3 Mates. 3 WR250Rs.​​​​​​​ 3000km

Brendan Monagle and his mates hit the 2018 WR250R Rally. It meant a ride from Melbourne in Victoria to north of Sydney in NSW.

- Brendan Monagle

The clock ticked over to 5.00am as myself, Nick White and Tom Bennetts fired up our steel horses and embarked into the morning darkness for the first leg of the journey. 

Coming from our respective homes around Melbourne’s suburbs, we convened to fuel up, smash a latte, a bacon-and-egg McMuffin and wait for Nick to stop dilly-dallying before we began our day of scenic dirt roads. We were headed for the WR250R Rally at Cessnock, northwest of Sydney. Over three days we aimed to avoid the highways at all cost, opting for the dirt and scenery of the open country.

Nick of time

First on our agenda was to carve up the corners of Mount Baw Baw, east of Melbourne. We hit the summit at about 9:30am, on the way stopping off in the historic goldrush town of Walhalla. We soaked up the atmosphere of an iconic period in Australian history before jumping on our three blue bullets and knocking out big kilometres through the Gippsland region. Stocked up with steaks and tinnies for our first night’s feast we passed through Buchan and then into the Snowy Mountains. The bitumen disappeared as the glorious red-dirt rolled across the landscape.

We barrelled straight through the mountains, winding around dirt roads with more twists than a pig’s tail, and as the afternoon sun dimmed we pulled over alongside the river and set up camp with not a soul in sight.

Brendan couldn’t resist a quick dip in the chilly waters, insisting a ‘cold one’ was best served in ‘a cold one’. We cracked open the tinnies as Tom – the hardcore ultra-lightweight survivalist – found himself a river rock to cook his steak on.

If that ain’t living off the land I don’t know what is.

Denied