Tasmania 2022 Day#8 - Saving Tassie one pub at a time tour

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

Tasmania 2018 - Day 6

DAY 6

Tasmania Day 1

It's day 6 of the trip but only day 1 of actually riding in Tassie. I was up at 5.45am but was awake from about 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep due to our cabin being like Hacksaw Ridge. The ship had been docked in Davenport for some time but I couldn't be sure how long as we had no window view. It was a fairly calm trip across so that was a bonus.

After yesterdays failed effort of disembarking the ship we regroup quickly and stopped for breakfast not far from the port, at you guessed it yet another bakery. I'm starting to think that this isn't our tour of Tassie but rather the great southern bakery and pub tour of 2018. Well if your going to stop in at a bakery it may as well be the best one.

I asked our fearless group captain what the plan was for today and was surprised to hear he hadn't made any, just the destination for the night Deloraine which is in the middle of the top end of the isle. So we all hastily surrounded some maps over breaky and devised a route plan. As Bruce would be leaving us in Hobart we decided to head west and take the road through Hellyer Gorge, something I was not at all displeased about. It's an excellent bike road. Sitting eating breakfast I could feel myself rocking backward and forward, great I'd gotten sea legs, hope that's not bad riding a motorcycle with my balance being all stuffed up.

The ride out on the highway to Burnie was only a short trip of about 50km, and it was pretty cold out this morning. When we stopped for fuel in Burnie most some of us put on neck warmers if we had them or another layer. I didn't bother as it would warm up right?

We turned off at Somerset and took the Murchison Highway up into the hills, where we came through the famous Hellyer Gorge. I think the Tasmanians spelt Hellyer wrong.

Hellyer Gorge Road

Lads in Hell? Yeah

Stu joins the party

Here's a short video of the Hellyer gorge and Murchison Highway.

Heading out of the gorge chasing Geoff was a lot of fun, it was over all too soon as we headed out on some of the long straights out towards Cradle mountain. The higher we got and closer we got the cooler it became. It was down around 11-12°C. We stopped again for a, ahem boys break and I decided it was too cold and put on an extra layer as did Geoff. This is summer? The scenery here reminded me much of the west coast of New Zealand. You can see the moss in the centre of each lane.

The road up to Cradle Mountain is open and sweeping up over the huge hills. We stopped at the Cradle Mountain lookout but the cloud was so low today you couldn't actually see the mountain. But the views over the valleys were glorious.

There's a mountain shrouded in cloud out there somewhere

Mountain Selfie goodness

We stopped at the boom gate on the road into Dove lake and the sign said to purchase tickets at the cafe. So we rode back to the cafe and had a spot of morning tea and to warm up a bit. I would have liked to take a photo of all the bikes in front of Dove Lake with Cradle Mountain in the background but at $16.50 each to get in and to have the photo's of mountain covered in cloud it was a bit like throwing money down the toilet. Besides there was more good riding to come yet and it was only early in the day.

We continued on out of Cradle Mountain and headed for Mt Roland and the road that goes around the back of it to Mole Creek and then on into Deloraine. The ride along here was cold still around 11-12°C, decidedly chilly for summer. The road here was very winding and I was having a lot of fun leading the group. Coming down a large hill we could see Mt Roland looming up high in front of us only a few kilometers away. The ride down to the valley floor and back up again was good fun.

We stopped at the look out and looked down on the valley below. You could see the road winding down the hill in the photo below was the same section that I stopped to take a photo on, in the photo above.

Mt Roland

We continued on down the back of the mountain range with more superb sets of twisties. The road was just about deserted everywhere we have hardly seen any traffic since we left the highway at Burnie. We did come upon a truck in the twisties but he moved over and let us all through, not before the mighty crossplane surprised the f*ck out of him.

Making our way into Deloraine it was still only just after lunch, so we got into our rooms and dumped some of our gear and continued on up towards Exeter and Beaconsfield.

Deloraine Hotel

Main St Deloraine

On the way to Exeter I felt a huge thump on my leathers right near my neck. Shortly after there was a painful stinging sensation in my neck. Swiping frantactly at my neck I quickly pulled over to look in the mirror, feels an awful lot like a bee sting, lucky I'm not allergic to them, just the pain from them. I couldn't find the sting as I might have brushed it off before I stopped but boy it was hurting for a while.

We made our way into Greens Beach was was quiet and relaxed looking place. There was not a sole on the beach except a guy walking his dog. Such a beautiful place. All the beaches we saw were all deserted across the whole island as well as most of the lakes, it was a bit bizarre really.

Greens Beach

We returned to Deloraine via an alternate route out of Beaconsfield which was also very twisty through the hills and farming land, quite a nice little ride.



We are staying 2 nights in the Deloraine Hotel. It was a nice central location in the northern part of the island for days trips out and it turned out to be a great decision. It was a great little pub the rooms had been recently done up and were clean and the beds were in good condition. The bathrooms had all be refurbished and were brand new. A single room was only $50 per night. Bargain really. You can contact the Deloraine hotel on 03 6362 2022 they are highly recommended.







Map Reference - two maps as there were too many way points for google to calculate