Worth the wait: Cancelled for 2022, plan now for the Burt Munro Challenge 2023. Photo / Great South
This month should have seen thousands of bikers head south for the annual Burt Munro Challenge but the ongoing Covid uncertainty led to its cancellation. With dates now confirmed for2023, Jane Phare explains why you should put it in your diary and plan your trip now.
There is something about Southland that revives the soul, at least for a jaded Aucklander wanting relief from sticky humidity, endless traffic – and when normality resumes, an escape from a seemingly endless pandemic.
It's February 2020 and my husband and I are flying into Queenstown to savour the two-and-a-bit-hours' drive on heavenly roads to Invercargill. And what a drive — towering mountain ranges with tiny hints of snow still clinging to the peaks, Lake Wakatipu farewelled at Kingston, and on to the softer, rolling hills which in turn give way to the flatness of the Southland Plains.
On the way are towns like Garston, Athol, Lumsden, Dipton and Winton, places where you can park outside a cafe, get a cream doughnut at the bakery and wash your windscreen at the petrol station with no one waiting behind.
And then, Invercargill, cheerfully overrun by bikers in black leather and boots, every motel along the city's motel mile, Tay St, gratefully showing a "no vacancy" sign, and a campground near Oreti Beach is full.
They come on a pilgrimage every year to the Burt Munro Challenge, zooming in from as far away as Northland to gather, admire each other's bikes, exchange road-trip stories, rev their bikes just for the joy of the noise, and – for some – take part in the racing.
Outrageous Fortune comes to town and Invercargill loves it.
The Burt Munro Challenge is seven events spread over five days on local racetracks and the stunning flat sands of Oreti Beach where Burt Munro tested his modified 1920 Indian Scout bike and set a New Zealand open beach speed record.
But first, we head south for the half-hour drive to Bluff/Motopōhue and the much-anticipated speed hill climb. But Bluff's weather has other ideas. It turns on rain, high winds and chilly temperatures. Volunteers in fluoro safety vests huddle on the side of the road, in huts and old caravans, waiting for the weather to clear.
One volunteer laments that the organisers switched the Burt Munro Challenge from chilly October to February each year so they could catch the balmy weather. Hah! There can be no racing in these conditions.
Leonard the volunteer safety officer offers to drive me up Bluff Hill to show me why. At the top, the wind is howling and gloomy grey mist shrouds what I'm told is a stunning view. Leonard nods back down the hill. The winding hill climb is 1.5km and the record is 54 seconds. But come round one of those corners at speed in these conditions and the rider will be blown right off, Leonard says.
While we wait, we head back down to the Bluff foreshore to visit the renowned Oyster Cove restaurant.
Mid-morning the place is full of damp bikers. They've taken photos at the famous Stirling Point signpost, which points to major cities, with their distances, around the world.
And they've marvelled at the enormous, stylised anchor chain nearby, a sculpture by the late Russell Beck (father of Rocket Lab's Peter Beck) installed in 2008. The sculpture disappears under Foveaux Strait/Te Ara a Kewa and is matched by a twin sculpture at Lee Bay on Rakiura Stewart Island, symbolising a link between the two, and between the anchor and sternpost of Te Waka a Māui.
Back inside, the bikers want to eat but the kitchen is closed until lunchtime, so we sit drinking coffee, steam drying and peering through fogged-up picture windows.
The weather doesn't let up and the racing is abandoned. But the lunch dishes coming out of the now-open kitchen – oyster soup or creamed paua in a cob loaf, blue cod, oysters, Stewart Island salmon - make up for it.
And Bluff is a charming place just to drive around, even in the drizzle. Bluff still has old halls and churches, shipwrecks, villas with not a scrap of paint left on them, and backyards full of tractors and ancient farm equipment. One home offered a nostalgic gift to passers-by, its pebbled front yard dotted with vintage prams, hand-mowers, tools, bikes and toys.
Through the drizzle, the distant silhouette of Tiwai Point aluminium smelter tries valiantly to break through. No one seems fazed by the weather though. We head back to Invercargill with the promise of clearer skies and plenty of drag and sprint racing at Teretonga Park and Oreti Park Speedway.
You don't need to be a petrol head or biker to enjoy the atmosphere. People-watching is one of my favourite pastimes and the bikers are a lively bunch. The older ones sport long, grey wispy beards, dark sunglasses and wear T-shirts that say "S*** happens."
They eat hot dogs without taking their eyes off the racing. I'm in my happy place when I spot the Scout mums selling plump whitebait fritters between slices of fresh white bread for $8.
