Tasmania 2018 - Day 8

DAY 8

Tasmania Day 3

Checking the weather radar this morning it was all clear with no rain predicted. A great start to the day. Today we were heading to Hobart for the night over the Highland Lakes Road. I drove down it in 2010 in a hire car on a family holiday and thought to myself, I have to do this road on the bike when I come back it was that good, except it turned to dirt just after the lakes lookout.

Whilst loading up the bikes in the morning we met a couple of riders that had stayed at the pub the night before. Speaking with one of the riders he mentioned that he rode over the Highland Lakes road yesterday afternoon in the lightning storm and hail. That interested me greatly as that was our planned route this morning. Probing for road conditions he confirm my fears and there was 20km's of dirt/road works. The group quickly ditched the road from our plans, but I was determined to ride it.

So some scheming and looking at the maps I managed to convince the group to ride up to the lookout about an 80km round trip of twisties. They agreed and off we went. Hooray for me as this was a highlight of the trip.

Riding up the Highlands Lakes road we came into thick forests on either sides of the road, it was a bit tricky to see as it was still early and it was dark in the shadows. Gotta watch out for kangaroo's here, there's plenty of road kill.

I stopped to take a couple of photo's and put my gopro on as the lads disappeared into the distance, Stu's V4 sounded brilliant as it howled up the mountain.

The road winds it way constantly going up through thick forested hills until it comes out at the top to sweeping curves over the tops of the hills. Large rocky mountains loom large on either side of the road, with magnificent vistas and views to the valleys surrounding.

The road surface along here is in very good condition, with very little traffic on the road we practically had the road to ourselves. Stu took off like a scalded cat, looks like he was having lots of fun. The road allows for some spirited riding.

Highlands Lake Tracktrack Road

The above pic is for some scale, the bikes are over shadowed by the size and scale of the mountain behind us.

Here is a short video of the trip up the Mountain and you can see how difficult it was to see this early in the morning. Enjoy.

Continuing on we rode past Pine Lake and down the hill into more twisties to which we soon turned around not sure why, but I found out later that we were only 1 km short of the Great Lakes lookout. D'oh, we missed out on some great views and photo opportunity. Oh well. We turned around and headed back up the hill and stopped in by Pine Lake for some pics. It a beautiful spot surrounded by huge rocky mountainous terrain with the lake in the centre.

Highlands Lake Road

Pine Lake - Not one of the great lakes

We now headed back towards Deloraine and the guys were absolutely gutted that they had to ride the 40kms of twisty mountain road again. This time I didn't stop to take any photos and now that the sun had come up enough so that there weren't so many shadows and dark spots on the road we really had a spirited ride back down.

We soon arrived back in Deloraine and turned off towards Cressy retracing our route from yesterday afternoon but at a much gentler pace as we didn't have a huge lightning storm chasing us.

We refueled in Campbell Town, it was almost 12pm and Doug suggested we have lunch. As luck would have it there was a Banjo's bakery right across from the petrol station. They make some fantastic pie's, sausage rolls and sammiches. I downed my spinach roll so fast I didn't even get a photo of it.


Setting off after lunch we took the Lake Leake Road. This was the road that one of the local riders at the Pub in the paddock said"You must ride Lake Leake Road, its stiffy inducing". Thats a fairly big call to make and also one I was highly skeptical about.


Turns out I was right, it wasn't a bad road by any stretch but it wasn't a fantastic one either and certainly not stiffy inducing by any means. The road was fairly high speed with lots of sweeping if not bumpy corners, riding along slightly above the limit you would need to be doing highly illegal speeds to make this road fun. I don't go in for these speeding shenanigans, that's not how I roll. We had ridden on far better roads in Tassie so far, most of them at or below legal speed on twister tarmac.

We then turned north onto the Tasman highway and headed towards the coastal town of Bicheno. The traffic along the coastal road was quite heavy compared with anywhere we had been so far, it obviously a very touristy route.

We rolled into Bicheno and had a little look around, they have a motorcycle museum here but we really didn't have time to spare to poke around in there. It would have been nice to check it out.

Stopping in at Bicheno boat ramp we stopped to take in the scenery, such a beautiful little coastal village very quiet. There was only 1 person on the beach and they were actually swimming the first we had seen so far. Its strange most of the beaches and lakes have been empty of people.

Bicheno Boat Ramp

Bicheno Beach

Bicheno Bay

The ride out of Bicheno and down the coast is a great ride with lots of twisty bits smattered with coastal views and beaches. Just out of Swansea I stopped to take some photo's of the coast along the Freycinet Peninsula. Such a beautiful spot, even more so on a bright sunny day as it brings out the beautiful aqua blue colours in the ocean, not so today as there was now cloud cover. I also noticed how dry it was along here, they mustn't get as much rain as other parts of the island which are all very green.

