POSING for a few photographs before heading to Germany on Sunday, Australian enduro motocross star Tanya Hearn looked at the tangle of vines and branches in the tree above her.

"That’d be a good one to climb," she said.

It was not a surprising thing for her to say because Hearn is an adventurer – that’s how she thinks.

"I always was. But I was always the city girl who wanted to ride a bike and wasn’t allowed to," she said. Whoever was stopping her back then would hate to see the 32-year-old now.

On Sunday, she will leave for Germany, wearing the Australian colours as part of a three-woman team to compete at the International Six Day Enduro in Saxony.

And she will be taking her new, shiny 250cc baby with her.

It has been a four-year pursuit made all the more sweeter because she was first reserve for last year’s trip. And Hearn, a postie who also works at a motorcycle shop, does her own fundraising, webpage maintenance and publicity, has done it the hard way.

She even gets help from a local butcher, but has to raffle the meat trays herself to see any profit.

"Nothing has come easy, and sometimes you’re so busy with all that stuff you don’t realise how well you’re going," she said.

The super-fit racer will figure that out soon enough, though, when she rubs shoulders with Dakar winners, multiple world champions and outright legends in motor sport-mad Germany.

"They love their racing over there and a lot of people will line the tracks to watch, which will be very different from racing in Australia," she said.

Five hundred riders from 32 countries will compete in the race that stretches 1000km through pine forest and soft European dirt.

All going well, Hearn will spend seven hours on the bike each day and have 15 minutes at the end of each stage to change tyres or make repairs. It is longer than any event she has ever competed in, but thanks to Redlynch fitness master Ken Dalton, she is in ideal shape.

"He’s so good, so nasty," she laughed. "It’s the fittest I’ve been, but I’ll need to be."

She said the large off-road fraternity in the Far North had been fantastic support, particularly mentor and former Australian Enduro champion Peter Buckley.

"I race at his place a lot and he raced this same comp in Germany last time it was there 23 years ago, so he’s pretty stoked for me," Hearn said.

The six-day event begins on September 24.

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