Heather Ellis is an Australian writer, journalist and motorcyclist with 40 years of riding experience She rode her Yamaha TT600 enduro motorcycle through Africa, Europe, Central Asia and into China and Vietnam from 1993 to 1997. She also worked for a year as a motorcycle courier in London.
My experiences and passion for motorcycling has lead me into motorcycle road safety advocacy in Australia. I am also a member of the Independent Riders' Group and a member of the Victorian Government's Motorcycle Advisory Group.
Latest Blog
30th May 2014
Bike injury payouts top $200m a year
Today in The Age. Motorcyclists are blamed for injuries often caused by SMIDSY (sorry mate I didn't see you).
26th May 2014
Labor plans to legalise motorcycle traffic filtering in Victoria
The Opposition has pledged to change the law to allow lane filtering - where motorcycle and scooter riders can move between cars that have stopped or are moving slowly, if it wins the November election.
Lane filtering was endorsed in a 2012 report by the State Government’s Road Safety Committee, which recommended more research be done “with the aim of introducing filtering in Victoria”.
7th March 2014
MOTORCYCLE TRAFFIC FILTERING IN VICTORIA
A push to legitimise traffic filtering by motorcyclists is underway in Victoria.
Support is set to swing marginal Liberal-held seats to Labor to reflect their promise to support recommendation 59 of the Parliamentary Inquiry in Motorcycling 2012.
Traffic filtering by motorcyclists will be legal in NSW from 1 July 2014. The first state in Australia to do so.For news reports: Motorcycle filtering legal in NSW Australia
Lets make Victoria be the next State.
Please show your suppor to legitimise traffic filtering by motorcyclists and scooter riders when it is safe to do so. Please contact your Victorian State politician.
To read the Recommendations of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Motorcycles 2012.
FREEDOM RIDE
10am on Sunday, 1st December 2013. Ride to the steps of every Paliament House in Australia.
Organised by The Freedom Riders Association of Victoria and supported by the IRG (Independent Riders’ Group).
(A group of Yarra Ranges riders leave Monroe's cafe, Healesville at 9am for Spring Street, Melbourne)
LOST IN AFRICA
synopsis
As a young woman of 28 years, I had reached that point in life when I questioned its purpose. It was then that the idea to ride a motorcycle through Africa and beyond was realised.
I felt inexorably that this was what I was meant to do. It was this inner drive which gave me the courage to follow my dream and not fall victim to doubts, which only breed hesitation and inaction. What are we doing here anyway, spending our lives where today is the same as tomorrow in our quest for more? What have we really got to lose by following our dreams?
I had ridden motorcycles all my life and traded by 250cc trail bike for a Yamaha TT600 off-road enduro. I resigned from my job as a radiation safety technician at a uranium mine in northern Australia and rode down the West Australian coast to Perth to board a cargo ship to South Africa. A work colleague joined me for a few months leaving Africa from Kenya. I rode on alone through Central and North Africa, Europe, Central Asia and back to Australia via China. I got lost in a desert, was befriended by armed bandits, survived London as a motorcycle courier, was detained in Russia and lived a thousand lifetimes a day.
The hours spent in my helmet all those years ago gave me time to reflect on the good fortune, chance meetings and coincidences which occurred with frequent, almost daily, regularity as I rode through many of the world's most remote and dangerous places.
The experiences of my four year motorcycle ride are the threads that weave my story together to leave the reader both entertained and inspired to believe in their own dreams and the energy that drives it: to trust in it and to follow their own intuitions.
I ask: Do thoughts somehow generate vibrations that in turn influence the energy that surrounds us all, paving the way, to achieve our dreams, to live our lives? It is from asking this question that I have always been driven to write my story to share as something of value.
The Ted Simon Foundation encourages those who adventure into the world to go the extra mile and transform their experiences into something of value for the world to share.
Sponsors and Advertising Links:
Tsubaki (sponsor provided 520 Alpha O-Ring motorcycle chains)
Yamaha (sponsor provided some spare parts for my TT600)
Shoei - motocross helmets with visor
