Tasmania 2022 Day#3 - Saving Tassie one pub at a time tour

The Deloraine bakery was open this morning so we could inject some much needed funds into propping them up whilst I enjoyed a delicious scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast. We discussed route plans here. The boys were going to go up over the great lakes again before heading back east up through Scottsdale. Flyboy and myself had other plans, we would try and meet up with them at the Pub in the paddock in Pyengana via gravel roads out past Ben Lomond, if all else fails meet up in St Marys our destination for the day.

On the way back from breaky we saw these three 70's Kwaka Z900's in pristine condition. We chatted briefly with the owners who were coming back from some larger ride.

Flyboy and myself took the road back out to Ben Lomond national park, we went through Blessington and Upper Blessington where we stopped for the following photos overlooking Jacob's Ladder. I'm glad we rode up there on day 1 in such good conditions as today was overcast.

We took to the gravel roads up into the hills to Upper Esk and then back down to Mathinna. Mathinna looked eerily like the town that time forgot, definitely banjo country. It was 26°C out today and most little shacks had their chimneys belching smoke inexplicably, it wasn't cold . There was absolutely nothing open here and we didn't see a single sole. So we continued on up the road towards Ringarooma. The road suddenly forked to the left and put is into thick forest and a shortcut to mushrooms.

There just something I love so much about riding through these pine forest roads, I don't know what it is but I can't get enough of it. Maybe it was time spent out in the pine forests camping as a boy scout in my youth, can't put my finger on what it is.

As we were standing here taking photos we looked over into the forest amazed at the amount of rubbish people have been dumping in here. Bottles, cans, car parts and other junk, in such a beautiful spot. People can be absolute pigs at times. Then we saw these little fellas growing right beside the road.

Thank you Tamron F2.8

Still clean but its about to get much dirtier

Just around the bend the road turned to gravel again and wound it's way up through the hills in tight bends through the forest until it came to the top of a ridge line where the trees had been cut down and there were views out over the valley's and surrounding hills.

We continued along from the lookout with mostly good graded gravel road, until the last couple of kms from the turn at Mt Albert Road where the gravel got a bit thick and slippery. Flyboy was kicking up the dust so I slowed down to get a clear run. I was sliding around a bit which slowed my progress a little but was still doing ok. 

Flyboy was waiting for me at the turn off and continued along, with some rather large mountains hills in front of us. Made for spectacular riding through the forest with these big hills looming up in the distance. The road was a mixture of different surfaces but mostly good graded gravel with the odd slippery section thrown in to keep you on your toes. The Karoo3 front seems to be doing great on the tar and pretty decently on the dirt only had 1 front end slide so far, the rear Motoz in the dirt is great also handling everything with ease.

We then came to a turn off to the left that was unsign posted. I'm sure this is the road we are supposed to take so we turned in and stopped and had a quick look at the map. Yep this was it alright. I didn't like the look of it as it was a single car width track that disappeared over a steep hill. I could hear Han Solo's voice in my head saying "I've got a bad feeling about this".

Photo by Flyboy

It turned into a steep descent  down 15 km bends on slippery gravel then throw in a few steep uphill bits on slippery gravel, I was working hard now, crouching over the bike trying to maximise my control of all the levers and gear shift, concentration was high. But to my surprise the big twin just torqued it's way up those slippery slopes with a fair amount of throttle at the bottom to get up there. I was working up a sweat as I still had my warm liners in, I should have stopped and taken them out. D'oh.

Flyboy stopped at the top of one of the hills to see I was still there. I mentioned to him that this is about as narly as I want to do with my rusty dirt skills. He said the same which made me feel slightly better. But from this point on the worst was behind us even though the road thinned out even more to just 2 wheel tracks across some farming land, where we soon got dumped back onto the road just a couple of km's from the pub in the paddock. I said to him "The guys will never believe I rode this bike through this terrain" He gave me a big grin and said "Yeah they won't but I saw it"

Photo by Flyboy

We were finally out on the flat plain and only took us about a minute to get to the pub, that road threw us basically right out on top of it.

We were soon tucking into a bowl of hot chips and a beer to quench a hard earned thirst. The Little Rivers Pale ale really hit the spot, a nice beer.

The pub in the paddock is renowned for its beer swilling pig Priscilla II, Priscilla had passed away a few years back and had been replaced. I tried to text the other guys here but had no reception. We waited about 30 minutes and few bikes came and went but none of our crew. So we made the decision to head off, we would catch up somewhere along the way.

As we got into St Helens I saw a sign for the Bay of Fires only 10kms, we had plenty of time so I said lets go and have a look. So we took the road out to Binalong Bay. The rock formations along here are stunning with their colours, must be awesome at dusk or dawn during golden hour. I didn't want to wait around till then as I'd rather not encounter any of the wildlife after dark and an ice cold beer was waiting for us in St Mary's.

So enough looking at rocks it was time to get to St Marys, we made our way back along into St Helens. Just as we passed the petrol station I save Dave in there, so hooked a u-turn and we rode back and filled up. Dave had kept riding from Scottsdale all the way having too much fun and left the others behind, where as the others turned into the pub in the paddock where we were going to meet.

We decided to not wait and we would meet them at the pub so continued up the pass to St Marys. Why is it that there are no cars anywhere until you come to a sweet set of twisty bends and then suddenly there's 2 or 3 cars to stuff up your fun. Took a while to get past safely but we did and blasted up the mountain pass. Good fun.

The St Marys hotel was a great little pub, awesome meals and super friendly staff. I had  3 lamb cutlets for diner at $24 and they were huge and awesome value.

Cool devil firepot out in the beer garden and looks like the guitar has been used in anger.

Another Awesome day in Tassie. I took my internal rain and warm liners out once we arrived and got out of our gear, so it should be a bit cooler on the ride tomorrow. Great weather so far in the mid/high 20's so far, will be a great trip if this continues.

Pubs Saved Counter:               5      

Bakery's Saved Counter:         2

Day 3 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