Travel Story
How I Got My Groove Back On The Road
by Celina McEwen
June 2019
Earlier this year, during the Australian summer month of January, the author went on her first motorbike road trip around the state of New South Wales (NSW). She recounts her ride and what it took for her to get there.
Earlier this year, during the Australian summer month of January, the author went on her first motorbike road trip around the state of New South Wales (NSW). She recounts her ride and what it took for her to get there.
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My Early Bike Dreams
Going on a motorbike trip had been one of my earliest dreams. I must have been eight years old, sitting in the back of a car with my nose pressed against the window when a fleet of bikes rode pass. The riders looked so free and happy, but also agile and light, a bit like dancers. It looked like so much fun that I wanted to be one of them. From then on, each time I saw bikes ride pass, I would say to myself: “One day, I’ll be riding too”. I imagined that day so many times.
All the way through my teenage years riding stayed on my mind. I was determined to learn, even before learning to drive a car. So as soon as I had enough money, I booked lessons. I was 18 years old and working during the summer break in the south of France. I imagined I could get my licence in that short period of time. |
First Bike Lessons
With no prior riding experience, the young school instructor handed me a Honda 650 cc. And with the bike, I also received a bag of mixed emotions, for which I was not prepared. I remember the thrill of finally sitting on a bike, the giddiness I felt from riding in traffic, the stress of manoeuvring slowly around tightly lined up cones, and the frustration from having dropped the bike and trying to lift it up under the smirks of the ‘boys’—learners and instructors alike. This was in the mid-1980s and not many women rode bikes in France, so true to this norm, I was the only one taking the course and patronised as cute for trying at first and then as odd for carrying on.
I now know that I needed more than a wish to ride. I needed to have a drive that no amount of smirks and comments from my family and friends, telling me that it wasn’t ‘for me’ to ride a bike, could sway. I needed to have the unshakeable confidence that I could do it. So, despite passing the knowledge test on my first attempt and having completed my course, doubts settled on the day of the riding test. I started to think that I was not strong or tough enough to ride a bike, that I was “out of my league”, that it was not reasonable, and that I was unlikely to ride in Paris where I lived at the time. It was no surprise then that I failed the practice test. But instead of persevering once the month was up, because I was returning to university, I convinced myself that it would be best to put it off for a while and went back to dreaming about riding into the sunset with a group of friends.
I now know that I needed more than a wish to ride. I needed to have a drive that no amount of smirks and comments from my family and friends, telling me that it wasn’t ‘for me’ to ride a bike, could sway. I needed to have the unshakeable confidence that I could do it. So, despite passing the knowledge test on my first attempt and having completed my course, doubts settled on the day of the riding test. I started to think that I was not strong or tough enough to ride a bike, that I was “out of my league”, that it was not reasonable, and that I was unlikely to ride in Paris where I lived at the time. It was no surprise then that I failed the practice test. But instead of persevering once the month was up, because I was returning to university, I convinced myself that it would be best to put it off for a while and went back to dreaming about riding into the sunset with a group of friends.
Still Yearning For A Bike
Fast forward 25 years. I am now 44 and I have travelled on my own around Asia, the Pacific and Australia as well as had the privilege of studying and living in several large cities in Europe and Australia. For various reasons, I find myself living in Australia again where my dream of riding resurfaces. Under new circumstances, I decide that it's time to try for the rider's licence again. It's a different time and place: by then riding is not as much as an exclusive boys club; I'm old enough to know that I can do this; there is more time to practice as you can ride with a learner’s licence before going for your final practice test; and I have a good reason to ride as it would be that much easier for me to get to work. I am excited to be riding even with my ‘L’ plate, so imagine how I feel when I am finally awarded my full licence. I am ecstatic!
When it's time to choose my first bike, I am pragmatic and opt for a city commuting solution: a 2007 Piaggio Fly 125 cc scooter. For the next eight years, I have great fun riding to work and zipping around town on the weekends. As soon as my child is eight, the legal age to be a passenger, he becomes my regular riding companion. But as years go by, he has become a reluctant pillion, especially because he has realised how Sydney drivers are unaware, uneducated or even, at times, hostile towards riders—although I have hope this will soon change as the number of riders has phenomenally increased in a very short period of time.
When it's time to choose my first bike, I am pragmatic and opt for a city commuting solution: a 2007 Piaggio Fly 125 cc scooter. For the next eight years, I have great fun riding to work and zipping around town on the weekends. As soon as my child is eight, the legal age to be a passenger, he becomes my regular riding companion. But as years go by, he has become a reluctant pillion, especially because he has realised how Sydney drivers are unaware, uneducated or even, at times, hostile towards riders—although I have hope this will soon change as the number of riders has phenomenally increased in a very short period of time.
