Ride Like Hell and You'll Get There

by Paul Carter

  I started to make arrangements to go to Japan to salvage what I could. ‘No, stay there,’ said my friend Taka. ‘There’s nothing left to look for.’ He added that a nuclear power plant in the area had some big problems, too.

  So there I was with two businesses running my arse ragged, severe sleep deprivation, a Supreme Court trial looming, a land-speed world record attempt campaign to organise, and now Jocko was dead and my Matt Bromley bike and sidecar gone . . . what else could happen? I sat in my office at the end of the day pondering this when my phone rang.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ said my wife.

  I jumped out of my seat and punched the air. ‘AWESOME, BABY!’ She was laughing. ‘I’m on my way home.’ I was suddenly full of pure joy and, grabbing my jacket from behind my chair, I paused to shut down my computer, and that’s when it happened.

  My body decided to scare the bejesus out of me and pulled a stunt that had me splayed on the floor under my office desk in massively violent spasms of pain. I was convinced in those first few minutes that my appendix had just exploded or that I was having an aneurysm.

  ‘Right, so, that’s it then,’ the voice of reason crackled over the PA system in my head.

  I vomited across the carpet, fighting to catch my breath as the pain hit in hard, overwhelming waves, while clinging desperately to the vinyl armrest of my desk chair. I was being tazered by my brain.

  ‘This is how you end,’ the PA announced, ‘alone under your desk in an empty office building.’ I’d always pictured something much more sedate or violently fast, but that’s life, isn’t it?

  The pain suddenly backed off, enough for me to unclench my fists. My right hand hurt so I rolled over onto my back and lifted my arm into view. I had been holding the chair so tightly that my fingernails had bent back on themselves and my fingers were bleeding. Moaning and scrambling I managed to drag myself to my knees and phone for an ambulance before the next wave of pain knocked me back into a puddle on the floor.

  Dr Brooks had a kind face, spoke with his hands and was very reassuring as I arrived at the emergency department of the hospital. There was no stuffing around, though. ‘You’re going straight in to have an MRI, Paul,’ he said. As the giant machine wound up and slowly began the search for my brain, I thought about John Lennon, not my wife or kid as I was supposed to, and by the time I came back out I’d moved on to the complete works of Paul Weller.

  ‘Kidney stone,’ said the smiling Dr Brooks. ‘Extremely painful. The nearest thing a man can experience to childbirth.’ Great, I’ll try to remember that, I thought.

  Twenty years of standing on the drill floor in the tropics while being dehydrated. ‘I’m fuckin’ paying for it now,’ I said loudly as I leant against the wall in the emergency department toilet, fumbling at my hospital robes with fingers wrapped in Elastoplast now holding my fingernails in place. I bit down hard as blood flowed into the urinal. The kidney stone was tearing everything up on its way out, it felt like I was trying to piss a brick with a tractor nailed to it. I let fly with enough bad language, blood and wall-punching to make the guy waiting outside fall over himself in an effort to get out of my way as I emerged, bloodstained and wild.

  Morphine arrived in my arm like an old friend with a fifth of whiskey and a sad story. Soon a prickly heat rush rolled across my forehead and down my spine like a white-hot jungle centipede. ‘Ohhh yeah, lower me down, you gorgeous hospital health professionals.’ I smiled crookedly at the doctor. Tears streaked wet tracks across my crow’s-feet and doglegged down my cheeks to pool in my jugular notch.

  ‘Are you alright?’ he checked my pulse.

  ‘I’m fine.’ I focused on not sustaining the grin and tried not to think about my brother-in-law Mathew; the drugs had made my brain revert to the last time I had this much morphine smashed into my body. Four years ago in Longreach Hospital, slap-bang in the middle of outback Queensland, with a toothless and obviously mentally disturbed pensioner in the bed next door, Matty’s bent jokes about my poor neighbour and the nurses and my condition had made me laugh so hard I nearly choked to death. So all’s well with morphine and me.