R1 on the Freycinet Peninsula

Tasman Highway

The other guys continued on and I rode along by myself enjoying the views for quite some time. Then a police car came past and was waving for me to slow down, I looked down and was only doing 109 kmh in a 100 zone. He's probably used to tourist traffic travelling well under the limit and thought I was speeding, or he saw the guys out in front and though I was going as fast as they were.

It was also along here I nearly got caught up in a head on accident between two 4x4. I was following one heading south around a left hander and he dipped his wheels off the road into the dirt, then violently pulled it back onto the road, just at the same time another 4x4 going the other direction passed him. There was literally only a few inches between them it was that close. I quick passed and caught up to the others who had stopped for some fuel.

Not far out of Orford I almost got myself tangled up in another incident. We were following 2 cars alongside a river. I pulled out to over take both cars but some traffic suddenly appeared coming the other way over a rise. Rather than punch it to warp 2 to get around I braked and pulled in behind the first car. I think they must have panicked and braked hard, I almost pulled a stoppie into the back of her.....I got the Fuck outta there as soon as I could.

Sometimes I think it would be a hell of a lot safer if I was speeding, I wouldn't have hesitated to blast by in my 20's and 30's, now I try to be a bit more conservative which actually put me at greater risk, I can't afford to lose my license. A stupid mistake on my part that won't happen again.

Not long after this we came into the outer suburbs of Hobart and traffic was getting quite heavy. We had entered peak hour at around 4:30pm. It was quite busy but luckily it only took us about 15min to get to our digs for the night the Wrest Point Casino.

Yeah we were upping the Ante on the accomodation stakes and staying in luxury. It must have been funny for the people inside to see 6 scruffy bikers stroll into reception with all our gear on. I bet they don't see that everyday.

We commandeered a baggage trolley and loaded it up with our gear and and wheeled it to our rooms. I notice they had valet parking, I wonder if they did bikes? Anyway no scungy valet guy would be riding my R1.

Wrest Point Casino

View from our room - Hobart and the Derwent River

The views from our room were quite spectacular looking out towards the city and over the Derwent River. The Hobart yachting club was having thursday night races on the Derwent tonight. Later on when the sun had gone down the night views from our room were also brilliant and dramatically different.

Getting changed and ready to hit the casino Geoff and I decided to celebrate with the last of the Rum and Bourbon, no need to carry it the whole way around the island so we downed it before legging it to the sports bar.

Happy Days

We ended up having diner at the casino and more drinks. A couple of guys had a go on blackjack, I prefered to keep my money, no need to make the trip more expensive than it needs to be. We must have tied one on as it wasn't until after 1am that we finally hit the hay.

Todays Map Reference

Tasmania 2018 - Day 7

DAY 7

Tasmania Day 2

Checking the weather for today it said rain, heavy rain. Consulting the radar it gave a grim picture. Mmmm riding in that sounds rather unappealing. The rain was coming in from the northwest heading in a south easterly direction. So two options for today.

Sit in the pub and drink all day or head east away from the rain and hope for the best. Despite Geoff's protests that the pub needed us we headed east to try and out run the rain. We left our bags behind so we could ride un-encumbered but did take our wets in Stu's Tank Bag. I forgot to put my gopro in today so only got some photo's for today's ride.

Taking the scenic route out of Deloraine we saw our first police car had stopped someone and was giving them a talking to, better them than us I say. It wasn't long before we arrived in Launceston and refueled and then took the A3 Tasman highway out of town towards the east coast. The road slow wound its way up into the forested mountains out east of Launceston. The road here was in need of some repairs was was still great fun. A lot of the tight corners had banking on them assisting you hook into the turn. Fantastic riding.

We stopped in at the Sideling lookout, beautiful views of the valley below and surrounding scenery with Scottsdale in the centre distance. There were a few fires down below and it was a little hazy, but for predicted heavy rain we were doing very well with sunshine and perfect conditions. Doug said"Shit" We all looked and he had lost part of his rain suite off his bike. Bruce said I saw something on the road about 2 km's back. Doug remounted and went back and found his rain suite intact as well. It hadn't been mangled by any cars yet.

The last 8km of winding road down the hill from the lookout had gravel all over it which was a bummer as it would have been great riding at normal speed. The scenery all around was spectacular. We passed a Lamborgini and McLaren going the other way, it looked like they were out having a bit of fun as well.

