SOUTH BOUND TIP RUN
When you get off the plane in Bamaga you enter the simplest airport imaginable, essentially a medium-sized shed on the side of a runway. There was a gaggle of blokes milling around all talking dirtbikes, a language we all instantly recognised. This was the group that preceded us, who did the ride from Cairns to the Tip, and they were clearly pumped from the experience. They shared tales of amazing tracks and a warning about one particularly difficult drop-off which, given we were heading in the opposite direction, would be a climb for us. I’ll point this one out when we get to it.
From the airport we took a bus to the Loyalty Beach campground, which faces north-west on the right-side ‘horn’ of Australia, and we were then closer to Port Moresby than Brisbane. This is where we met up with Daryl, truck driver/chef Scooter, and Peter ‘Buddha’ Luczkowski who would serve as our lead rider for the week. For anyone unfamiliar with Buddha, he served as mechanic for Jeff Liesk, Mick Doohan and Kenny Roberts Jr.
Daryl of course was runner-up in the 1995 500cc World Motorcycle Championship, which meant we were already in the company of motorcycle legends. But it was about to get better with the arrival of Jeremy Burgess, head engineer for both Doohan and Valentino Rossi. Not a bad line-up, right? And the stories told over end-of-day beers were unforgettable.
After looking over the fleet of Honda CRF450Ls and choosing our weapons for the week, we got suited up and made