  I was ushered into a treatment room where I lay on a bed in a corner, staring at a soundless TV suspended from the ceiling, trying to lip-read the conversation on the screen. Sudden and frenzied activity broke through my morphine heat haze and I could hear doors slamming and garbled conversation. Two paramedics circled the corner wheeling a patient who appeared to be a rather nasty-looking junkie. He had just been the lucky recipient of a free government heart start, but instead of saying ‘thank you’ and slipping into his clean hospital jammies for a cuppa and bickie, he was thoroughly pissed off about it, swearing and punching on. Moments after his wild punches connected with one of the paramedics,a cop appeared and slammed his elbow down on my noisy neighbour’s chest, causing his screams to stop and mine to start. The nasty bastard had just lost his arse. At the same time as superfly on my left did his business, the elderly lady on my right, who had just arrived after falling and breaking a hip, did her business all over her curtained-off area.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ I said, then I started laughing. The more they screamed, the more I laughed. I knew it was wrong, but that just made it funnier. And the more people started looking at me, horrified and offended, the worse it got. I was laughing, crying, I got the hiccups, I nearly shat my own pants.

  Dr Brooks appeared, all focused, serious and kind amid the screaming, shitting and laughing. He politely explained that they couldn’t move me to a private room at the moment so could I please stop laughing. I held my breath, bit my lip, composed myself and asked for some headphones so I could watch the movie.

  Nine hours later Ayers Rock, red and huge, finally exited my body. I went home to have a shower and drink 600 litres of water.

  SPEED WEEK 1,

  2011

  ON ANY BIKE, in any language, 300 kph is a big number. But doing 300 kph on an untested experimental motorcycle could be considered a reliable way to kill yourself.

  Our motorcycle, the BDM-SLS or Bio Diesel Motorcycle Salt Lake Special, is 4 metres long, weighs almost half a tonne, and runs on an experimental fuel called ‘Clean Diesel’ produced by Australian company Linc Energy. Linc pushed the experimental envelope to produce it, like we did with the bike, and produce it they did. I can’t really describe the process to you in basic terms because I can’t spell most of the words the Linc engineers use when they try to explain it to me, let alone understand what they mean. But so you have a rough idea of what Clean Diesel is, here goes.

  The back story is a simple one. I was going to run the BDM-SLS on bio-diesel fuel derived from used cooking oil, just like I did with the bio-bike that I rode around Australia in my last book. Part of the reason I wrote that book was to make a point about the future of fuel, about our chronic dependency on it. Without fuel—I’m talking good old-fashioned petrol—we descend into anarchy faster than you think. We have played the oil game at a level that’s hard to define in print globally, and at any human or environmental cost, every day since before the end of World War Two. You could pretty much say that WWII just morphed into a secret energy war that has raged on since. Now the fossil fuel system is just too big and powerful to stop, and many people think, what’s the point?

  For me, the dream of a viable alternative fuel, sustainable at the bowser, was the idea of diesel derived from garbage—turning used cooking oil to fuel. It’s not a hard or expensive process, and our country goes through a massive amount of diesel every day; our country is run on the trucking industry alone. I never did the maths on it because I got despondent and utterly frustrated with the system. But, having said that, just think about how much oil your average fast-food burger joint chucks into landfill every year—there is an inexhaustible supply of the base product. All our public transport,trucking and industry could be fuelled on bio-diesel. We would suddenly produce 75 per cent less carbon emissions.

  One of the first things that hit me when I was riding
around Australia on used cooking oil was the amount of people in rural areas, or for that matter anywhere outside the cities, who instantly recognised that I was riding a bike that was powered by bio-diesel. That was because they all have little secret stills of their own. On average, every rural roadhouse would chuck out about 20 litres of used cooking oil a month. Instead, a local farmer will take it home to brew cheap fuel. It was like they suddenly identified me as a friend. But their praise and acknowledgement was hushed and whispered. Why so secretive? Because if our government were to find their bio-diesel stash it would slap a big fine on them. Instead of encouraging the potential of bio-diesel, the Australian government fines them and sits back to enjoy the fuel tax revenue system as it is, while at the same time imposing a carbon tax on everyone. It’s a pointless bureaucratic joke that goes beyond just greed and propels it into stupidity.

  Companies like Linc Energy have taken their ideas for cheap sustainable diesel to our government and were told to fuck off.

  They said, ‘But we have a great system that we can prove works, can we show you how it works?’

