’s so tidy his hair somehow stays neat when he takes off his helmet.

No photo-trickery here. That’s a frigging steep, rocky hill, and Mr Clean’s making it look easy on the big Yamaha.

We wanted to know how the man who’s now one of Yamaha Motor Australia’s management got his start.

Adv: What’s your official title at Yamaha Motor Australia these days, and how did you start riding?
PP: I’m Brand Development Manager, which is principally about the behind-thescenes stuff.1972 and actually didn’t start riding until I was 17. A guy I went to school with in the outer suburbs of Brisbane had an AT1 Yamaha that he’d received for his 17th birthday, and he used to ride it to school. I was intrigued to the max with it, and eventually one afternoon I got to ride it along the bank of the nearby river. I was just like, “How good is this!”

Peter Payne – Brand Development Manager for Yamaha Motor Australia, and a bloke with plenty of ’bike cred.

But it wasn’t until the next year after I’d left school that I got my first bike, a Suzuki TS185. Carel Berendes (pronounced Carl) was the local motorcycle dealer. I used to walk past, and often look inside, when catching the train to and from school. He sold Suzukis. It wasn’t a big dealership and he did lawnmower and small-motor repairs, but he was a true enthusiast. He was a keen road racer who also knew about the Six Days and all that sort of stuff that we’d never heard of.

I just wanted a trailbike, and at that time I thought a DT1 would be cool. I thought they were the neatest thing of all, but they were too expensive for me. Carel advised not to get something that big. He suggested I get something lighter as it’d be easier to learn on.

So I went, “Oh. Okay!” as he knew what he was talking about.I eventually went trailriding with him, and he was also friends with Brian Foster, who was then a Sales Manager with Yamaha, and Vince Walker, who was also a former road racer. Those guys taught me a lot. Carel the Suzuki dealer also had a 185 Suzuki that he’d fitted with a 21-inch front wheel, alloy guards, a tank bag, a little headlight and a little tail light, steel footpegs, knobby tyres and so on…this was 1971. I was like, “What’s all that for? #And what’s a Six Days?” They tried to tell me, but it wasn’t until I saw On Any Sunday that I knew what the ISDT was.

The first competitive event I rode was in 1972 at Beaudesert, and I think it was Queensland’s first enduro.

John Nic (left), founder of Kiwi Rider magazine and NZ legend, and Peter Payne show why he enjoyed his time there so much. That kind of terrain is everywhere in the Shakey Isles.

Adv: What brought about the start with Yamaha?
PP: The 185 Suzuki was great and Carel was right, I did learn a lot, and then I moved up to a TS400.

Initially my parents didn’t want me to ride. They wanted me to learn to fly as that was a bit of a family thing, but I said, “Nah. I want to be around motorbikes.” I didn’t care if I had to sweep the floors, I just wanted to be around bikes, and eventually I started working with a Yamaha dealer at Moorooka in 1972. Steven Cotterell, (now Director and General Manager of Yamaha Motor Australia) was just as fanatical about bikes and riding, and we became friends and riding buddies.

Eventually I started working for Annand and Thompson, the Queensland Yamaha distributors at the time, in 1974, and in 1975 we officially started the Yamaha enduro team for Annand and Thompson. Steven used to work there as well on and off while juggling work, riding and Uni.

Adv: Racing in the ’70s must’ve been very different to today.
PP: The QTRA (Qld Trail Riders Association) enduro events were running at the time, and usually they were a single 300km loop to be ridden in a day with a few special tests included on the trail. For a two-day the loop was usually a reverse of the first day. I was still learning, but I finished those first couple of events okay, and in 1974 I won the Queensland State Championship for my class, as did Steven. In 1975 we went to Oberon for our first interstate event and that was an eye-opener. Again we went okay, and at the end of that year we went down to Victoria for the Newry Two-Day, run by Norm Watts. It was a great event, and we got gold medals. I still have the memory of the fresh smell of the eucalyptus forests that were so different to Queensland, and the looks from the Victorians wondering what we were doing so far from home.

The bikes around this time, and the first real development project we built was based on the YZ125C alloy-tanked Monocross motocrosser that was converted to a 175cc enduro model. Another friend we rode with, Bob Esler, had the first one that was developed with input from him. It had a few teething issues, – like no power until very high revs – but they were eventually ironed out. We then built one for Steven, and he won a lot on that bike while I was on the 400cc models.

