The Great Escape...Well, Nearly Great

I was raised in the house where I currently live. My parents emigrated from England in 1963, and I was born the next year. When my father chose the land to have the house built on, it was back then, one of only a few houses in the street. Of course, all these years later, the entire area, including what was then surrounding bushland, is all houses.

Every day I ride my bicycle on streets that were, back when I was growing up, dirt tracks, bushland and creeks. This area, only a few hundred meters from where I sit writing this story, was the place I first learned to ride a mini motocross bike.

I will never forget the day my brand-new Suzuki RM80N was delivered. It was late in the afternoon and after a few laps around the garden, I switched off the two-stroke engine and proceeded to roll silently down the street to where houses turned to bushland, where I started my new bike and took off down the track. The motor first had to be run in, so, I rode with care, not allowing the revs to go into the powerband...where it would go from a moderate pace to terrifyingly fast in the blink of an eye.

I did this daily for the next year or so, always searching for new places to ride. Back then, if I had enough fuel, I could have ridden from my home on the south side of Brisbane, all the way to the Gold Coast. I never did that journey, but I did enjoy riding all day with friends, or alone, and these were some of the best times of my life.

Paved roads occasionally intersected the tracks, so we would dash across them, or ride along for a distance to get to the next section of the bush if housing developments made it necessary. I imagine there would have been loads of complaints from local residents to the police about these noisy speeding teenagers riding their trail bikes on the streets past their homes. So, the police began to ride bikes of their own to chase down these unruly, unlicensed and unregistered criminals.

The cops rode Suzuki PE250 trail bikes and were always in pairs. One day, I was returning from a ride and wasn't far from home when I had to cross a road, and as I came out of the bush, around the nearby corner came two cops on their bikes. I immediately turned back from where I had come, speeding back into the bush as I frantically tried to escape.

The track I was on ran parallel to the road. As I glanced to my left, I saw one of the police bikes going up the street to head me off. I had no idea how far behind me the other cop was, but I knew I was done for as their bikes were much more powerful than mine. I had to think fast. These tracks I knew like the back of my hand, and I took a left turn into an area called 'the figure eight'.

About ten metres in, and instead of following the dirt, I rode off the track and into the long grass, thumbed the kill switch, and laid the bike over on top of me, pulling the handlebars into my chest to make the bike as low and flat as I could. There, I waited to be caught. Thirty seconds later, I heard the sound of a bike approaching. I held my breath as I watched a cop ride past not three metres away and keep going.

I must have laid in that grass for half an hour before I dared pop my head up to see if the cops were nearby, but to my joy, they were nowhere to be seen. I gave it a bit longer before starting my bike and cautiously continuing my journey home.