We stopped along the way as we got separated again, so I took a couple of pics whilst we waited. The other guys arrived in a couple of minutes. Turns out Doug had been stung on the elbow by a bee that went up the sleeve of his jacket, incredible really. Dave also got stung by a bee on the trip so that made 3 of us in a couple of days. They also have those huge bumble bees here similar to the one's we saw in New Zealand last time. I never seen some many bee's before, we certainly don't see this many on the mainland.

We stopped in for fuel at the roadhouse near St Columbia Falls and it was right on lunch time. I'd been here previously on other trips and I knew there was the famous Pub in the Paddock just a short distance from here. I suggested we visit the pub for lunch and there wasn't any arguments against that suggestion so that's what we did.

You couldn't miss the Pub as there was a huge Beer sign on the side of the road at the entrance but somehow Geoff managed to ride straight past, Dave had to chase him down. Not sure why he couldn't smell it, he was that close.  It was a dead end road that went up to St Columbia falls so he would have to come back eventually, about 5 minutes later he rode back into view.

I ordered a grilled chicken sammich which was fantastic, it hit the spot just right and wasn't too filling. Looking around the bar area they had hundreds of pictures on the walls of motorcycling groups pictured outside the pub. I noticed Charlie Boormans photo amongst them.

We met a local rider on a ducati and spoke with him briefly about the roads in Tassie. He told us "You have to do the Lake Leake road it is a stiffy inducing ride". Now that is setting the bar high.

The pub is a popular tourist spot and it's also a popular bikers stops as well. We parked the bikes under the shade of the shed, by the time we came out from lunch there were a lot more bikes in there as well. The pub is also famous for their beer swilling pig Priscilla. I found out Priscilla had died and now they have Priscilla II as a replacement. There is a little shrine in the pub that was cornered off to everyone and it had an urn with presumably Priscilla's ashes and photos.

Beer swilling Pigs, maybe they can fly too

We could see dark clouds now starting to come over head and to the south, we'd been lucky so far with dry roads and blue sky's, however the western side of the island was copping a hammering in rainfall, we had been outrunning it for the time being and hopefully that will continue. We were still travelling to the east down to the coast.

We rode the short distance down to St Helens which we simply passed through on our way to St Marys. There were some dark clouds ahead in the mountains where I was intending on going, or we could take the road down the coast which was clear. We consulted the rain radar and it was clear so I made an executive decision and we headed up the St Marys pass, a superb set of twisties that was over way too fast.

We stopped briefly in St Marys to consult google maps. I would have liked to ride down Elephant pass but it was getting late in the afternoon now and the guys wanted to get back to Deloraine. Oh well we missed a great bit of twisties but they don't know that.

The road from St Marys across the Esky highway was more or less just boring straights and bits of curvy road. There was some road works to negotiate where they had put down lime and then just watered it. The bikes got covered in crap. We turned onto the main road between Launceston and Hobart called the Midlands highway. This was straight and boring and with lots of traffic. Luckily we were stopping off after 10kms at Campbell Town for fuel then turning up back roads to Deloraine.

Subway with a drive through

Doug had the great idea to tub the bikes with the car window washer at the petrol station, it worked a treat to get most of the heavy crap off the bikes. My brake light and number plate weren't visible.

On the way back we took the C522 back road out to Cressy which is in the top 50 rides in tassie. We were heading in a north westerly direction and there were huge storms coming over the highlands in  that direction. The clouds were black and green with flashes of lightning. I was leading here and kept upping the pace to try and get around the top of the storm before we got a hosing and it was working. The road would turn west towards the storm so I'd speed up and it would turn north again getting around the storm so I'd speed up some more, this repeated several times.

Three off us were thinking the same and the other three decided to stop and put their wets on. They ended up getting an absolute hosing for 5-10 minutes whilst we out-rode the lighting storms and made it into Cressy dry as. However we stopped in the petrol station and put our wet weather gear on as it was looking bleak still. As we finished the others just pulled up.

Photo courtesy of Doug

Riding out of Cressy heading to Deloraine we encountered a few small showers not much really about 5 minutes worth, my boots and gloves didn't get soaked so there mustn't have been much in it as luckily we skirted around the edge of the really heavy stuff. I noticed that all the little tiny towns that we went through had interesting looking little pubs right along the roadside. It would have been good to be able to stop at these and check them all out, but then it might take 3.5 years to tour around Tassie.

Yet another fantastic days riding in Tassie and for a day predicted with rain we actually hit less than 5 minutes worth with some good planning. So it was back to the pub for more beers.

Day 7 Map Reference