We’d do motocross as well, but I was never any good at it. Steven was an A-Grade motocrosser and did well, but I was an also-ran. I just wanted to ride single trails in the forests. The footage of Malcolm Smith in On Any Sunday on the tree-lined single track during the ISDT in Spain is indelibly imprinted on my mind, and that was my favourite type of riding. Motocross wasn’t.

There were some great events as enduro began to take shape in the ’70s – the Forest 300s at Dungog were great and I see that it’s been suggested to run one again in the future. The Lance Watsons, The A4DEs, Kenilworth in Queensland Bathurst, Orange…they were all great events run by a lot of enthusiastic people.

The first Australian Four Day Enduro Championship at Cessnock in 1977 was a bit of a disaster for both Steven and myself. I had a head-on with one of the organiser’s cars on the second section. That was the end of event for me as the bike was damaged. Steven broke his wrist on a slippery wooden bridge not long after.

I won another championship in 1978, and the Yamaha team continued to go well. We had ITs by then, and the 1978 IT400 I had was a great bike. It was just one of those bikes that was a real gem. I had the chance to go to the Six Days in Sweden that year, but I really didn’t have the money to do it.

In 1980 I got another Queensland Championship and we won the Trophy Teams event at the Four Day, but I rode Husqvarna for a short time as we had sponsorship that allowed me to go to the ISDT in France.

Adv: That must’ve been an experience.
PP: It was an awesome experience as well as a total eye-opener.
That was the year Geoff Ballard won his final moto at what was the last ISDT before the name changed. GB had been in Europe for the year living in his old green Kombi and he’d really matured. He was always fast, but by then he’d risen to a new level.

That led into the 1980s, and enduros had begun to change. In general they’d become smaller loops ridden several times, instead of one big, long loop, and had motocross-style special tests instead of the trail type. I was just getting bored with the repetition and I decided that was it.

I went to the Six Days in Italy in 1981 and did okay, finishing with a silver. It was an okay event, but I wanted to do other things as the trailriding had changed. I was still working for Yamaha and I continued on, but I wasn’t competing in Enduros.

Adv: You moved to Honda.
PP: I did. In 1982.There was a lot of crossover of staff back then. The Yamaha distributor and Honda distributor were owned by the same parent company, and when a pretty good job came up with Honda one of the managers there who used to work for Annand and Thompson Yamaha suggested I apply for it. I said, “Okay.”

I ended up staying there until 1997.Meanwhile, Steven had his own Yamaha dealership from 1980, but had come back to A&T Yamaha in 1984 as Sales Manager. When Yamaha Motor Australia had taken over A&Ts in 1989 the Director was Bill Vivien. Bill was my boss when I first started in spare parts with Yamaha. It was a bit of an in- joke between us with them asking repeatedly, “Why don’t you come home?”

I really enjoyed working with Stuart Strickland when I was at Honda, but in 1997 I went back (home) to Yamaha, and I still hadn’t really ridden any offroad bikes.

Adv: Was it the change back to Yamaha that started you riding again?
PP: It was the YZ400F in 1997.We had a pre-production model arrive at work, and I looked at it and thought, “I just have to ride this thing.” I took it down to Steve Smith’s property at Beaudesert and wondered what it was going to be like! The handling and power were fine, but I couldn’t believe the brakes. Disc brakes front and back! You could go through water and you still had brakes. You could go down hills and you still had brakes. You could do anything and you still had brakes. It was the biggest single thing that hit me after almost 16 years off dirt bikes. The brakes were amazing.

I began doing some trailriding again, and together with Steven, we again started doing a bit of development work.

I’m a bit of a pain for neatness and having everything just right, but I’m okay with picking up things from bikes just by feel. I did some development on the early WR250F along with GB and Steven, and eventually went to Japan with some development work there. We took Ben Grabham along with us for the first electric-start WR. He was riding Yamaha then.I was doing the riding with the development of the bikes, and that led to more trailriding.

Adv: You went to New Zealand for Yamaha.
PP: Yeah. When Yamaha took over from the previous distributor we had to change things, and it meant changing a generation of the culture about Yamaha in the marketplace. It was difficult at times, but I really enjoyed living there. I even got used to the cold and wet, and I especially loved the riding. I was initially to be there for two years and almost nine years later I was still there.

We had some success in New Zealand eventually.

Adv: Now you’re back in Australia and Yamaha is having a lot of success with the Ténérés. We’ve spotted you on trails here and there, and you’re as tidy and composed as ever, still riding the cleanest lines and making everything look easy. Will we ever get to see you with a Super T stuck on the upside of a sandy dune or drowned in some rocky, fast flowing creek?
PP: (Laughs) Hope not!

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