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

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