My first motorbike camp of 2026
Early February 2026
Himi in pieces in the garage for nearly 2 months after the rear shock failed.
There have not been many posts of late as Himi had a hernia. At the beginning of December the rear shock blew on my motorbike and to this day I still have not had a reply from Royal Enfield about a warranty claim. So much for the 3 year unlimited kilometre warranty!
Millstream Falls, Australia’s widest single drop waterfall, February 2022.
I asked my Royal Enfield dealer if there were any replacement shocks for me to buy if my warranty claim was denied? There were none in Australia to even purchase. I ended up having to buy a third party shock to get the bike back on the road. That took 6 weeks to arrive :(
The plan for this trip with the repaired bike was to camp in the old logging area in Tumoulin State Forest. After setting up camp I would visit Millstream Falls just outside of Ravenshoe.
We have had a lot of rain and there is no track into my intended campsite in an old logging area. You need to make your way through dense both fallen and standing trees. In the wet I thought this might be an issue but the real problem was getting to the trees.
I needed to first travel a hard clay packed road on Himi that in sections has no rocks in it for grip and is not flat. This type of dirt road I call “red ice”. I know from walking this road over many years in the wet season that even on foot it is easy to end up on your back side.
A section of the road during the dry back in July 2020. It looks so harmless in the dry.
I got two thirds of the way in and was so pleased with how well I was doing. Then mother nature sent myself and 200 kilograms of motorbike and camping gear to the ground. One second I was upright and the next I was flat on the ground with both myself and the motorbike pointing in the opposite direction I was heading.
Was mother nature telling me to turn around? Not one to take advice when in charge of a motor vehicle (ask my wife) I decided to proceed on to camp.
Have you ever tried to pick up 200 kilograms of motorbike and camping gear on a clay track so slippery you can barely stand up? I had to drag the motorbike off the track into the grass to get it upright.
I did not get much sleep that night as the rain did not stop and I was a bit worried about how I was going to get out on a track that would be even worse.
I did get out safely the next day with a lot of sliding and cross rutting and quite few heart in the mouth moments. I was very pleased that I managed to not drop the bike!
I spent the rest of the day on far less slippery dirt roads and visited a raging brown water Millstream Falls :)