“What’s the chance of a quad bike review?”
our esteemed editor asked. Fairly slim, as it turns out.
Quad bikes exist in a strange legal black hole in Victoria – you can buy them, but you can’t register them for recreational purposes. You can get a limited kind of road registration for them as a “special work vehicle”, but to do so you need to basically prove you’re a farmer with your own land.
But there are a few “quad bike experience” tours out there that allow you to have a crack at these strange vehicles, so I sign myself up for a two-and-a-half-hour session at Adrenalin Quad Bike Hire in Sale, Gippsland.
For company, I recruit Cheffie, a two-wheeled tarmac terrorist, as well as my conservative father, John, who makes it clear in advance that he thinks “quad bikes are for environmental thugs who just want to tear up the soil”.
We are greeted by the weathered and inscrutable Gary, who talks us through how to ride our hulking steeds in a manner that makes it clear he’s dealt with some resoundingly stupid individuals in his time.
“Throttle’s over here at your right thumb. This is your front brake. Don’t use it, you’ll probably crash. This is your back brake, it’s been disconnected. This is your park brake, we cut that off as well; people were riding around with the brakes on all day and complaining that the bikes were too slow.”
Cheffie is assigned a stocky Kawasaki 370, dad takes the beefy Honda King Quad 500 and I’m given a Honda 400 festooned with so many cable ties that they almost look decorative. After a couple of laps around a test loop to make sure we’re not going to kill ourselves immediately, we set off.
Our first few tracks are quite varied, from open smooth paddock tracks to deeply rutted backroads where, frankly, it’s amazing the quads don’t bottom out and get bogged.
In open corners, the best approach seems to be diving in way too fast, throwing your body into the turn, then wrenching the handlebars around and mashing the thumb throttle to spin the back out.
After a brief slide, the chunky back tyres will grip and fire you out in roughly the right direction. This is most excellent fun.
In the ruts, the best approach is more or less to let the bars move freely as they will, and mash the thumb throttle so the bike can just slide and steer itself. This is also excellent fun.
Next we’re diving into the bush, dodging tea trees and ducking under branches on tight, technical trails that require a lot of attention.
Cheffie and I are starting to have some serious fun. This does not escape Gary, whose asset preservation instincts kick in.
He gently slows the pace, which lets me think for a minute about what we’re riding over – fallen tree branches, knee-deep ruts and bumps, rocks … These quads aren’t fazed, they’ll pull you over all sorts of stuff.
And then, suddenly, the track opens up and we see the main event – a giant, moist, virgin mud flat that spans several hectares. We stop to admire it under the Gippsland sky.
“Well at least if we fall off, mud’s supposed to be great for your skin,” says Cheffie.
“Not this mud,” replies Gary, “I promise you. There’s not a crack or crevice this stuff won’t stick in, and you don’t wanna know what it’s made of.”
We gas it out onto the mud, and as soon as each bike crosses the line onto the soggy stuff, traction becomes a distant memory. The quad bikes just sail gracefully across the surface, sending up giant rooster tails of chunky mud. Cheffie sails past at full lock sideways, engine bellowing and laughing like a madman despite travelling at a fairly sedate 20km/h or so. Dad floats past backwards in a gentle loop, looking slightly dazed. Gary cracks a rare grin.
You certainly want to have your wheels pointed in the right direction when you hit the dry stuff again because, when the wheels grip, it’s a lot more abrupt than when sliding.
I hit the dry at an angle moving at about 40km/h and immediately regret it, nearly pitching myself off the side. But I follow the golden rule – when in doubt, gas it out – and the bike sorts itself out quick smart.
Back at the shed, I ask my companions what they reckon about the whole experience. “F***ing outstanding,” says Cheffie, spattered with mud from head to toe and still giggling.
Dad is less convinced: “Well, that’s more or less what we used to do getting from A to B on the farm.”
For my part, I’ve enjoyed these odd machines far more than I expected. They’re enormously grunty, quite physical to ride but lots of fun to stuff into tight corners or wrestle around a longer arc. They’re certainly at their most exciting when pointed sideways but, in the back of your mind, you’re always aware that they tend to roll over the top of you in a crash, with severe spinal consequences.
Gary reckons all sorts of people sign up for these tours, from 90-year-old grandmothers to bucks’ turns to groups of Melbourne businesswomen.
“Those girls are mad. They come down twice a year. We stick ’em out in the mud bowl and come back in eight hours to get ’em,” he says.
“They look like creatures from the black lagoon at the end of the day. But that’s what it’s all about!”
