‘Get me the hell out of Belfast…’
In the 1970s Chris Donaldson was desperate to escape the troubles in his home town of Belfast. So he bought himself a Guzzi and set out for Australia. But first there was Africa to deal with
Since the Stone Age, The Walkabout has been an Aboriginal rite of passage. It is when adolescent boys wander into the bush on a journey with no destination. During this time they make the spiritual transition from boy to man. It’s a time for self-assessment and thought, when he can learn about himself without the influence of his elders, friends, or family. It’s a physical and psychological journey. I didn’t look like an Aboriginal adolescent as I set off from Belfast on my café racing Moto Guzzi, but looking back, I see that the same determination drove me to set off on a journey of self-discovery. I was twenty-one and wanted to go ‘somewhere’ for ‘some time’ and, well, for ‘something’. When I was 16 I read about a bloke, in Motorcycle News, who had ridden his motorbike to Australia. This story fired my imagination and I bought my first motorbike for twenty quid, it was a BSA Bantam. Not quite Jack Nicholson’s Harley-davidson, but to a spotty teenage git it was the next best thing. And the full-face helmet hid my acne.
No doubt the Ulster Troubles added to my eagerness to get away, helped by my geography teacher, Sleepy Sam,
who assured me the world is round, full of strange exotic lands and different cultures, and where, for some reason, they didn’t care if you were a Protestant or Catholic. But my Bantam wasn’t going around the world because it stopped every time it rained, so it had to go. I bought a BSA 250 but it broke down at every tra c light, so it had to go too.
My next bike was a 600cc BMW, which was boring, so I tried to sell it. But it had 100,000 miles on the clock – I connected a drill to the speedo to wind the clock back. Two days later a guy on a Honda flagged me down. ‘I used to own that bike,’ he said, glancing at the milometer. ‘Only 60,000 miles? That’s less than when I sold it!’
Then I saw the red Moto Guzzi Le Mans in a shop window. The Guzzi had a big V twin and it throbbed like a heartbeat, like life itself. I had to have it.
My dream was to ride to Australia, continue to America, and back home and circumnavigate the world. Did I want to meet new people, learn about different religions and interesting cultures? Nope. I just wanted to get the hell out of Belfast. My maps promised me tarmac roads all the way to India. Burma was closed, so I would board a ship from India to Singapore, then to Indonesia and on to Oz. But with the oceans and politics to get in the way the concept of riding around the world was more an illusion.
I converted the Guzzi into a touring machine. Off came the sports fairing and low-slung clip-on handlebars. On went a touring screen, comfortable high handlebars, top box and panniers, adjustable rear air suspension, air filters, and a cassette tape music system with speakers on the tank bag. I felt terrible – it was like hitching a caravan to a Ferrari.
Deathtoamerica
My first stop was London and by the time I got my Iranian visa, it was 4 November, 1979. Then, on that night’s TV, a bloke with a big bushy beard shouted, ‘Death to America’. The American embassy had been overrun and the staff taken hostage. Ayatollah Khomeini had started an Islamic Revolution. The Shah of Iran had been overthrown. ‘Death to Western Imperialists,’ chanted the students. I knew Irish motorcyclists were probably in that category so bought a map of Africa, with a dotted line across the desert, inscribed ‘road’. It looked like my best choice: drive south to the Kenyan coast, hang a left, ship over to India and ride to Australia as planned. Easy.
After a small fracas with a blizzard in Austria I made it to Greece, but missed the last boat to Egypt so took the one to Israel instead. I met up with a Scottish guy on a Suzuki and we tried unsuccessfully to get out, which left me no choice but to take a boat to Cyprus then Syria then ride down to the Red Sea for another ferry to Egypt.
Syria was little better than it is now, and full of scary looking men with machine guns. By dusk I reached Damascus and watched the sunset over the oldest inhabited city in the world. I had wanted to spend time here, but fear took precedence over curiosity, and I kept going.
The road climbed and deteriorated again as I approached the Jordanian border. The rain froze on my visor and I was nearly out of fuel. The border post was deserted, so I rode through. Then the road turned into a dirt track, no streetlights and no buildings. I was in no-man’s-land. Through the drizzle and mist my headlight beam suddenly lit on two soldiers standing in the middle of the road wearing balaclavas and old-fashioned WW1 greatcoats. They were armed with sub-machine guns, of course.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! I slammed on the anchors to skid to a halt just in front of them, but they didn’t flinch. Unshaven and gaunt, the taller one shouted at me then prodded me in the chest with his gun. I produced my passport and all the other papers I had. He kept shouting and poking, but I’d had enough machine guns for one day.
