What’s that old line about BMW GS owners never venturing outside their comfort zones? If it was true, they’d never get any further than the car park at Starbucks… boom-tish!
Now here’s the thing. The 2021 BMW GS Safari in far north Queensland was anything but a walk in the park, and the 200-plus riders on the mammoth organised adventure ride well and truly put paid to the scandalous notion that rival bike riders love to perpetuate.
Despite being scheduled for late May and the dry season, the five-day Townsville to Cairns GS festival was dogged by lingering wet season showers that, shall we say, made conditions just a little more treacherous than expected. And when you think of far north Queensland and its red clay tracks and deep green rainforests that are regularly punctuated by croc-infested waterways, well, calling the conditions treacherous might just be an understatement.
We’ve ridden more than a few waterlogged adventure bike rodeos in our time and day three on the GS Safari was up there with the gnarliest. The notorious Bump Track and Black Mountain Road in the rainforests just north of Kuranda, west of Cairns, are now carved into GS Safari folklore.
It was slippery, it was greasy, the tracks were filled with bog holes and there were swamps deep enough to swallow a GSA whole. Seriously! We loved it. Others, maybe not so much.
But here’s the thing: everyone dug deep, stepped way out of their comfort zones and got through the day. Awesome. And that’s what makes a ride one to remember.
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The driving forces behind the GS Safari are a dynamic duo by the names of Shane Booth and Chris Urquhart, mightily supported by Chris’s partner, Anthea