New Friend, New Bike Dreams
I probably would have remained a scooter rider had it not been for ‘Sizzle’—my partner’s nickname based on his bike’s number plate that includes the words’ three consonants. It’s not that I wasn’t super keen to ride a bigger manual motorbike, but it seemed so difficult to choose the ‘right’ one. For years, I looked at bikes online. I even bought “Motorcycling for Dummies”— which, despite being US-centric, is very useful to find out more about “First bikes”, “Buying a bike”, “Preparing to hit the road” and “Women in motorcycle”—and asked advice from people I trusted. But I also received unsolicited counsel from people I barely knew—ranging from encouraging, to condescending and outright disparaging. Again, social conventions were being thrown at me, insinuating I was a bad mother for wanting to ride a bike: “Do you really think it is sensible for a mother to ride?”; “What if you had an accident?” Not questions they would have asked a father. But I was also doing a good job of creating my own obstacles. I kept freezing at the idea of going out by myself to test a second-hand bike. What if I couldn’t ride it? What if I dropped it? A couple of male friend riders told me they would come with me, but there again I wondered how many times I could ask them to drive out to the suburbs to check out a bike and help me determine whether it was a good deal or not.
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So, after seven years of riding, I still didn’t know how to go about buying a second-hand bike and where to start to choose a model. The only things I knew were that I liked the look of smaller bikes, because they were lighter and, thus, easier to handle and pick up by myself should I drop it or fall off—an essential criteria thanks to the smirking ‘boys’— and that I wanted something above 450 cc. In addition to that, I had to be realistic about what I could afford to buy and maintain as well as insure—because the road tax and insurance cost go up with the size of the engine. But this is where Sizzle comes in the picture. Soon after meeting him, he helped me turn my old dream into a reality. By assisting me in simplifying and clarifying my needs, he made the purchase of a bike more concrete. We talked about the various options and managed to narrow the list of possibilities down. I figured out that I wanted a cruiser between 650 and 850 cc. I also figured out that, however much I love the look of the Triumph, Motto Guzzy and the likes, I was better off—for now anyway—with a Japanese bike—easy to find second-hand and cheaper to buy and fix.
Motorbike Search Begins
Equipped with this list, I set online searching Australian bike sale websites. Very soon, I found the perfect bike for me at the right price. It was a 1995 Virago 750 cc cruiser. The Virago is very light, comfortable and manoeuvrable, and this one had less than 20,000 km on the clock. But I still only dared ‘watch’ it online because it was located north of Brisbane, in Queensland, one thousand kilometres from where I live in Sydney. And the questions flooded again: “How can I test ride it?”; “When will I have time to go there?”; “How can I bring it back down to Sydney?”; “How much extra will it cost to register in NSW?”.
In fact, the answers were straight forward and, with Sizzle’s support, three weeks after seeing it for the first time online, we were driving back from Queensland with my bike strapped to a trailer. In Australia, each state manages the delivery of licences, the collection of road taxes, etc. This means that, in NSW, to register a bike from another state, you will need to have it inspected by an accredited mechanic who will then issue a ‘pink slip’ to certify that it is mechanically OK and has not been illegally modified. With this piece of paper and the compulsory insurance, I was then able to transfer the registration from the previous owner to myself, the new owner, at the NSW government Roads and Maritime Services.
Funnily enough, that turned out to be the easy part, because it’s one thing riding an automatic scooter in town at around 50 km per hour, and a very different thing riding a bigger, more powerful manual bike at around 110 km per hour—the maximum speed limit in Australia—on a range of surfaces. It took me four weeks to feel comfortable venturing out of my local area and ready for a long ride down the coast to Wollongong. It then took me another two months to plan and set off on the road trip.
In fact, the answers were straight forward and, with Sizzle’s support, three weeks after seeing it for the first time online, we were driving back from Queensland with my bike strapped to a trailer. In Australia, each state manages the delivery of licences, the collection of road taxes, etc. This means that, in NSW, to register a bike from another state, you will need to have it inspected by an accredited mechanic who will then issue a ‘pink slip’ to certify that it is mechanically OK and has not been illegally modified. With this piece of paper and the compulsory insurance, I was then able to transfer the registration from the previous owner to myself, the new owner, at the NSW government Roads and Maritime Services.
