Lastfire forrally

• Published date: 09 June 2021
• Publication title: Courier, The

The bonfire has been Ken Gillespie’s domain since motorcyclists first turned up en masse for a midwinter rally four decades ago.

Back in the early days of the rally in Oturehua, in Central Otago’s remote Ida Valley, Mr Gillespie, the farmer on whose land Otago Motorcycle Club (OMCC) members had asked to stage their rally, would help cut firewood for the bonfire.

Next, he would help build it: a wooden pyre that grew to be 10m long and several metres high. Then, on the Saturday night, he would light the bonfire to cheers and hoots from the many hundreds, sometimes thousands, of bikers who had made the annual pilgrimage to the Brass Monkey Rally.

‘‘It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it,’’ Mr Gillespie said of his special fire-lighting technique.

‘‘But I’m not going to elaborate on that.’’

The huge log fire was always central to the warmth, camaraderie and antics of the 24-hour rally, more than half of which was spent in darkness.

‘‘There were days that we’d arrive back first thing in the morning, before anyone was really wandering around,’’ Mr Gillespie recalled, ‘‘and there would still be people standing around the bonfire.

‘‘And the odd one sleeping pretty much in the embers.’’

On Saturday morning, thousands of motorcyclists from throughout New Zealand rumbled into Oturehua for the 40th, and final, Brass Monkey Rally.

For decades it had been winter’s biggest thing on two wheels — ever since six members of the OMCC went to a Cold Kiwi motorcycle rally, near Waiouru, in the frozen heart of the North Island, and then decided to organise their own.

The exact year that Leo Fisher, Peter and Alister Stevenson, John Willems, Bill Veitch and John Weir attended that northern rally seems lost in the mists of time. John Ashton, writing 20 years ago, gave both 1979 and 1980 as the date. Willems and Veitch, speaking to The Weekend Mix, offered both 1980 and 1981, before settling on the earlier date.

What is recorded is that, travelling south again across Cook Strait, with the ferry bar closed, Mr Veitch wagered Mr Fisher $10 he could not get a bottle of rum. Mr Fisher won the bet and as the night wore on the decision was taken: ‘‘We could run a winter rally like that in the South Island.’’

The first goal was to find the coldest workable location. Oturehua fitted the bill. Closing the deal, the local community was willing to help make the rally happen, and Mr Gillespie offered the use of a piece of his farmland next to the Idaburn Dam.

‘‘The local people of Oturehua...