CLASS

Please enjoy another great piece of writing in our series of Heywire competition stories. For those who missed the introduction to this series, these stories have been prepared by students as an English assessment and are being shared with you as they were submitted for assessment. (So, yes, there are some grammatical errors and spelling mistakes). 

As many are deeply personal, students have chosen to have them published anonymously. We encourage you to enjoy them as they are meant to be: the amazing personal stories of our teenage students. 

Dr Margaret Henderson

Greenbushes – Wokalup ride

The cold air gushing over me as I look left and right over my shoulder before I cross the main street of Greenbushes to begin my venture from Greenbushes to Wokalup via Enduro dirt bikes for 160kms through the forest. As I cruise down the main street of Greenbushes I look up at the sky and all I can see is endless dark gloomy grey clouds, this is when I knew that it was going to be a long, hard, challenging ride. 

We reach the end of the road where the lead rider enters a single trail and we enter, there are 5 of us. The night before, the winds were up to 100kph, which caused lots of trees to obstruct the track, which meant that we had to jump the 115kg bike over them. Once we were 50km into the ride we arrived at our first checkpoint, Glen Mervyn dam near Collie, this is where we had a bite to eat at the Utes, but after a 15 minute break we were straight back in the deep lush green forest, I started to notice the gloomy dark grey clouds getting closer to us, we had to make a quick stop to equip the wet weather gear to prevent our dirt bike gear getting soaking wet, that would add 5+ kilograms to our weight. 

Riding through the hills is a different type of adrenaline, weaving in and out of the tall steep hills make you feel free. We were getting closer to our second stop, near Allanson, this is the final stop before arriving at Wokalup pub. We rolled into the next stop where the two Utes were waiting, as I came around the corner, I could see dad standing next to his car, I could tell that he had a sigh of relief seeing me still in 1 piece. We re-fuelled the bikes, had a drink of water and we were off, back into the slippery, clay, hilly country. By this time, it was 1:30pm, 5 minutes after the stop the rain bucketed down on us, I felt a puddle like feeling in my boots after going through an abundant amount of half a metre deep puddle. 

Out in the forest you lose all your bearings, everywhere you look looks the exact same no matter where you are, but somehow our lead rider knows the way around the forest like the back of his hand which amazes me. When riding through the forest you don’t know what obstacles you can stumble upon like wire, deep wheel ruts, puddles, black ice (very slippery clay), rocks, steep hills, railways, other bikes flying around the same corner as you at 100kph. About 30 minutes after the rain had started, it had paused, we got about 20mm of rain in the space of 25 minutes, this is when I knew the puddles are going to cause issues for us and our bikes. I came around a corner at the bottom of a valley and their was one of our riders stuck in the middle of a metre deep puddle, luckily his bike didn’t suck in much water and was able to start right up and ride out of the muddy mess, I was next to go through the puddle, I was quivering, had goosebumps, felt like a wet rag and had to build up the confidence to attempt to skim over the puddle.

As I entered it just got deeper and deeper, suddenly my bike veered off to the side and I had no choice but to let it drop, I leaped off, it fell on the air filter side of the bike which means it was sucking water into the engine, I had to rush to cut the engine out before it was too late, I picked the bike up and attempted to start it which wasn’t easy, it was trying to start for 20 seconds but didn’t sound like it was getting anywhere. I was shaking in fear of knowing that I had just hydro locked my bike, but I persevered starting it, suddenly I heard it turn over, steam was puffing out the exhaust burning off all the water that it had just sucked in, I was out of the puddle and on my way. We were about 15 kilometres out of Wokalup, we were near Mornington Road which was our last road to venture down. 

Riding along side the other riders is a different feeling, knowing that we had made it safely out of 160 kilometres of treacherous thick forest. By the time we were heading down Mornington road it was 3 o’clock, all I could think about was changing into my warm track suit pants and sitting by the heater, as we came past Harvey Ag it felt like I was having a dream, riding my own dirt bike past my school, turning right onto south west highway was like the homestretch of a long road trip, I could see dad with a smirk knowing that all 5 bikes had arrived in one piece. This ride will be a lifelong memory for all of us.