Burt Munro Challenge - Oreti Beach

[Richard Gee]

As some of you might have gathered from one or two threads I've posted here and on another couple of forums, I've gotten quite into this Burt Munro stuff since being down here - read the books, seen the movie, the documentary and been to Hayes a couple of times to see and photograph the bikes.

This weekend there is a tribute meeting going on in Invercargill - beach racing at Oreti, something at Teretonga, a road rally and a road race on Sunday. Beach race today and decided I would just have togo. We went with a guy who runs a restaurant in QT, who is good mates with one of the guys who was going racing (Nice guy, is the Jack Daniel's NZ distributor).

We left QT last night at about 8.30pm and arrived at Colac Bay (I think) where my mate's batch is. His mate and another guy were there with their BSA's one of which had the head off and was ebing rebuilt after bending a valve earlier in the day during unofficial 'testing'... They finally got it fired up and revving happily at 1.30am. What the neighbours would have thought is anyone's guess. It was a single cyclinder 500cc (not the bike in the pics below) and made an 'oompah....oompah....' kind of noise as it was blipped.

We left the batch this morning at about 7 and arfrived at Oreti about 8 in conditionas that could be described modestly as 'stormy' and more accurately as 'like a fookin hurricaine'.

Took heaps of pics, here are a few. Didn't get to the Teretonga track race :-( Nevertheless was blown away by some of the machinery there, from stunning historical classics to some of the wackiest racers I've seen... Hope you like them.

Where we stayed (yes, they are eyebrows and that is a smile)




Nice Indian in the paddock




Another nice Indian




And another




Wacky racer 1!!!!!!!!!!




Wacky racer 2 (This guy was popping wheelies and squirming about all the way up the half mile track, and back down the other half mile....)




Team Jack Daniel's




Giving it some




Giving it some more




The racing




Helmets are essential wear in sand storms....

Edited by Richard Gee on Saturday 25th November 02:33

[Esprit]

very, very cool.... it's times like these that NZ reveals some of its true magic.... for all of the faults of the NZ people, there are still blokes in sheds with their toys

[GravelBen]

Nice

That also explains the number of classic bikes I've been seeing in Dunedin this week must have been all making their way slowly southwards. (or not so slowly)

[marksteamnz]

Thanks for the pictures brilliant. Considerably better capturing the atmosphere than the TV1 news coverage.
Richard you said you've read the Munro books is that the Begg biography and the Tim Hanna biography? If so how do they rate, compare etc?
Cheers
Mark Stacey

[Richard Gee]

I think I like the Begg one better. I get the impression, and it might only be an impression, that the Hanna one has just popped up because of the Munro hype. Mind you, I enjoyed the John Brittan book a great deal. Still reading Hanna's Munro book by the way! Put it this way, my dad is into it in the UK too, and I've sent him the Begg book as a Christmas present!