Dust Hustle, LTR #425
Doesn’t matter what you ride, as long as you’re there to have fun!
Feature: D-Train Photography
If you love having good light hearted fun on any type of motorcycle without the pressures of performing at a certain level to avoid coming last in a race, or you really just want to do something completely different like get your 1990 model Yamaha FZR1000 motorcycle out into a paddock to rip up some grass and have some straight up fun, then ‘Dust Hustle’ is an event you should definitely put on your ‘to do’ list.
Nestled neatly in between the hills of a small Queensland country town 85km’s South West of Brisbane City lies a place called Boonah, which is home to the popular Queensland Moto Park, a Motocross venue better known as ‘QMP’. Traditionally you’ll see the usual there, modern day motocross bikes cutting laps around the variety of MX track’s they have on offer, with the occasional National MX Titles events hosted here as well as a series of vintage 2 stroke MX bike races.
Once a year however the venue lays home to Dust Hustle, an event that brings a slightly different atmosphere with a large variety of machines that are not your traditional MX style bikes. With these motorcycles are the riders/owners who dare to try their hand at riding a full MX enduro style track on bikes that mostly were really only ever built for road going purposes.
Some years ago, a mad scientist by the name of Hughan and his team from an inner Brisbane City custom motorcycle garage known as ‘Ellaspede’ came up with a crazy idea of putting the most unique and random motorcycles they could build onto dirt tracks with the sole purpose of just having as much fun as possible. Originally the event had access to flat track venues, namely ‘North Brisbane Speedway’ and was an absolute hit with motorcycle enthusiasts all over QLD. The event began to grow popular real fast, and with entrant ticket numbers capped it very quickly became common knowledge that if you wanted to secure yourself a rider entry you had just hours to do so once the tickets went on sale online.
With the popularity of the event growing so quickly and the constant demand from entrants to add a second event to the calendar, the team at Ellaspede answered the challenge and added QMP as the other venue for their second race day each year. The events that had been playing out at North Brisbane Speedway invited bikes of all make, model and style from full MX bikes to mini-bikes, posties and scooters, vintage and classic dirt/road bikes, right through to Japanese sports bikes and even V-twin cruisers. Basically if it has two wheels and an engine, you can ride it at Dust Hustle as long as you were having fun. It made for some awesome viewing for spectators too, and with the laid back no racing, no gate starts approach, it was always going to be good quality laughs and all round good times for everyone.
The first event that was held at QMP was an interesting one with many having never ridden a full MX track before. Likewise in the previous events, any of the road style bikes that were being ridden in a class that is now famously known as “Risky Road Bikes” at the flat track venue were able to do so with almost stock standard road tyres on the bikes. This new venue was set out to pose a new challenge to anyone on road going tyres and would put everyone on notice that they should be looking to invest in some dirt/MX style tyres for next year’s QMP event. What followed was an awesome showing of high-powered sports Japanese bikes and V-twin Harley-Davidsons turning up with motocross tyres front and rear to help the bikes perform better on the full prepped MX tracks.
To keep this event non-competitive and light-hearted, it’s also highly encouraged that you bring out a motorcycle that usually wouldn’t be found on a dirt track before. With exactly that in mind a lot of people set out to build bikes solely for the purpose of this event only, creating some wild and unique machines. Dust Hustle really does allow the opportunity for anyone to get involved as it can definitely be done on a budget. Many bikes that get entered into the events are old farm bikes or just old barn finds that have been sitting in the shed for years collecting dust and now there’s an opportunity for motorcycle enthusiasts to drag these bikes out of hiding and ride them.
The team behind ‘Dust Hustle’ have done an outstanding job at managing all the different styles of bikes that turn up to their events and with the sole expectation of just having a fun time, it’s definitely an event that you should try and get to if you haven’t done so already…
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