Sailing on Bourke’s open plains

Sailing across the wide-open plains out back is not an experience many people in Bourke get to experience – unless you want to take up land yachting. And devotees of land yachting say the thrill is equal to anything you’d experience on the water.

Local Byrock enthusiast Colin Dunstone was bitten by the land yacht bug years ago and found that it was easier to build them himself than try and source these specialised vehicles. Colin and a small group of thrill seekers get out on the claypans around Bourke whenever conditions are right, and he is encouraging anyone who wants to add some excitement to the weekend to come and join in the fun.

“We can get up to about 65 kilometres an hour if the wind is right,” Colin said. “Top speeds for some of the competition land yachts are above 100 kilometres an hour which is pretty exciting when your bum is only a few centimetres off the ground!”

Colin is the master of innovation and despite being a very long way from where land yachts are traditionally built, has managed to have some competitive craft out on the plains. He is now one of the few land yacht builders in the country and his designs stem from plans off the internet with modifications to suit whatever materials were available. 

“The land yachts we use are all homemade and based on plans put out by Western Australian land yachters,” Colin said. 

“The design is called a Lake Lefroy Mini and the construction is based on access to readily available materials, a grinder, and a welder. 

“This design is one of many that fit within the international land yacht class Mini 5.6, which in a nutshell has the rules that all of the wheels must fit within a loop of rope 5.6 metres long and must have wheelbarrow style wheels.

“There are more world classes, generally getting bigger and faster with much more rigid rules,” Colin said.

Lake Lefroy is a 550 square kilometre salt lake near Kalgoorlie, the mecca of Australian land yachters and the place where the designers fine-tuned their craft.  The $4,000 Blokart craft is the closest to Colin’s construction – which he scrounges on a limited budget of a couple of hundred dollars per yacht.

“Internationally, there is a big following in Europe with the large areas of hard sand on the tidal beaches of France and England being popular, as well as unused bitumen airstrips in England,” he said. 

“The salt lakes in the deserts of the USA host national competitions and Argentina has a following also.

  “My original interest in land yachts started in 2015 when the Scouts in Darwin had a two-seater land yacht to use on a camp. Knowing a few would be needed for the camp, I did some research and with much scrounging, I built two more for the camp.  

“Since then, four more have been built here at Byrock, using things from tip shops as well as a lot of eBay and Gumtree shopping.

“Windsurfer sails and masts, boat trailer, quad bike and golf buggy wheels and axle stubs for the rear and pushbike wheels for the front.  A couple of wheelbarrow wheel hubs from the Nardoo clearing sale at Wanaaring have already been turned on the lathe at the Bourke Men’s Shed to take high speed bearings.

“I was lucky to salvage a number of mobile phone base station panel antennas over the years and the fibreglass front cover of these became our seats which saved a lot of work. 

“The Telstra tower in Bourke has a number of panels on it that would be suitable!

“The minis on salt lakes have been clocked at up to 110 kph but conditions have to be spot on for that to happen.  Our best so far is 65 kph over a 250-metre run but as we refine our sail set ups and get higher quality and lighter weight wheels, higher speeds are expected,” Colin said.

If you would like to experience the thrill of tearing across the clay pans around Bourke in a custom-made land yacht, Colin would like to hear from you. He is hoping to build up the fledgling sport into a bigger club but competing against some of the other land yachters around the country may be a big ask.

“The nearest club is more than a thousand kilometres away, so at this stage, it’s just an exciting activity for anyone interested in the Bourke area,” he said. 

Source: The Western Herald