ANDREW de Longville and his 12-year-old daughter Aria share an unusual father-daughter bond – motorbikes.
“There aren’t enough hours in the day when she’s riding,” de Longville says proudly. He is the president of the Whittlesea Township Motorcycle Club and joined when his daughter was seven.
“We got into the family weekends, then I put my hand up to be on the committee and now I’m the president,” he says. “I’ve always been into motorbikes and I hoped the kids would take it up so I could continue doing it.”
The club goes on weekend rides and on any given weekend some 200 members might turn up. They make use of six tracks on privately-owned properties in Yea, Harcourt, Lancefield, Nathalia, Ruffy and Benalla.
The rides are endurance-based, not races, and cater for children and adults with specific tracks to match the abilities of the riders.
On a typical weekend the group hauls its gear to one of the tracks – sometimes with as many as 20 or 30 caravans along for the trip – and rides for five hours each day.
“It’s a free ride, so you can stop riding whenever you want and take it all in,” de Longville says. “The laps are usually about five or six kilometres in distance so we stop every now and then for a barbecue and a raffle.”
Such has been the popularity of the club it has had to cap membership numbers. De Longville estimates there are about 150 people on the waiting list to join the club.
“I think it’s because of the availability we have for places to ride,” he says. “These days you can’t just take your kids to the bush and ride wherever, you need to be fully licensed and registered. The kids don’t get hassled by police so that also plays a factor.
“In the past three or so years we have just exploded in numbers. Part of it too was probably the bushfires, which burnt out a lot of that Kinglake area, so many places were closed.
“And also if you live in suburbia you have to find ways to go for a good ride. Not everyone wants to be a racer at our club and you can do half a lap then watch everyone else. We’ve got a casualness, that’s what it comes down to. People are getting right into it.”
De Longville rides a Yamaha WR250 and his daughter a Kawasaki KLX140. He says the pair will keep riding with the Whittlesea club for as long as possible.
“The freedom of being able to go on a ride with my daughter is fantastic,” he says. “Not many other places in Australia offer what we offer.”
