Broken Hill was meant to be a quick pitstop before pushing back into the desert and making our way up to Queensland. Somehow though, an afternoon stop for some quick repairs turned into staying for four days, living at a mechanics workshop and joining a local motocross race weekend. Standard.
I’m not going to lie, the bikes had taken a beating over the past few thousand kilometres. And when I say, ‘the bikes had taken a beating over the past few thousand kilometres’ what I really mean is that we gave the bikes a beating over the past few thousand kilometres. However, with plans to soon enter Queensland and then onto Northern Territory, we knew it was only going to get worse for them. We also didn’t plan to be in any towns with populations over 1,000 for the next month and a bit, so if the bikes were going to get some TLC, it was now or never.
We had the basics down pat. But for anything more than oil changes, air filter changes and chain adjustments, we’d need to recruit outside help. Over the past couple of weeks, we built up a little wish list for the bikes, and Broken Hill was going to be our only shot to get it done.
Unsurprisingly, when we tried to find a mechanic on Friday afternoon to play around with some suspension, change some tires and do some electrical work on the bikes not many were keen to touch the bikes until Monday. We lucked out though when we found Rob’s Dirtbikes, who told us to come around the next morning.
When we got there, I thought that it would be a pretty quiet Saturday morning and our mate Rob would just be finishing off a few little jobs. Well, the place was busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest, half the town was there getting new tyres or tuning up their bikes. Turns out there was a motocross event on the next day. Either that or they’d just had a big Friday doing burnouts and skiddies. Possibly both.
The place was a madhouse. Along with the mechanics working on bikes, they let a lot of the local kids that were racing the next day use the space and tools to get their bikes set up. Whenever anyone needed to replace something on their bike, they would go searching through the more than 100 scrapped bikes on the property. There were piles of every imaginable part. From small bits like sprockets and chains to a shelf of 20+ seats and stacks of fenders. Even a pile of chassis.
Despite that madness, they welcomed us in like family. Rob was never too busy to slow down with what he was doing and explain the process to me. By the time we’d gotten all the work done on our bike, and then had the obligatory knock-off beers (and playing with the various bikes, trikes and cars on the property), the evening was setting in.
I think they may have taken pity on us, cause when we told them that we were just going to head up the road a few kilometres and find a patch of dirt to pitch the tent, they offered us to a small caravan at the back of the workshop for the night. We weren’t going to say no to our first real bed in a month, so they showed us to the caravan while we put away the knock-off beers and opened a case of celebratory welcome beers.
Rob was racing in the motocross tomorrow and insisted we come along in the morning and head off afterwards. It was hardly an offer we could refuse. Well surprise surprise, a morning at the motocross quickly turned into afternoon, and then afternoon turned to evening and so we settled in for another night at Broken Hill. Aside from one dude stacking a jump, breaking his arm and being taken away in an ambulance, it all seemed to go rather well. No one seemed all that phased about the stack so maybe that’s just how motocross works.
It was pretty gnarly watching these guys and girls though. Compared to the bikes they were riding and stuff they were doing, we were pretty much touring Australia in a wheelbarrow. Kids as young as five were racing and I can guarantee you they would have beaten me around the track and possibly lapped me.
I did, however, get a chance to ride Rob’s KTM EXC 500 race bike. Holy smokes, it was just a whole other level. I don’t think I even got out of second gear, but let me tell you, that bike was faster than a fat kid chasing an ice-cream truck. Well, I mean, I guess that’s what you guys would think. Myself, as an experienced motorcycle rider used to the raw performance of my bike, Tina, with 40-year-old engine technology, I wasn’t really that impressed…
When Monday morning came by we weren’t mucking around. We knew if we didn’t get our act together and leave early, we’d end up staying one more night. Then another, and another, and another. So, at the crack of dawn, 10am, we said our goodbyes to the whole crew at Rob’s who welcomed us into their family.
When we arrived at Broken Hill, we were in business mode. We just wanted to get in, fix what we needed and then continue on our way. We’d come out to this part of NSW for the epic roads and empty desert nights under the stars and didn’t want to waste our time in a town. I was antsy to keep going and keep making our way north. There were so many hikes we’d seen further up and plans we had that we didn’t want to ‘waste time’ in Broken Hill. As it turned out, Broken Hill is one of our best memories from the trip so far.
We were welcomed into their community and shown so much hospitality in a way that I’d only really experienced in South America. And if we’d not slowed down and spent an afternoon getting to know everyone in the workshop and learning from them, we’d have missed it all. It’s impossible to know in advance what are going to be the defining moments of a journey like this. Closing ourselves off to anything but the preconceived notions of our remote outback trip camping off in the sticks would have shut us off to so many of the best parts of the trip already, and I’m sure plenty more over the coming weeks.
As for what’s next, we were headed for Queensland, and unbeknownst to us, it was also to be Tina’s last ride.
More on that soon.
Pat
So there’s no point fluffing about here. You probably want to know how and why I smashed my ankle into a few bits. It’s honestly not even that exciting. I wish I could tell you that I was doing a sick wheelie just after jumping through a ring of fire and dodging drop bears and hoop snakes but it’s much more boring than that… Or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.