My loyal reader may recall that last month found me freezing my proverbiaIs off in the Welsh Mountains just as Her Majesty's Govt. were about to lease them to the Ramblers Association for exclusive use as an upmarket outdoor theme-park (No jeans, trainers or motorcyclists, thank you very much).But since even my loyal reader thinks everything I scribble is a load of scaremongering bollocks, I decided to jet-off in the company Gulfstream Mk. IV to thaw out in the antipodean summer and leave the fate of the off-road motorbicycle trade to those who know better. Mind you, things weren't much better down under, not least because Mirabella Foxpup who I had inadvertantly invited - after an evening of Gin Slings and exotic cheroots at the Boar and Stoat - to replace the otherwise engaged Fill Le Grande as my new personal assistante (otherwise engaged, it turned out, to a 16-stone rugby player from Beckenham, which was a little unfortunate when he realised my intentions), caused a bit of a rumpus at Sydney Airport.
'When you said we were going to visit Sydney,' she squealed, 'I thought you meant Sid Fairbrother, the cut-rate cosmetic surgeon of Marseille for a little top-up up top... You lying brute...' So it was not an encouraging start to what I'd hoped would've been much topless action and frolicking in the surf on Bondi Beach.
As it turned out, even this proved impossible because an urgent telegram from My Editor (they still have telegrams in Australia - it's the colonies) bade, nay, ordered me to compile a viability study for an Oz edition of M/cycle Trader: the man's empire building mania is completely relentless.
It was as much as I could do to persuade the still-sulky Ms. Foxpup to throw her powder blue-jeaned Essex legs over the XJR1300 provided by the nice man at Yamaha Australia, but eventually we left on an odyssey of discovery, cheap motels and nasty rashes, the results of which don't make entirely pleasant reading... certainly in a family magazine like this.
First off, if we think we've got it bad with Gatsos and draconian speed limits in Blighty, you should try Oz.
Against this draconian background, which is perhaps a grim taste of things to come hereabouts, it's hardly surprising that sales of motorbicycles aren't exactly buoyant at 18- 20,000 units last Year. Well that's actually not quite true, because no-one could tell me how many unregistered bikes are outed each year, and in a country which is about 95% wild, open space many thousands of off-road bikes are sold and not registered every year. It mightn't even surprise you to know that the top four selling bikes last year were ALL dirt bikes, with Yamaha's WRF450 the top dog. And then there's the additional distortion of the thousands of Honda CT11Os which are bought to carry Australia's postpersons on their rounds.
So against this scenario, how does the trade stack up? Well multifranchise dealers occupy impressively spacious premises on the outskirts of most cities, although Honda and Harley-D tend to do their own thing just as they do here. What is initially a little unsettling is to walk into one of these gaffs and find dirtbikes occupying as much if not more space than roadies, whereas in Blighty they're either in specialist outlets or tucked away behind last year's run-out ER-5s. Even more peculiar was the sight of blokes turning up at Sydney Yamaha-Ducati on 30 year-old Bonnies and Commandos to window shop for brand new sportbikes, but the thing of it is that because the climate is so kind to anything automotive down under, so-called classic bikes survive a lot longer and are used as everyday transport. Plus there's none of the nonsensical polarity between ancient and modem motorcycles that exists over here.
Only in Melbourne, which is way down on the south coast and rather more culturally and climatically agreeable than the unbearably hot and aggressively cobber-ish eastern coast, were there any of what I'd call traditional dealers. What's more, as used to be the case in many British cities, most of 'em were lined up in the same road (Elizabeth Street, to be exact) and cheerfully bursting with randomly categorised makes and models, both old and new. This was nirvana to me, and after half an hour of rapturous suspension testing I'd nearly been persuaded to buy a spanking new DT175 (yes, they're still available in Oz) for a piffling £1500 which the nice salesman with the kipper tie (yes, they're still available in Oz) claimed he could ship to the UK for £200... by which time Ms. Foxpup was showing all the signs of going ballistic from boredom, so we left just in time to save my wallet and my shins.
However in such a sparsely populated country it is inevitable that there are dealers that have neither airy air-conditioned palaces nor jam-packed shopfronts with oil-stained linoleum floors, and one of the most unusual and frankly innovative dealers I visited straddled the crossroads in the tiny, outback town of Daylesford in Victoria. At the imaginatively christened, er, CrossRoads Motorcycle Cafe, Henry Mitchell serves up an ice-cold Diet Coke or a cup of English Breakfast tea (if you're mad enough to want one in the 35° swelter) whilst he spanners away at his eclectic selection of Jap trailies and classic Europeans (including a gorgeous Ducati Sebring). His sole agency ? Royal Enfield 'Which we're doing pretty well with.' I was happy as a larrikin to sit and jaw with him and, what was even better, his shop was next door to the local beautician, which kept Ms. Foxpup from giving me agg whilst she got a manicure.
There's a lesson here somewhere, but jet-lagged outta my mind after 32 hours flying back to snow-storms, powercuts and Ms. Foxpup's parents screaming something about age of consent, rm damned if I'm sure what it is. Emigrate of Oz, maybe?