  ‘No,’ said our government. ‘And if you contact us again, we will have you all tazered and made to perform unnatural sex acts to a 400-pound Queensland wild sow.’

  Right, so you get the picture.

  Despite the lack of government support, Linc just went ahead and did it anyway. It cost them hundreds of millions.

  There are shallow coal formations all over the eastern states of Australia, and Linc drill into these formations and, in a nutshell, pump oxygen into the coal and set it on fire. Not in a ‘burn the house down’ way but more of a ‘combustion that is occurring not burning’ kind of way. Unlike mines that dig a giant fuck-off hole in the ground and gasify the coal on the surface, the UCG (underground coal gasification) synthesis gas that comes out of Linc’s well is the source of the clean diesel—basically, they convert the syngas to liquid fuel. Linc built a demonstration facility near Chinchilla in Queensland to prove all this. This facility is the only one of its kind in the world; it has trial generators and a GTL (gas to liquid) pilot plant. Linc has successfully combined UCG and GTL technologies to produce high-quality hydrocarbon liquids from synthesis gas.

  Like many great ideas and some really bad ones—such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, genetic mutation, cloning, supersonic flight, brain surgery on a conscious person, atomic weapons and killing lots of people because you don’t like their banking habits, colour, religion, sexual orientation, political beliefs or they’re just not German enough—the Nazis were the first to come up with this syngas process. German engineers produced diesel in a similar fashion when their supply lines got cut off in Russia. Some clever Nazi probably got a panzer running on seawater in 1941, but then immediately disappeared along with everyone they ever knew . . . ever.

  As far as I’m concerned, Linc and their Clean Diesel is a happy viable middle ground that works. And thank god at least someone is doing something different, not the usual few million spent on a flash TV ad campaign about how much they care about the environment and the future with lots of shots of cute kids playing on a beach and getting hugged by their wonderfully good-looking happily married parents. Or full page ads in the newspaper showcasing a snappy tag-line like ‘Human Energy’ or ‘Fuelling Good’ which some advertising copywriter charged a small fortune for or an enhanced image of a happy functional nuclear family cavorting in a huge green field because they care . . . Fuck off. We know we need petrol, we need all of it, every hydrocarbon product ever made, but don’t expect us to buy these cheesy ads, for fuck’s sake, it’s insulting. Just ask BP.

  Drilling is drilling. It’s dangerous. It’s a hole in the ground. Mother Nature can turn around and shit all over it if she wants to, or there’s just some other freak accident, or good ol’ human error, or greed, or a combination of the lot. I say, by all means, drill—of course I’m going to say that—but break it and you pay for it.

  Here’s where the man behind the company that will set the pace for fuel supply in Australia enters the story, quietly and with no fanfare. Linc Energy’s Peter Bond walks into a meeting I’m sitting in. He’s a big man, six foot, broad shoulders, in jeans and a casual shirt; he fixes me with a strong blue gaze and shakes my hand. At the time I have no idea I’m meeting our country’s foremost fuel entrepreneur. Needless to say, Peter is completely affable, warm and not at all the corporate giant I had pictured. Within moments I understand that he is all about transparency, accountability, and sustaining the environment he’s drilling in. In fact, all the things I’ve spent twenty years waiting to see oil and gas companies not just say but actually do. It’s like slipping into a warm bath. I’m hearing the future of affordable, sustainable fuel in our country being mapped out across the conference table. I’m in drilling nirvana; I have to force myself not to clap when he finishes speaking.

  So I had my fuel, I had my bike, I needed to test it. Speed Week was less than a month away.

  Over the past two years, Associate Professor Colin Kestell, the University of Adelaide and I had put a lot of effort into this event. Our objectives were straight forward:

  Select an engine, capable of enough speed but not too heavy.

  Test the engine airfuel maximums.

  Develop the power train to integrate the engine with the chassis.

  Design and build the chassis.

  Design the frame and fairing including full CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analysis in 3D.

  Test a scale model in a wind tunnel to verify CFD results.

  Select the right gearbox.

  Link the gearbox to the engine.

  Combine the engine, gearbox, transmission, front triple clamp and fork geometry with rear swing arm within the frame and fairing.

  Fabricate rims and select tyres.

