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 as a motorcycle courier in London on the TT600.
The experiences and the lessons I learned on this journey have defined me - defined how I view every part of life..... Heather Ellis
PLEASE NOTE: After the ride through Africa and Central Asia, I arrived home in Australia in September 1997 but the timing wasn't right and I never completed my book. Near death and then life took over: university, career, marriage, babies, separation ...and divorce). A book based on this ride will be available late 2014.
Latest Blog
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)
Freedom Ride against anti-bike laws
RIDE 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 to many of the world’s most remote and dangerous places 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.
This trust tells me we have more to thank Nikola Tesla for than our electricity and communications technology.
"If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration."
Nikola Tesla, inventor, electrical engineer, physist and futurist.
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
