Nick and Trudi Selleck have day jobs to be extremely envious of. Not many people can say they work alongside their significant other – successfully! – and that the work involves running motorcycle adventure tours across the country. Pretty unique, right? Meet the team that is MASCHINE.
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Since 2011 Maschine have been running adventure rides and road motorcycle tours for groups large and small. Maschine are accustomed to managing group sizes of 100 – 200 riders and have successfully managed adventure rides with over 250 riders. But equally, they know how to create a great event for more intimate groups.
It is no mean feat managing a moving circus like an adventure ride and is often likened to herding cats! But with a great team of people supporting their events they manage to pull it off with seeming ease.
Some of the rides they have organised in 2015 include retracing the Burke & Wills Expedition route from Melbourne to Karumba, TransTerra 5 day ride through South Coast NSW and a 16 day road tour of Europe taking in Italy, Austria, Germany & Switzerland.
The people behind Maschine are husband and wife team Nick and Trudi Selleck who both have extensive working in the motorcycle industry.
Nick’s 24 years in the motorcycle industry is varied; working as a mechanic, managing marketing and ecommerce in both retail and wholesale as well as managing the Broadford Motorcycle Complex for a period of time. He has been riding bikes since he was 5 years old and has competed in motocross, enduro and supermoto races. In planning and organising adventure rides he has become very knowledgable in using GPS for route planning. Nick is a Level 1 coach with Motorcycling Australia and recently completed the training to achieve Level 2 accreditation.
Trudi’s career has utilised her fantastic organisational skills as an IT project manager and in marketing. In 2002 Trudi began a web and graphic design business that she operated for 12 years before starting Maschine to concentrate on event management. Trudi is an accomplished rider and has completed many big adventure rides including crossing the Australian continent south-north on Maschine’s Burke & Wills Expedition and the many alpine passes of their European trip in July 2015.
Supporting Nick & Trudi is a great team of people including Loretta in the office as well as a team of volunteers that come together for the events. A signature of Maschine events is the fantastic support that is always close to hand for riders. Staff work together in a range of roles including; lead riding, medical, tech support, tyre support, support vehicle driving, photography & videography to name a few roles. They typically volunteer their time but invariably the Maschine crew make it lots of fun along the way.
Aside from riding great roads & tracks and seeing spectacular parts of the country one of the key elements of all Maschine events is the social aspect. Nick & Trudi love the atmosphere that is generated when a bunch of like minded adventure riders come together and they are generally a pretty easy going bunch and take whatever comes in their stride. Nick & Trudi have made some lasting friendships with people all over the country.
Aside from adventure rides Maschine have developed a range of rider training courses aimed specifically at adventure travel riders. The courses focus on developing real world skills that adventure riders can add to their arsenal and build confidence to tackle more challenging and rewarding rides. Nick has broad experience off-road and over the past few years has ridden tens of thousands of kilometres each year, often through some remote terrain, so he has a wealth of experience. The training courses offered by Maschine include:
– Adventure Trials training utilising trials bikes to build confidence and skills
– Sand Riding Bootcamp
– GPS Training
– One Day introductory adventure riding for newbies
Although they are based just out of Melbourne in Victoria they travel along the east coast for training regularly and their rides take them right across Australia and internationally.
The 2016 calendar for Maschine is filled with a great range of adventure rides and events. Some of the key events being:
3-4 March – Adventure Trials training, Pacific Park NSW
6-11 March – KTM Australia Adventure Rallye
19 March – Touratech Adventure Challenge, Bright VIC
16-17 April – Sand Riding Bootcamp, Noosa QLD
22-25 April – TransTerra 4 day ride, Western Victoria
14-15 May – Sand Riding Bootcamp, Echuca VIC
21-22 May – Sand Riding Bootcamp, Stockton NSW
11-25 June – TransTerra 2016, Alice Springs to Broome WA via Kimberley
18-19 July – Adventure Trials training, QLD
September – Italian and German Alpine road tour – Italy, Austria & Germany
September – Southern France & Spain road tour
Maschine’s key event for 2016 is their TransTerra ride from Alice Springs through the Kimberly region to Broome WA. With 12 days of riding and camping under outback skies it will be a true Aussie outback adventure. The ride is planned to begin the week following the Finke Desert Race so you can watch Toby Price and the KTM race team riders smash out the Finke course before heading off on your own adventure through the centre of Australia.
Nick has been riding a KTM 1190 Adventure R since October last year and is loving it’s off-road capability, sophisticated electronics and outright power of the v-twin engine.
“My first big ride on the KTM 1190 Adventure R was for our TransTerra ride,” Nick stated.
“I fell in love with it on the Monday and got more and more excited by it as the week went on. I’ve put a lot of kilometres on other makes and models over the past few years and none of them have excited me as much as the 1190 R has!
I took it on one of the most gnarly tracks I have ever ridden on an adventure bike and it handled it beautifully.
Most of all I was super impressed with how sophisticated the electronics are. I basically rode it in off-road mode most of the week and not once did I feel a need to turn the ABS or traction control off to get through difficult sections. When I did deactivate the ABS and traction control it made me appreciate how refined it is at taming the power. The KTM electronics package is noticeably more refined than other models I have ridden and I think it is really important riders get a chance to understand how it can assist with their riding experience.”
Nick has been coaching alongside Chris Birch at the recent KTM Training Series and will be attending the KTM Australia Adventure Rallye in March as lead rider, as well as helping out riders with the GPS routes.