‘So, what the fuck do you want?’ I shouted back.
After a moment’s silence they burst out laughing. I stood mesmerized while the Guzzi burbled between my legs, trying to calm my nerves with its steady beat.
‘I am sorry for my friend,’ the short one said. ‘He likes to make a joke with you.’
‘Ha bloody ha,’ I said, too sarcastic for my good. ‘Most people bloody scared at his joke. You bloody brave,’ he laughed again.
‘No, I bloody scared too.’
‘You go now, you bloody good sport,’ he said grinning. ‘We hope you have enjoyed our country.’
‘It’s been a blast,’ I replied, and drove off.
‘You guys are twisted,’ I shouted back when I was well out of range. It would be a while before I saw any funny side.
More balls than brains
I camped by the pyramids for a week then headed south along the Nile. The road stopped at Aswan and I took a ramshackle boat to Wadi Halfa, where I intended boarding the train to Khartoum. However, the boat was late, and the train left early, so on the spur of the moment I joined a convoy crossing the desert – we could follow the Nile as it made a large U-bend to the west, or go the more direct route with the railway line. On my Michelin map a dirt road followed the railway.
The Land Rover was desert-equipped but two VW Campers, a Moto Guzzi Le Mans and the 1200cc Datsun Cherry were not. What the hell was I thinking? We drove past two pyramids then the track disappeared in a melee of tyre ruts that crisscrossed in the sand. We all stopped.
An old guy on a camel walked towards us. ‘Where is the road to Khartoum?’ I asked. He waved his hand at the desert with a can’t-you-see-it-arsehole? look on his face.
The trouble was in Sudan, the word ‘road’ is merely the general direction you should go, it makes no suggestion of any prepared track on which you may travel.
‘Let’s go for it,’ shouted Charlie in the Land Rover and with a great roar of assorted engines we drove away. The Guzzi skidded and fishtailed across the sand. I dabbed the ground with my feet to stop me falling. Then, even the ruts disappeared. We were lost. Well, not exactly, we could still see the town 200 yards behind us. We struggled on, too mortified to go back.
A few miles later, we all got stuck, apart from the Land Rover. The Guzzi sunk up to the engine sump, the front wheel buried to the axle and the rear wheel spinning. As we set up camp, I knew the smart money was on going back and waiting for the train. We’d all failed the first test miserably. None of us had done any off-roading apart from the English lads, who spent a wet afternoon in a muddy English field. We were a motley crew of five vehicles, five nationalities, and all very different people, but all equally despondent as we set up our tents.
‘Through the mist my headlight lit on soldiers standing in the road… with sub-machine guns’
‘Did anyone let their tyres down?’ Charlie asked. ‘You need to let your tyres down to 15 PSI to drive in sand.’ The most basic lesson in desert driving, but I didn’t know!
‘What difference does that make?’
‘It increases the contact area, and stops the wheel sinking.’ I’d decided I would ride 500 miles across the Sahara Desert on an Italian café racer. I was 21 years old and thought I was invincible. I’d had no thought of what I would do if I broke my leg or smashed the bike. But immature men use their balls as brains. Somehow I made it to Khartoum, then caught a train to Wau, in the jungle. I then had 600 miles to ride over dirt roads to the next petrol station.
600 miles to the next petrol station
I tied the two five-gallon drums on the pillion along with three gallons of water. But with a full tank and all my gear, when I pushed the bike off the centre stand the suspension compressed to the stops. Jesus Christ, I thought, I can hardly hold the bike up, let alone ride it. The smooth tarmac on the Italian bridge was like the heaven before the hell on the other side. There was a five-foot drop at the end of the bridge where the dirt track had eroded. At the police checkpoint, the cops helped me down the slope and I signed myself out of this dubious version of civilisation.
‘Do you check with the other posts to make sure I don’t get lost?’ I asked the sergeant.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘At the start of each month we check the books.’ Reassuring.
So this was it, six hundred miles to the next petrol station. I rode off, wobbling. The road was worse than my wildest nightmare, and they had been really wild. The potholes were like bomb craters, all joined up in a continuous line. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck! I thought, as no other adjective covered the situation. What madness is this?
