Rick a freelance journalist starts his own top end adventure. On a Kymco MXU 400 of course...


Rick Huckstepp is a former fishing guide in the Northern Territory and now works as a freelance photo journalist working for the One the Road Magazine as well as many fishing Magazines.

Currently, Rick Huckstepp is chasing adventures travelling around Australia covering the Oonadatta Track, Kakadu and inland WA including the gold fields, Tanami Road, Flinders Range, Innamincka races, dinosaur fossil country in Queensland, the gold fields in Cape York and much more! On this escapade Rick Huckstepp has entrusted a Kymco MXU 400 to make these adventures come to life. Travelling in a camper trailer with the MXU 400 on board, Rick will use the MXU for the roughest off-road travel imaginable and extended trips into the remote bush.

Here is the first log of Rick Huckstepp’s adventures….....

Having traipsed around Australia for three years in a 30-foot bus with a car trailer in tow and then having caravanned a lot of this Continent, I was looking for something different to cover with camera and pen. I had my fill of caravan parks and the grey nomad set and the only option I could see was to grab a camper trailer and ATV and head for the dust.

There wasn’t a camper trailer on the market that suited my needs as I needed a lot of water, supplies, storage for camera and video equipment and storage for my Kymco MXU to stay remote for long periods of time. Therefore, we set about building the ‘Huckfish’ bush trailer named after my website www.huckfish.com.au

Station country was in my sights for some photo shots, as well as the extensive goldfields this country offers. The remoteness I was after involved distance and once there, distance is still an issue. Carrying packs, firearms and metal detectors was something I was aware could weigh me down- not being as fit and young as I used to be.

I put my adventures to my Trailer Boat Magazine editor who is also the editor for ATV Magazine, Barry Ashenhurst. He suggested a number of quad bikes that might suit my purposes, and I decided on the tough, robust Kymco MXU 400.

I had an overlong draw bar built on the Huckfish bush trailer and the Kymco MXU 400 got the ramps.

It piggy backed its way to the NT where I had a deadline to meet on a filming contract. From there we headed south into the Selwyn Ranges a hundred or so kilometres in the bush, south of Cloncurry to have a look (albeit unsuccessfully) for some of that valuable yellow stuff!

That week was probably the most fun I have had since early days on motor bikes. The MXU 400 is a gutsy beast and with a metal detector strapped on the front rack I took it through some steep creeks, the banks of which would test any 4WD unit. It really shone!

Some of the plains country I was riding through was covered in Spinifex up to a metre high. Anyone who knows Spinifex knows it as a dense prickly mass of vegetation that is impossible to walk through. If the prickly spikes don’t get you, serpents such as king browns just might!

The Kymco chewed its way through the lot!

High range was possible most of the time until the mass of Spinifex looked impenetrable in which case low range 2WD sorted it out. The odd hidden ant hill and quartz boulder had me in full stop mode on occasions but the bike stood its ground mostly.

Next I am off to a farm around Mackay and from there into the Clermont Goldfields in central Queensland.

Stay tuned... Back