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 2022 Day#1 - Saving Tassie one pub at a time tour

I'd awoken early with only 5 hours sleep thanks to someone wanting to keep the bar open till 1am.  I thought we wouldn't have much time to get ready but it turned out not to be the case. The ship wasn't rocking so thought we've docked. Getting up on deck the sun hadn't come up yet and we we still offshore. The ocean was dead flat. We watched as the sun came up from behind the tip of Tasmania. Beautiful sight. 

Finally we were allowed to get back on the bikes and disembark the ship. First job was to pack our gear back on and unstrap the handle bars.

We stopped for a quick breakfast just off the boat. The food was lousy and the coffee was luke warm milk with a dash of coffee flavour. 2 mouthfuls and it went straight in the bin. We should have learnt from last time and made for a small town out of Devonport.

Flyboy had flown in 2 days before us and was hogging all of tassies best roads to himself. I couldn't have that now. I was exchanging messages with Flyboy and he was in Mole Creek nearby, I said we were heading to Deloraine to drop off our luggage and then ride. We headed to Railton, just as we came into railton the big Africa Twin blasted past the opposite way around the bend, a bit of a wave and we waited in town for him to catch up. We dumped our gear in at the Deloraine Hotel where we were staying for the next two nights and headed out for the Great Lakes.

Then we blasted up the Highlands lake road and stopped at the look out over the lake for a quick break and catch up. There was plenty of road kill on the way up to the lakes, dead wildlife every few hundred metres. It was an awesome day for riding the temps were in the 20's.

Great Lakes

Tuono's in Paradise?

It was a steep twisty decent after the lookout which opened up into sweepers and then straights. The boys on the faster machinery that didn't know where they were going pulled out ahead and straight past the Poatina turn off. We waited for about 10 minutes or so, messaged them and then continued on towards Poatina. Dave said the road to Bothwell was straight and boring. Heh heh....pays to know where you're going and not just blindly follow.

As we came down the side of the mountain towards Poatina the views out in front of us were spectacular. I pulled over as did Flyboy. I said to him "Is there a lookout up here, this is spectacular".

"Dunno" came the reply, then he looked around and saw a huge sign on the other side of the road that said lookout with a camera on it. D'oh we couldn't see the sign because we were so busy looking at the views. So up the dirt track we went to the look out, then were soon joined by Geoff and Scotty.

Stunning views from up here on a pristine clear day. There was a headrace tunnel here at the lookout, it allowed water to flow down from the great lakes through 6kms of tunnels down across the western tiers to Poatina Power station then  and out across the plains.

Found this diagram of the power stations here in this area on the Hydro Tasmania website. Great place for power generation.

Did I happen to mention how stunning the views were today. Oh yeah.

 

We dropped down the side of the western tiers and then had a brief look in at Poatina, nothing much there. It's an old Hydro community looks like something that hasn't changed since the 60's.

Poatina turn off looking back at the Western Tiers

As we came down into the farming lands below the mountains we crossed this interesting little tiered  irrigation channel, this is obviously the outlet from the power station. Amazing how it drops a couple of feet every 100 metres or so.

We stopped for some lunch at yet another bakery in Longford. The pies here were also exemplary, JJ bakery cafe in Longford, look them up when you are there. A few messages back and forth and the other guys were in Cressy about 10kms down the road. 

Scotty(Nigel) and his mates

Flyboy and I decided that we would go up Jacob's ladder today whilst the weather was great, as you never know what we will get in 2 days time. Geoff and Scotty got scared off by the small amount of dirt and returned to the pub in Deloraine. It was just on 1.30pm and it was only about 170kms return from Jacob's ladder. We came to ride tassie's roads not sit in the pub all day. We would be in the pub by 5pm.

Dave did a few poor navigation choices here and it felt like we were going around in circles popping up in the lower suburbs of Launceston before eventually coming into Evandale. There was this cool water tower to get a photo by at least.

We got to the turn off into Ben Lomond National park, where we were descended upon by bees' buzzing around our bikes. A quick pic and off we went again. This will be the first dirt riding I've done in over 20 years and up a steep hill as well. You might say I was a little nervous but also determined, these days I'm more Rusty Demon than Crusty Demon as I don't have much experience on dirt. At least I had the tyres for it and Dave has some video of me riding down at walking pace. I think a little old lady with a zimmer frame would have overtaken me down the mountain. Oh well better to take it easy than bust the bike or myself on day1.

The ride up through the forest was interesting. I was finding it difficult to stand and hold on to the bike. The tank was wide and slippery and the reach to the bars was a long way down and changing gears standing up was blowing my mind. I think I was spending $9.90 of my attention just trying to ride and control the bike let alone looking where I was going. Arriving in the bottom viewing area we were greeted with spectacular view above and below us, with rugged rocky peaks above and forest below. The road winds its way steeply here up to the top with switchback bends a bit like Stelvio pass in Italy, except that is paved and this is gravel.

We made the climb to the top, it was easier than I thought it would be but the last two switch backs at the top got a lot slippery than the one's below. I wouldn't ride my R1 up here on road tyres but the AT handled it pretty well. We arrived at the top carpark/lookout and took to the viewing platform to take in the sights.

Top carpark

Jacob's Ladder

There was a bit of haze in the sky from a bushfire/burn off in the forest on the other side of the valley. Still the views were superlative. Think I've run out of words to use.....

Hazy views

It was now 3.30pm and time to get going with about 85kms to get back to Deloraine Hotel we made our way down. I found it much easier and went faster on the trip down as I could hold onto the bike better going down the hill by pushing my legs against the tank. Still had a few slip and slides here and there but the tyres were handling this not much problems.

The ride back across from Ben Lomond is a fantastic hilly sweeping ride and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We arrive back at the pub around 5pm just in time for beers. They boys were already par-taking in the beery goodness. Dave mentioned he has done enough straight roads in Tassie, lets do some bends. Have an idea of where you want to go I say. My ride is not going to be the same as their ride on this trip. There will be much more gravel, those Tuonos wont like the gravel. But all good we will meet up at the end of the day for beers and tall stories.

Deloraine Hotel is highly recommended with new rooms and bathrooms $55 per night and fantastic meals.

Day 1 Map Reference