Date	18/Nov/17
1 Rider	Hooters
Rider of the day	Not awarded
Stack of the day	Not awarded

The Holland Track Dash Ride Review:- By Jason Old
Ed sums up day 1 of this ride nicely in his video. Video Credits to Ed Pitman & Shane Eriksson.
As we planned this ride, we had setup and planned to be riding in high temperatures, heat & choking dust, what we experienced was the complete opposite. As has been shown on the News, the goldfields area was hit with a small natural disaster of a super cell storm, of which we felt the full force of and threw the rides plans into disarray.
The original plan was to have an early kick off from Hyden, ride the track to Coolgardie and return the next day, with the option of a detour to check out some old ghost towns.
The crew assembled Friday afternoon into Hyden where we enjoyed a meal, meeting each other and good night's sleep. Friday was quiet a warm and windy afternoon, with the Shire of Kondinin actually being under harvest movement bans, we checked with Shire and they gave us clearance to ride the track. Chatting to an old local shearer at the bar, he warned us of mother natures unpredictable nature and that with the hot day, a storm was likely. He was dead right, I didn't believe how right he was to be though!
Everyone was up bright and early, making the last minute preparations to their bikes, when ten minutes before we where due to leave at 6AM, the rain started for a steady shower, delaying the start and soaking the area but not dampening our spirits. A good mix of bikes, 2x KTM 640's, KTM 500EXC, Beta 390, Yamaha WR450F & 250R, SWM 500 and 2x DRZ400's. With around 6000km covered collectively by the bikes for the weekend and no breakdowns encountered, they where all very well prepared.
A 60km transport section dropped us at our start point of the Holland track. A quick regroup and we hit the track, with a cracking pace. No dust, a few puddles and a nice sandy track with plenty of grip. We had spread out nicely and the first 4 bikes passed a 4WD, the only other vehicle we where to see all day. Once the next lot of riders arrived, they where nicely bogged, by themselves with little recovery equipment.
We did try for half an hour to assist to free them, but they where stuck fast. Only hope was another 4wd to snatch out, they had a Sat phone & plenty of water so we had no other option to leave them.
The first part of the storm then hit, with a severe electrical storm hitting the area. I rode to the top of Mount Holland, but with the steel survey pole atop the only high point for kilometers, I made a hasty retreat off the hill to catch up with the group. The first 4 bikes through had been waiting patiently and we decided to split into 2 groups for the remainder of the track.
Unfortunately the next section of the track was the red clay that water doesn't penetrate, it just pools on top and turns into as slippery as Ice, a struggle to walk on let alone ride. With a few stacks and mud growing by the second, we said goodbye to Ed, Peter & Attilio who made the right call and retreated back to the main gravel roads and to a hot shower back at Hyden.
We continued on and battled through the rain and red clay gloop, until the rain did break and sun did manage to dry us out...for a short time. A lot of puddles had formed and at times tricky to navigate, with the 4wd ruts making square edges to the middle of the track and deep holes, just waiting to catch someone out who misjudged. Some of the holes on the track could swallow a 4wd, let a lone a dirtbike!
The group had spreadout quiet a way, with Neil, Mike & Shane getting on the gas and making into Coolgardie just after the severe part of the storm set in. Jed, Paul and myself however where still coming into town on the Victoria Rock rd, when mother nature showed it's force. The worst wind, rain, hail and continually close forked lighting we had ever experienced on bikes. The visibility was down to only meters with trees falling across the road and a very interesting situation. Not very waterproof set up's as we were expecting heat, we were drenched and the needle like rain and hail and 80km gravel road into town felt like it was never going to end.
It was a huge relief when we finally made it into town. But that was only the start of issues. Coolgardie had also copped the brunt of the storm, trees and powerlines down. No power and no fuel of which we where relying on to return back to Hyden. Kalgoorlie & Kambalda were in the same predicament, is amazing how three major towns don't have their key services on generator back up.
Coolgardie had ground to a halt, our ideas of "let's go to the pub, they will put the beers on ice" soon faded out as they, and the servo just shut their doors, leaving us hungry, thirsty and trying to think of plans on how we where to return to Hyden.
Queue Mike Hugtenburg, with the gift of the gab, he had soon arranged the motel we where staying at to put on steak dinners, cold beers & egg and bacon rolls for breakfast, all without power and they could have easily shut their doors to us aswell like the rest of town. Cheers to Vicki & Gold Rush Motels Coolgardie.
An early night and later wakening, the next morning the sun was shining and we spent the most of it, frantically trying to dry out our riding gear. With the maps out and a lot of deliberation on our plan B, we discovered Kambalda BP was running on a genset and pumping fuel. A fellow Ducati road bike rider was also in the same ordeal, with minimal fuel. We divided up the fuel the best we could between all the bikes and the Ducati.
We all limped into Kambalda BP on fumes, both DRZs running out of fuel on the way, but a trick with the safari tanks being to lean the bike all the way over on the left to transfer the last litre or so to the fuel pick up, this was all we needed to get to the servo. We said goodbye to the Ducati rider who was riding back to QLD, very thankful that we were able to help him out.
The amount of water laying on top of the clay pans, it was decided that it could be quiet likely the Holland track was impassable. Chatting to a local, we decided to ride the railway access track from Kambalda to Norseman. This section of the ride was awesome, fast, just the right amount of mud and creek crossing to keep it interesting. You could follow this all the way to Esperance, a ride for another weekend!
Neil had an unfortunate encounter with a culvert, luckily he was relatively unscathed, a bit sore and with a team effort the bike was straightened up, broken bits reassembled and we hit the track again. Some very interesting riding across the salt lakes and nice scenery coming into the hills of Norseman.
With tanks and bellies full from the Norseman Roadhouse's home made sausage rolls, we settled in for the long 300km gravel road stretch back to Hyden. The road didn't seem to end, just concentrating on knocking down kilometer after kilometer we rolled on across the big endless flats of the southern goldfields. Unfortunately Mike's makeshift esky didn't survive the road, once again in 24 hours the track being covered in ice! :)
Minimal dust and corrugations and only a few small sections of slippery clay where the grader had recently been through lead to a reasonably uneventful trip back, other than encountering the couple of Bungarra's, snake and thorny devil. For some reason the local birds (feathered type) took a likening to Jeds Beta, with two different bird collisions coming out of nowhere.
We where all pretty happy to get back to the vehicles and hit the road to Perth, capping off a brilliant adventure with a top bunch of blokes and will definitely do it all again, I couldn't lose the smile the whole way home!
https://youtu.be/Du0dTx4ltWM