A “Dop and a Tjop” in Yeppoon…

Cecil Barnard, an expatriate South African, had stumbled across my website a few months ago, and very kindly invited me to spend some time with him if I ever found myself near Rockhampton in northern Queensland…

Leaving Brisbane HQ for my ride north... My good friend Mark Behr was there for the early goodbye...!!

His message, sent in Afrikaans, was simple and to the point…

“If ever you’re passing through Rockhampton, there’ll be a “dop and a tjop” waiting for you…!!”

Translation: “Pull in for meat and drinks….!!”

Naturally, I needed no second invitation, and as the time for my final push to the farthest point in Australia drew near, I made contact with him again, and arranged to meet up with him…

I was up at dawns crack to load and pack the Big Fella, and by the time Mark and Taryn surfaced to greet the day, I was ready to roll, eager to be back on the bike after a three week hiatus…!!

I rolled out of Forest Lake, and headed for the highway…

After long periods off the bike, it usually takes me a few kilometres to get settled in and get a “feel” for the balance of the bike again, but today, after barely a few hundred yards and a couple of corners, I felt glued to the seat…!!

The Big Fella was about 25 kgs lighter than usual, no longer weighed down by the duffel bag that contained a spare set of shock absorbers, amongst many other things…!! I had opted to leave the bag behind at Mark’s place, until my return in a few weeks time…

The bike seemed as eager as I was to be back on the road, and handled like a dream, flicking me through the many roundabouts that led to the highway, and then skipping through the early morning traffic with ease…

Happy to be back on the road again...!!

After crossing the Brisbane River, that had earlier this year inundated the city and caused massive damage to the infrastructure, we cruised past the airport that I had landed at the day before, and set our sight on Noosa, a seaside town on the Sunshine Coast. Morgan Parker, the guy who we had ridden with in Laos and Cambodia, called Noosa his home, but it had been a long time since I had heard from him, and I wasn’t sure that he was in residence, and anyway, Noosa was barely 200 km north of Brisbane, and I had planned a much longer route up the coast than that….

I took the coastal road that led past Sunrise Beach, where I stopped to watch the early morning surfers for a while, then began searching for a fuel station… Noosa Heads is a sleepy kind of place, and on this particular Sunday morning, it was almost comatose…!! By 9.00am, the temperature was already in the 30’s, and the people that were moving about, were going about their business as if they were pushing their way through cottonwool…!!

I wasted no time refueling, rivulets of sweat trickling down my back as I willed the pump to speed up… The clerk in the store took forever to ring up the fuel and the water I had bought, while I stood by in my full kit, sweat running down my forehead… At one point I wanted to lean over the counter and give him a “wake up shake”…!!

“You OK buddy…??” I asked eventually, impatience getting the better of me… “Had a big night maybe…??”

“No mate… It’s so bloody hot this morning… I’d rather be out in the water with my board…!!” he replied…

With a full tank and a heavy hand, we made good time up the Bruce Highway, passing through Kybong, Chatsworth and Gympie, staying west of the Tuan Sate Forest, skirting Maryborough, and then stopped in Childers to get something to eat, and let Cecil know that I was on the way…

I had by now covered almost 400 km and was still another 350 km short of Yeppoon, which lay about 40 km northeast of Rockhampton… In the past, after a layoff from riding, I would normally plan a day of four to five hundred kilometres to get back into the groove with, but here in Australia, with huge distances between the places I intended to visit, my first day back in the saddle had been much longer… Today was no exception, but I was enjoying the feeling of having the Big Fella under me, and despite the heat, felt like riding all day…!!

Which is exactly what I did…!!

Met a few hard core Harley folks along the way....

Hundreds of bikers were out on the road, the vast majority of them astride Harley’s, and cruising at speeds that made the Big Fella sneer…!! I stopped for fuel again at Miriam Vale, and while I stood chugging down a few bottle of water, a very large contingent of the Tribe of Judah motorcycle club arrived… The noise from the dozens of bikes, shattering the afternoon quiet…

Rode with this guy from Miriam Vale to the Gladstone turnoff...