I disappeared from one crater into another, the bike’s suspension bottoming out and the rear tyre crunching on the mudguard at every hump. By the end of the first hour I had covered five miles. I had to stop to rest my aching arms every fifteen minutes. It was hard work hauling on the ’bar to stay upright. I hadn’t got out of first gear yet and could have walked faster. My petrol would never last at this rate. After another five miles my back tyre burst. I had a repair kit, so it wasn’t a big deal, but I’d lost my pump somewhere along the way. The local trucks had compressors, but the police log showed two vehicles passed a day and two trucks had passed already. It was getting dark, and I didn’t relish a night in the jungle. All I had to defend myself with, from wild animals, was a knife and fork. I decided to buy a spear or bow and arrow at the next Sudanese Argos.
Out of the dusk, an old guy of about seventy appeared on a bicycle. I was embarrassed at being scared on my own. He smiled showing his yellow and black teeth and told me to wait. Ten minutes later a pick-up truck appeared with a load of guys in the back. The driver insisted on fixing the puncture and pumped up the tyre.
‘I will follow to make sure it’s okay,’ he said and, after another couple of miles, the tyre blew again as my last inner tube gave up. He fixed it again, and this time it held.
I pulled into the first village, Tonj, after travelling a whole fifteen miles, and set my tent up beside the police checkpoint. The village was a cluster of mud and straw huts and didn’t have much to offer, but the cops were friendly and
shared their beans before I crawled exhausted and depressed into my tent. The day had been a disaster…
The track was now smooth hard clay, dried in waves after the rains. Coming out of one huge hole the bike slid sideways down another. I couldn’t hold it upright and slipped to the bottom of a ditch where the bike fell over on me. Petrol poured out of the plastic cans and hissed on the hot exhaust. Panicking, I ripped the containers free and heaved the bike upright. I swore at the continent of Africa in general then sat down to catch my breath, which is when I heard a noise in the jungle behind me. Shit!
I looked around slowly and saw eight hunters standing watching me silently from the bushes. They were armed with the best bows and arrows money couldn’t buy and they looked like athletes. And they just stood and stared at me. I didn’t know what to say, so I waved. It was supposed to be a macho, sort of ‘all right, mate’ wave. But it came out as a finger waggle.
They gave me that ‘it’s a spaceman’ expression, which was fair enough. I mean, a big red motorcycle falls into a hole, a guy jumps up screaming, throws all his stuff off, then lies down in the middle of the road. Just what you expect to see on your morning hunt. And with that they disappeared back into the jungle.
Fall back at your peril
I ducked through the civil war in Kenya and crossed into Tanzania then Zambia. Rhodesia was transitioning into Zimbabwe and was in turmoil. I would have to travel in armed convoy. The vehicles assembled at the edge of town with pick-up trucks at the front, middle and back. Each had a mounted heavy machine gun and armour plating.
The tarmac roads in Rhodesia were pothole-free and I looked forward to the ride to the town of Wankie. (The new government would sensibly rename it Hwange.)
I started at the front of the convoy but soon they were driving at 70mph, which was too fast on my wobbly wheels. Before long I was at the back and the last tail gunner pulled alongside, the driver gesturing me to hurry. I shook my head, pointing at the bike, shouting I couldn’t go any faster. He smiled and ran his hand across his throat, as if with a knife, and sped off. I got the drift: fall back at your peril. I watched the taillights disappear into the twilight. Like the old buffalo that can’t keep up with the herd, he falls behind to be picked off by the lions.
Soon it was dark. What would I do if there was a roadblock? Do I stop, or blast through in a hail of gunfire? I had heard gruesome tales of torture by rebels. It had been a very dirty war. I turned my lights off so the bad guys wouldn’t see me, but nearly drove off the road. Fuck it! If anyone tries to stop me, I’ll blast through, I decided. I had never felt so alone.
I was so late arriving the army camp commander stood waiting at the gates. He thought I had been ambushed. I parked up beside their homemade ‘Leopard’ armoured cars. The good news is I did finally make it to South Africa rolling into Cape Town on new fangled circular wheels and fresh tyres. At 5pm on 23 March, after five months, 15,517 miles, and eighteen countries, I parked on the promenade at Green Point. Behind me lay a microscopic tyre tread which led all the way back to Belfast. There was no welcoming committee just the surf breaking on the rocks below. I expected to be jubilant but I was as empty as a Sudanese petrol tank. I realised I was at another dead end. I sat back on the bike, boots on the handlebars, and stared at the rollers, with no idea what to do now, apart from play my harmonica. Yet I still had a Moto Guzzi and $340 in my pocket, but my reality was that the next stop was the South Pole.
‘I couldn’t go any faster. He smiled and ran his hand across his throat and sped off’