Blog: July 17. Cooktown

It’s a rainy Sunday morning and I’m happy to say I’ve spent the last week riding a loop from Cairns to Cooktown and back in Far North Queensland.

It was for work, so that takes a little of the edge off the ride, but it was still great.

Photographer Wilko and I had been congratulating ourselves on organising a ride we’d both been wanting to do and being able to write the whole thing off as ‘work’, but that backfired. It really was work. Especially for Wilko. We had only a couple of hours in Cooktown when our original plan was to spend a day-and-a-half there, and Wilko was so frigging busy the whole time we hardly managed to wolf down more the two high-class restaurant meals in the town at Triumph’s expense.

The occasion was the model release of the 2106 Triumph Tiger Explorer, a 1200cc triple that turned out to be a surprisingly capable off-roader. As usual with the Triumph Australia, we were never told, ‘No’, no matter what we wanted to do, so the bikes copped, and coped with, some heavy handling.

I’m not a fan of taking bikes on the beach, especially bikes as heavy as these, so my bike stayed high and dry, but the two bikes that did venture onto the tidal flat both ended up sitting on their bashplates. The good news is the water was very fresh and carried hardly any salt. The tide was a long way out, and the pools of water had flowed from the mountainsides that bordered the beach. It was quite drinkable (and free of saltwater crocs).

After the two bikes had shown the nature of the surface, you’d think the message would be clear, but the Triumph guys like a challenge, so…

It took quite a while and a lot of digging to get all three vehicles back on dry land. To everyone’s credit, it was treated as the best fun anyone could have on a working day. There was lots of clowning and paying out on each other and overall it was a really great part of an awesome ride. We caught Barra, spotted crocs, rode sand, water and, in the rain, slimy red mud in the rainforest.

In between those things we stayed at high-class resorts, ate huge amounts of very expensive restaurant food and, on the one night those things weren’t available, we met up with Roy Kunda at the Palmer River and he set up one of his amazing camps, complete with extra-tender, cooked-to-perfection steaks…after an entree of huge prawns and bugs, of course. And coffee!

I bunked down early, but there was clearly some very irresponsible behaviour on that particular evening.

Overall it was a great few days. I had a high opinion of the previous model 1200 Explorer, but this one is even better. The electronics package has been upgraded considerably and now sits level with the other bikes in the class, and the riding comfort is quite amazing.

So that was my week.

Now the payback. I have to try and frantically make up for the week I haven’t been at my desk.

It was worth it.