At Oreti Beach, bikers line the tussock dunes to watch bike racing on the sand pounded flat by a stormy outgoing tide. There's a smell of av-gas mixed with hot chips in the air, the tinny spluttering of Japanese bikes competing with the throaty roar of the Harleys.
A sign says, "No dogs, no glass, no patches," as volunteers check rally passes. The young bikers are racing, the older ones watching. There's no sign of sushi for sale. Instead, it's slushies, candy floss, Donut Dude and Kracker Jacs Dairy, "16 different flavours of shakes" and, of course, cheese rolls on offer.
It's a thrill, looking down the 26km stretch of sand, to know that my favourite actor, Anthony Hopkins, tore down that same stretch while filming The World's Fastest Indian. Actually, it was probably a stunt double on the bike but it is a thrill nonetheless.
This beach is Munro Country. It's where he set the New Zealand open beach record of 131.38 mph in February 1957, and broke it in 1975 when he hit 136 mph. But it was in 1967 that the world sat up and took notice when Munro, then 68, clocked a world land speed record of 184.087 mph across the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah on a 47-year-old modified bike.
Since 2006 the Burt Munro Challenge has paid homage to a man who never gave up, who never stopped testing, improving and riding his motorcycle well into his 70s.
Auckland biker and airport security guard Garry Chapman, 59, and his partner Donna Moody are regulars at the Munro Challenge. Chapman's been riding a motorbike for most of his adult life, and he's roared down from Auckland on his Harley Davidson CVO Street Glide.
At Oreti he's sporting a leather jacket covered in patches denoting the rallies he's been on. On the bottom edge is a patch that reads, "Grey-haired bikers don't get that way from pure luck." He's come off a few times - "nothing too drastic" - but he's witnessed some risky riding.
Right now, there's nowhere else he'd rather be, watching a younger version of himself throw themselves around the beach track on their bikes. The commentators roll their "rs" in that southern way. "Ooh! That would have huurrt if he'd come off."
And they make jokes about cheese rolls being the "sushi of the south". Quite why grated cheese mixed with a packet of onion soup and condensed milk (the cheat's recipe), rolled up in white bread and toasted is so delicious is a mystery. But on a chilly Invercargill day, there's nothing quite like it.
Bill Richardson Transport World's cafe quite possibly holds the record for Southland's largest cheese roll. The staff slice the loaf of bread lengthwise, so the result is a meal on its own.
Customers can eat in a 60s kitchen or a 70s lounge off the main cafe and even the museum's bathrooms are worth a visit, each one themed in yesteryear fittings and memorabilia.
The museum itself is a marvel. Transport World is built on the back of Southland transport owner Bill Richardson's truck and car collection. Richardson's only son, Harold, died tragically in a car accident in 1995 so his daughter and son-in-law Joc and Scott O'Donnell took over the family business when he retired.
It was Joc O'Donnell who forged ahead with her father's wishes to expand the collection and share it with the public. Transport World opened in 2015 and now houses more than 300 vehicles – including vintage trucks, racing cars, an impressive collection of retro Volkswagen Kombi vans, pedal cars, V8 Fords - and 200 vintage petrol bowsers.
Even if you're not particularly interested in vehicles there's plenty more to see, including vintage jukeboxes, wearable art, vintage clothing and baby gear, a Lego room, a Cadbury room, a mousehole trail for children, an old movie theatre, replica stores, a jailhouse, and a vast collection of McDonald's Happy Meal toys.
At the back of the museum, I come across Joc O'Donnell cleaning some old framed pictures that she's cleared out of a spare room. "I plan to turn it into an old-fashioned ticket office," she says cheerfully. It's that hands-on, can-do attitude that O'Donnell is known for. Helping in the wings is a team of 12 staff whose job it is to patiently and skilfully restore shabby new editions to their former glory.
Not far away is another O'Donnell museum, Motorcycle Mecca, a collection of immaculately restored motorcycles and sidecars, dating back to 1902. The O'Donnells bought the motorbike collection from a collector in 2016 and opened Motorcycle Mecca six months later. It now houses more than 300 rare and classic motorcycles, a wonderful collection of vintage sidecars, and a vast array of bike-related memorabilia and artworks.
Aptly, the Honda Invercargill street races on the last day of the challenge are held on Bill Richardson Drive, a light industrial area transformed into a race track with the help of some hay bales and plastic barriers.
The nearby E. Hayes And Sons Motorworks Collection is also an Invercargill must if only to see its prized attraction: Burt Munro's 1920 Indian Scout bike that clocked a world land speed across the Bonneville Salt Flats, a record that has yet to be broken.
For more travel inspiration, go to newzealand.com/nz.
Check traffic light settings and Ministry of Health advice before travel at covid19.govt.nz
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