Sadly today was our last day in Tassie, loading up the bikes we fueled up, oiled the chains and checked tyre pressures. Funny the front tyre was down 4psi and rear was down 5 psi. It seems that the tubed tyres leak somewhat more than tubeless. I always seem to top them up every couple of weeks.
We headed out of Queenstown via Zeehan Highway and then turned up the B28 via Lake Plimsoll, it was only 30min out before we took a short stop to have a look over the lake. Beautiful mountain scenery here on the west coast.
It was only a short stop as we keep going onwards up the Murchison Highway and then took the turn off towards Cradle Mountain. As it was a nice sunny day I thought we should have some great views over cradle mountain from Black Bluff lookout.
There were 2 Asian tourists in the carpark when we parked up the bikes. The guy started looking at our bikes and was hysterical with joy when we all pulled up, he tried to communicate with us with his broken english; read very broken english. Turns out he was a motorcyclist back home, showed us photos of his ride. Very funny him oohing and ahhing at all the bikes.
Climbing up to the top of the lookout we had superb views over the valley below and all the way out to Cradle mountain. Spectacular scenery, the last time we were here it was covered in cloud.
The chinese couple took some photos of all of us standing around the pinnacle, new boy band cover photo time.
It was time to get going again, so I thought that I might be able to get some photos of the guys along the road somewhere so headed off to look for a spot before they were ready. At the speed they ride I reckon I'd have about 2 minutes to find something and setup. Not much time really.
Flyboy came back after he went past as I was packing up my camera, didn't have the heart to tell him I slipped and panned too quickly when he went past and probably missed the shot. So we then rode together to catch up to the boys.
We finally caught up to them as they were getting ready to head in for a coffee at Cradle Forest Inn at Moina, I decided to order Scones with jam&cream. They tasted as good as they looked and the coffee was nice and strong. It was saturday and lots of bikes were out today, a few bikes were stopping in here so must be popular with the locals.
Flyboy said there a nice little lookout on the left a few kms out the road we'll go have a look. The others kept motoring on so we quickly checked it out. There seems to be endless lookouts all over tassie all with various levels of spectacular.
Next up was the ride across to Sheffield. At Gowrie Park found this large mural painted on a shed along the roadside.
As we were head to Sheffield I saw a sign to the right that said Paradise 3kms. We both stopped and did u-turns and went back and headed down the road. Unfortunately Paradise is just a locality and nothing there just a house or two. I didn't even notice a sign, but google maps shows there was one.
Still a excellent little diversion in some beautiful countryside, I came around a sharp downhill right hander and suddenly a bee/wasp flew inside my helmet that was slightly cracked open for ventilation and was buzzing around in front of my eyes. Lucky I had my internal dark visor down as it was caught in-between the two, but nearly ran off the road trying to get it out.
Paradise Road |
We stopped in a Sheffield where the guys were filling their pie holes with all sorts of goodness from the bakery. I was still a bit full from the scone but couldn't pass up an opportunity to save another bakery, so got a small sausage roll/spinach roll. They were awesome. Gee the jackets getting tight on this tour.....
Sheffield is best known for it murals painted on the buildings, there were a couple right next to the bakery. I didn't have time to go searching for more as it wasn't long before we were heading across to Beaconsfield. Flyboys workmate was also going to meet us there, he was riding an Africa Twin as well and was also getting on the boat tonight.
We rode out to Beaconsfield and then across Batman bridge to Georgetown, there was a strong side wind riding along here that was blowing us all over the place. I was kinda over it by now and to be honest didn't really want to ride out there as Flyboy said it was a shit ride, he was right. Georgetown was a small fishing village, the pub in town near the waterfront looked nice however. Time to head back, via some brilliant backroads from Beaconsfield to Devonport, it was getting late so no photos and I was having too much fun.
Rolling into Devonport the guys were looking for somewhere to eat. Flyboy mentioned he was going into the city centre so I thought I would go take a look, the boat doesn't depart till about 9:30pm or something like that. Both Flyboy and Andy went to a car wash to wash the bikes, so I joined in to get most of the dirt off from the western explorer and the bugs.
It was rather cold out waiting to board the ship. It seemed to take forever, as we chatted with a few of the other riders there. A couple of shots of Fireball warmed us up somewhat while we waited.
TASSIE Epilogue
Another successful tour of Tassie completed, no one died which was good and there were no crashes which was great even though I tried my best with the wallaby incident.
Tassie is such a great place to ride, there are so many good twisty roads with awesome views of mountains, lakes, farmlands, forests, beaches and historical places. Plenty of dirt roads too for even more adventures.
Thanks to a great bunch of guys for such a memorable trip, without you guys it wouldn't have been the same. All good riders, and great company. There were many tall stories told in the pub at days end, good times. Shout out to our fearless tour captain Dougie, for booking all the important stuff. Thanks Legend.
We booked all of our accommodation, mostly pubs in advance. Lucky as most places were booked out. Our first day was 26th March and last was 2nd April, 8 days in total. The temperatures were good mostly, although we did have a few cold days near the end of the trip, earlier in march might be a better option but it was still good until early April but I probably wouldn't plan a trip later than this. Most of the accomodation at the pubs cost between $50-$75 which is great value. Fuel prices were sky high at around $2.30 - $2.35 per litre, but have since dropped to more reasonable levels($1.80).
I did 2873kms around Tassie on my trip meter, average 359km per day which was a good distance I think and I did over 5000kms for the trip in total. You could do more kms per day but I feel that you would end up missing a lot of things, as it was 8 days was good but still a bit short. I think you would need a good 14 day trip here just so you could see and do a lot of things. Camping would make it cheaper but could be bad in wet weather.
We did our best to inject some much needed funds into the local pubs and bakery's, although the bakery score looks pretty low, we did spread the love to some local cafe's, no franchise places for us.
Pubs Saved Counter: 11
Bakery's Saved Counter: 6
Day 8 Map Reference
Great stuff Steve. Glad you guys had a good trip away. I really need to get on top of my write-ups from down South...
ReplyDeleteThanks mate, it was another epic ordeal trip but thoroughly enjoyed. Looking through all the photos to make the blog made all those memories come flooding back, it was like enjoying the trip twice. Get ya shit together will ya.....
Deletehandsome bunch of guys ! no wonder the tasmanians locked up all their women
ReplyDeleteYep
DeleteWhat a wonderful ride report this has been, engaging and great photos.
ReplyDeleteI really want to ride Tassie now!
Thanks Warren. There's plenty of info here for route plans and places to stay etc and good roads to ride. You can't really go badly wrong in Tassie really.
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