Sixes of the best
21st Annual CBX6 Owners’ Club of Australia, Inc. National Rally
24-27 October, 2014 – Traralgon, Vic
This year’s rally was named “The Mountains to the Sea Rally” and was based at the Quality Inn, Latrobe Convention Centre in Traralgon, Victoria. It turned out to be a wonderful venue and the Club was catered for extremely well by Jeff Hawke and his team; highly recommended to other clubs holding functions. Saturday was the “Mountains“part of the rally and the start of the ride had us wondering if we were going to get wet. We did a round trip leaving from Traralgon and visiting the historic gold mining town of Walhalla, Melbourne’s largest water storage, the Thompson Dam and passed through towns like Rawson, Erica and Yallourn North on the way back to Traralgon. The roads were quite wet in places but that didn’t curb the group’s enthusiasm and we successfully traversed every type of corner known to man. This run had very little straight stuff and was a motorcyclist’s dream. The scenery in the West Gippsland forest area is magnificent even though there is still plenty of evidence of where the bushfires went through. The sun came out between Walhalla and the Thompson Dam and we all enjoyed the warmth when we stopped for a photo or two in the dam wall visitors car park. The chat as usual was about the bikes, the roads we had just travelled, what the modifiers had done since the last rally and what people had done since the last rally. On return to the venue there was much swapping of bikes and discussion on problems people were having and suggestions on how to fix the issues. The CBX is the same as any other 30 – plus bike, it gets problems, especially when not ridden much. Some of our members have a lot of experience and can pick the common problems quickly helping out members with less experience with their sixes. Sunday’s ride was the “Sea” part of the rally and we had a relatively easy ride to Inverloch via Tarwin Lower for lunch. I don’t think anyone saw the sea, they didn’t get past the bakery in the main street. We travelled to Mirboo North and had afternoon tea at the Four in Line café, worth a stop if you’re in the area, lots of motorcycle memorabilia and nice sweeping corners home to Traralgon where we held the Show and Shine in the Convention Centre car park. The quality of the Twin Shock early models gets better and better and is a difficult one to judge. The ProLink models was a bit easier with an obvious winner and the rest looking like they get ridden a lot showing those obvious dirty spots. The Modified class again was an obvious winner as the Vice President didn’t enter his bikes; it would have been a close thing if he had entered the turbo special. If there was a trophy for the most ridden bike it would have been the club magazine editor’s modified CBX that he was happy to let people ride to see what they could do to their CBX. The Club Secretary was the only person to have a break down with a blocked fuel filter and the only person to fall off. We’ll blame the fuel filter for stalling the bike when he was trying to turn. We had a break down vehicle following the group but it wasn’t needed. In all 24 CBXs made up of Twin Shock early models, ProLink later models and a growing group of modified models attended the rally. The CBX Club does not restrict the attendance of members on other bikes and a lot of members rode non-CBXs especially from interstate. We’d rather see members attend the rally than say they have to be on a CBX. Participation is our prime goal. We upheld our club motto, Good Rides, Good fun, Good Friendship and look forward to the next one in 2015 where ever it may be.