  Test electronic fuel management system and gauges, controls, linkages, seat and rider position analysis.

  Dyno test.

  Speed test.

  Break world record.

  Get drunk.

  Dr Colin Kestell stood under the open rollerdoor looking into the expansive mechanical engineering workshop with a coffee in his hand and a slightly distracted expression on his face. It turned into a smile as I stopped by his shoulder and punched him on the arm.

  Two years ago, Colin and I had collaborated, along with his students spanning several graduating years, to build ‘Betty’ the bio-bike and get all the way around Australia on bio-diesel made from used cooking oil. Betty was a pig—a shuddering, painful death pig. She tried to kill me, she tried to shove her left handlebar up my arse, she put me in Longreach Hospital for four days with cracked ribs and a damaged rotator cup, she made me beg, but I loved her. She was built on a shoestring budget, a Frankenstein motorcycle running an 8-horsepower irrigation-pump engine that vibrated so violently I had residual nerve damage in my hands for three months after I completed the ride.

  Betty spawned another bio-diesel monster, but this time there were no cute names, no making do, no irrigation-pump engines. This time we had a 1.7-litre, 90-kilowatt, 60-horsepower Holden Astra turbo diesel engine teamed with a five-speed Harley Davidson Dyna gearbox. The Bio Diesel Motorcycle Salt Lake Special was designed for one purpose only—to go fast on a salt lake in the middle of nowhere.

  The BDM-SLS has a very wide frame, long wheelbase (more than 3 metres) and is made of steel. So it looks and sounds cumbersome and underpowered, but in fact this is what you need to get up to speed on the salt. Weight is essential to get the power down on the back wheel and avoid wheel spin, and it also aids stability on the salt, especially with crosswinds; the length will also help in these unique conditions.

  No expense was spared—she was getting close to six figures. We had been working on this project for more than two years and this trip to Adelaide was the one I had been dreaming about for so long—the one where I get to ride her for the first time.

  Just the thought of going to a place like Lake Gairdner ha
d been exciting me, to fly across our great land, look down and see endless red and orange earth occasionally interspersed with sparkling white salt lakes. The lakes are so remote, so untouched. My nose pressed up against the perspex, I had been gazing at them on every flight to and from Brisbane for a long time, waiting for Speed Week to arrive, amazed at the beauty of the harsh inland. Our salt lake was 550 kilometres northwest of Adelaide, one of the most remote places in Australia.

  With Speed Week starting on a Monday, I arrived on Saturday morning so we had the whole day to pack everything before leaving on Sunday for a week of intense salt-skimming balls-to-the-wall speed trials.

  Saturday was mad. Colin had been in touch with the DLRA as there were concerns about the weather, the potential for rain being monitored diligently. I had mates arriving from Brisbane and Matt Bromley was also en route from Sydney, on a bike of course. The whole event pulsed a viable sense of purpose into everyone as we scurried about packing, re-packing, checking and double-checking everything twice. By lunchtime our gear was good to go, the bike was ready and sitting in her custom-made dual-axle trailer, two support vehicles were laden with fuel, bike spares, tools, tents, water, tarps, food, the list went on and on.

  It was really exciting for me to have two of my close mates, Simon Hann and Howard Fletcher, joining me on this adventure. Both blokes have busy family lives and careers to juggle, being the good citizens they are these days. Of course, it wasn’t always so. Both Simon and Howard were oilfield men in the traditional sense, and by that I mean they used to be bad, medievally bad. They used to have their names on their shirts, they had tattoos, rode motorcycles fast, drank to get drunk, never went to the doctor and had a keen interest in self-destruction.

  But that was the past. They had turned the successful corner, bent their ways and embraced the new environmentally friendly all-you-can-eat oilfield salad bar system, and now they are good. So good, in fact, that they are husbands and fathers, they exercise, watch their diet, have regular health checks, don’t smoke and only have the occasional drink. They got educated; they have lots of qualifications now and sometimes wear ties to work. Simon looks like he never battered a muppet in a bar fight. Howard looks like my accountant, except my accountant doesn’t know how to make napalm and never ran through the jungle naked with a large piece of burning toilet paper protruding from his clenched butt cheeks.