Many of the guys and their girlfriends came over to check us out, and shook hands with me after discovering that I was on a trip a little longer than the one they were currently enjoying…

“Good on yer, Mate…!!” and “Crikey…!! Way to go…!!” seemed the most common parting comment as they walked around the bike and then left to go refuel their hogs… Another biker came to sit on the bench near where I was standing, and we struck up a conversation… I never did get his name, but when I discovered he was on his own and heading north to Gladstone, about an hour away, I decided to ride along with him for awhile…

We stuck to speed limit for most of the time, riding alongside each other and chatting while we swallowed the miles… He was a jovial guy, with a dry sense of humour, and I enjoyed his company, even thought it was for such a short time… It’s at times like this, when despite the fact that you have never met the biker riding next to you, you still feel part of that brotherhood of folk who are happiest when they are astride their bikes and riding…

Seeing a bike cruising next to you, is almost like seeing yourself, and I for one, can’t help wearing a face-splitting grin when I do… You almost immediately fall into a pattern, one of you on the inside of the lane, and the other on the outside (usually where I prefer to be) and you find yourself riding with a casual confidence, even though you have no idea of the skills your companion might or might not have…

There’s an unspoken trust between you, that develops within a few kilometres of riding together…

"Because the sun is going down and I still have a few hundred kilometres to go...!!"

Shortly before the Gladstone turnoff, I dropped back to say my goodbyes, took a few pics of my friend, and then with a salute to him, I yanked the throttle to give the Big Fella notice that it was back to the business of getting to Rockhampton… He responded with glee, and we settled into an easy rhythm as we bore north…

I crossed the Fitzroy River which splits Rockhampton, in the late afternoon, and stopped to call Cecil… He seemed genuinely excited at the prospect of meeting me, and urged me to get to Yeppoon with all due haste…

Half an hour later, I was winding my way down a narrow residential street that draped it’s way across a low range of hills, and pulled up outside a house that was built into the side of the mountain…

Cecil came out into the drive and waved me forward to a spot under the house where I parked and finally switched off the engine for the day… It had been a long nine hours on the road, and I was sweating profusely…

Seconds after introducing ourselves, we cracked open the first welcoming beer of the evening, and then got talking about our bikes and the trips and journeys we had been on…

Cecil greeted me with a cold one....

Then he revealed his own GS....!! Another Big Red...!!

Standing under an elaborate cover nearby, and swathed in a blanket, was Cecil’s own BMW 1200 GSA…!! It was red one, just like Trevor and Chenty’s Big Red, and when the blanket came off it, I felt a sudden pang of longing for my Canadian friends… Many’s the time that I wished they had been with me during my ride through Australia…

It was another few beers before we finally got some kit off the bike and trudged up the stairs into Cecil’s home… I felt my face light up at the sight of hundreds of books, covering almost every surface of the living room area… Judging by the titles, I could see that we shared many of the same interests… History, travel, philosophy, photography… It was easy to see why we had taking an instant liking to each other…!!

While Cecil prepared a salad and dressed the two huge steaks in preparation for BBQ-ing, I related aspects of my trip that he inquired about… He had undertaken a couple of long rides through his adopted country, and was very keen to journey farther ashore himself…

Out on the road with Cecil Barnard... Thank for the ride, Buddy...!!

Our personal circumstances were much the same, and Cecil now lived alone while recovering from his own bout of recent heartbreak… He was delighted to hear about my “discovery” in Bali, and often referred to the experience I was having as a “modern day fairy tale”, which in many ways it was…!!

“99,99 percent of people want to be in your shoes, my friend…!!” he had said while we chewed through our steaks, and all I could say in return, was to repeat the old and now well used cliché, that “If you can dream it, you can do it”…!!

After demolishing two bottles of red wine, to go with the half dozen beers we had earlier punished, I staggered off to bed, mindful of his Dachshund Lulu who dashed about excitedly underfoot, and then made a beeline for my bed, where she stretched out to receive more of the tummy tickling I had earlier subjected her to…

Early the following morning, I awoke to a pounding in my head that not not been there the day before, and after a healthy breakfast of muesli, Cecil and I headed out on a short ride around Yeppoon…

We stopped up on the bluff above Cooee Beach to take a look around, and then headed back through town and out into the countryside where at one point, I looked down to see that we were cruising at 150 km/h down a narrow country road…!! Cecil had been docked many a driver’s point off his license in the past, and I could see why…!!

After a 40 km ride around the northern and westerns part of Yeppoon, we rode back to his house where I bid my new-found friend goodbye, wished him all the luck in this the beginning of his “next life”, and then kicked the Big Fella into gear and pointed him north again…

We stopped at Cooee Bay to take a gander at the view...

Another big day was in the offing, and although I would have like to have got a much earlier start, I was more than happy to have been able to take the short ride I had with Cecil…

Thanks a million for the hospitality and the ride, Cecil… And get your backside onto Big Bertha and take off for the far horizon as soon as you can…

Nothing clears the mind like a long, long ride…!!

©GBWT 2011