Funnily enough, that turned out to be the easy part, because it’s one thing riding an automatic scooter in town at around 50 km per hour, and a very different thing riding a bigger, more powerful manual bike at around 110 km per hour—the maximum speed limit in Australia—on a range of surfaces. It took me four weeks to feel comfortable venturing out of my local area and ready for a long ride down the coast to Wollongong. It then took me another two months to plan and set off on the road trip.
So, at the age of 52, I lived my dream and as my cousin remarked, “I got my groove back”. Sizzle and I went on a five-day trip, camping along the way. We did a 1,400 km loop around NSW. Departing from Sydney, we rode north, following the Hawkesbury River, crossing at Wiseman's Ferry. We kept going through the Hunter Valley, spent our first night in Singleton, and then rode through New England region. There we stopped at Tamworth and Armidale. We then rode east to Coffs Harbour on the coast, before heading back south to Sydney through the great lakes area, with a stopover in Forster.
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Road Trip NSW
Once you leave the cities, you’ll find that NSW has varied and beautiful sceneries. Riding in the Hawkesbury gives you this strange sense of riding through the English countryside with its gently winding, narrow roads between river and forest. But look closely and you’ll be amazed by how different it really is. Take for instance the colours, shapes and textures of the eucalyptus trees with their mix of straight and crooked, smooth and peeling bark, with shades of blue-green, dark orange and silver grey, but also burnt black trunks from bushfire. Riding slowly, I could smell the smoke from fires spreading across the bush.
Going up the mountain range of New England was another experience altogether with its wide and straighter roads stretching lazily through farmland. The ride there was fast and smooth, but still allowing me plenty of time to spot the crops, cows and horses, as well as the odd isolated houses in valleys or on top of hills. Along the way, I had the pleasure of being regaled by the loud galas, colourful lorikeets and indolent kangaroos, and the displeasure of seeing too many roadkills—a reminder to ride with extra caution at sunrise and sunset to avoid animals that cross the road in search for food—first signalled by the mangled red on the road or by the strong smell of rotting carcass.
A new set of pleasures awaited as we made our way down towards the coast. They included the gradual change from the scents of wattle blooms, jasmine flowers, cypress, pine trees, and mowed lawn, to the salty smell of the ocean. We left behind the calls of the birds for the sounds of the cicadas and the noise of the wind in the treetops for that of the waves crashing on the shore. Riding further along the coast, we reached the spectacular Lakes Way, a 77 km long road between ocean and lakes. This is definitely a place where you should stop to take in the landscape more fully.
Going up the mountain range of New England was another experience altogether with its wide and straighter roads stretching lazily through farmland. The ride there was fast and smooth, but still allowing me plenty of time to spot the crops, cows and horses, as well as the odd isolated houses in valleys or on top of hills. Along the way, I had the pleasure of being regaled by the loud galas, colourful lorikeets and indolent kangaroos, and the displeasure of seeing too many roadkills—a reminder to ride with extra caution at sunrise and sunset to avoid animals that cross the road in search for food—first signalled by the mangled red on the road or by the strong smell of rotting carcass.
A new set of pleasures awaited as we made our way down towards the coast. They included the gradual change from the scents of wattle blooms, jasmine flowers, cypress, pine trees, and mowed lawn, to the salty smell of the ocean. We left behind the calls of the birds for the sounds of the cicadas and the noise of the wind in the treetops for that of the waves crashing on the shore. Riding further along the coast, we reached the spectacular Lakes Way, a 77 km long road between ocean and lakes. This is definitely a place where you should stop to take in the landscape more fully.
Camping And Road Tripping
As I mentioned earlier, the road trip was also a camping trip. Now, I should say that I’m not one for camping. It reminds me of camping in France when I was a child, especially seeing my parents pack the car with the suitcases, the tents, the inflatable mattresses, the food, the table, the chairs, cooking stove. And it also involved going back to the same camping site every year, pitching the tent in the same spot, meeting more of the same or similar people, etc. But this time it was a pleasure because we travelled light and didn’t know where we would stay every night. We packed a two-person tent, ultra-thin, self-inflatable mattresses and a small waterproof bag of clothes each. We strapped all of that to the back of our bikes and off we went.
We didn’t book sites nor did we pack food as the areas we were travelling through had plenty of options to sleep and eat. Besides petrol station food, we found alternative cafes, gourmet pubs and friendly local supermarkets. We didn’t need to make reservations ahead of time because, even in January, the peak summer holiday season in Australia, there are camping sites where you can simply call in on the day for a spot to pitch your tent for the night—although, camping sites along the coast are busier than inland during that season and you may need to try a few places before finding a vacancy.
Inland, the sites were very green and plots spacious, with friendly campers greeting us and wanting to chat about bikes—well, mostly men talking to Sizzle about engine size and tyres, while ignoring me. Along the coast, though, camping sites were divided into small plots with barely enough space for people to walk in between the clusters of caravans and tents of large family and friend groups, making these densely packed sites as attractive as living in newly developed high-rise suburb. We also found that some sites were very peaceful than others. Indeed, some were near train tracks or too close to the road, while in others we found ourselves lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves or enchanted by morning birdcalls and evening frog orchestras. The other big difference worth mentioning between coastal and inland camping is the price of a site, ranging from $20 a night on a powered site inland to $120 a night along the coast.
We didn’t book sites nor did we pack food as the areas we were travelling through had plenty of options to sleep and eat. Besides petrol station food, we found alternative cafes, gourmet pubs and friendly local supermarkets. We didn’t need to make reservations ahead of time because, even in January, the peak summer holiday season in Australia, there are camping sites where you can simply call in on the day for a spot to pitch your tent for the night—although, camping sites along the coast are busier than inland during that season and you may need to try a few places before finding a vacancy.
Inland, the sites were very green and plots spacious, with friendly campers greeting us and wanting to chat about bikes—well, mostly men talking to Sizzle about engine size and tyres, while ignoring me. Along the coast, though, camping sites were divided into small plots with barely enough space for people to walk in between the clusters of caravans and tents of large family and friend groups, making these densely packed sites as attractive as living in newly developed high-rise suburb. We also found that some sites were very peaceful than others. Indeed, some were near train tracks or too close to the road, while in others we found ourselves lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves or enchanted by morning birdcalls and evening frog orchestras. The other big difference worth mentioning between coastal and inland camping is the price of a site, ranging from $20 a night on a powered site inland to $120 a night along the coast.
Part of enjoying a ride is also to connect with other riders with a low wave of the hand or a slow nod. Over the course of the five days, we saw many riders, mostly men riding solo, duo, and, occasionally, in larger groups. On this trip, I didn’t see many women. Admittedly, it is difficult to determine whether a rider wearing a full-face helmet and other protective gear is a female or a male, but there are a few signs that give female riders away, such as a smaller build and the shape of the thighs. Of the ones I saw, very few were riders; the great majority were pillion passengers. In any case, none of them was black! Whatever the numbers, it was with great warmth that we acknowledged each other with a tip of the helmet. As a female rider, I also got a few winks from drivers I assume were also riders. All these silent acknowledgements are part of the joy of being a rider too because they are signs that you are accepted as a member of this large community.
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Of course, over the five days, there were a few ‘hairy’ moments, mostly because of drivers tailing me or not paying attention when changing lane and swerving onto me. Despite those moments, which served as reminders to always be vigilant and, as the NSW road safety campaign states, to ‘ride to live’, the road trip was amazing. Not only did I get my groove back, but I also got to live the dream of my life and confirmed the joy that riding is.
Whether solo or with Sizzle, I love riding. It’s such a wonderful feeling. Besides the speed, one of the main attractions of riding a bike is the fact that you feel like you are one with the landscape. When you ride you are immersed in what you see, but you also experience smells, sounds and touch more vividly. And, so it was on this trip, the sensations were incredible. I particularly love feeling the wind, the drizzle of the garden sprinklers, and the heavy rain, or the cool air of the shaded road, the hot midday sun, the heat of the engine against my calves or from the asphalt rising to my face. Plus, I enjoy the physicality of riding: sitting for hours, guiding the bike with your upper body and arms, but also simply feeling your body with and against the natural elements, for example when resisting the wind or insects crashing into your lower leg, the sweat rolling down your neck and spine from the sweltering protective gear. In addition to that, I love the raw, powerful sound of the engines; especially riding behind Sizzle’s deep and round roar when it joins with the soft hum mixed with high pitch undertones of mine.
Local Bike Rides
I haven’t planned my next road trip yet, but I can’t wait to set off again. In the meantime, I regularly go for a ride along the south coast, between Sydney and Wollongong. That stretch of land is a delight as it offers bush covered hills and secluded alcove beaches, national parks and quaint little towns, three-lane motorways and slow windy roads. But even simply riding around Sydney can be exciting, for example from Watson Bay north of the Eastern Suburbs coastal line, down and around Botany Bay. And what’s more, recently, I have noticed an increase in women riders around these parts, finally joining in the joy of riding.
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