The return trip home

The trip back from tassie was always going to be a let down, I'm mean how could it compare and the weather forecast wasn't looking good today with rain and showers for Melbourne. We said goodbye to Flyboy and Andy as they both were headed for Adelaide.

Melbourne

We just managed to skirt around the rain riding along the freeway and got as far from Melbourne as possible before stopping at the Wallan service centre. We said goodbye to Craig and Geoff here as they were heading home today. The rest of us were heading north with no certain destination known. We'll see what happens was order of the day.

A few stops here and there along the way, picking up Stu in Broadford as he seemingly got behind then went past as we stopped for breakfast. We meander through Beechworth and on up to Holbrook. It was around 2:30pm so Doug called a few pubs, nothing in Boorowa, Scotty suggested Tumbarumba. The Tumba pub had rooms so that was were we were heading. Going down Jingellic road Stu pulls over and says let's turn around, the skys were black and foreboding, so we approached Tumbarumba from the Rosewood side from the north. Storms were approaching and it was raining to either side of us. We just made it into the pub before the heavens came down, how's that for luck?

When we were getting fuel in Holbrook I saw some USB cables and bought one to try on my Africa Twin, plugging the phone in it started working and the maps came up on the dash. This made navigation much easier, wish I had that at the start of the trip, the one I had kept vibrating lose and I eventually lost it so borrowed Flyboys cable.

It was bucketing down outside but we stayed dry, Stu found the $10 cocktails, so we had about 5 each until they ran out then went back to beers.

Cheers for an awesome tour, the hard core crew

Got two hands, just need two mouths....

Scotty ordered the T Bone, when it came out it was about an inch thick and covered the entire plate. Biggest T Bone I've seen in years.

We retired to the common room upstairs after closing for a couple of end of tour drinks. We would be home tomorrow.

Cheers and thanks for reading this far.

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

Ride to the Spirit of Tasmania - Pre Tassie Day 5

Day 5

Today was a bit of a nothing day really as we only had to be in Melbourne 1.5 hours away to catch the ferry across to Tasmania. What could possibly go wrong? Well, when you have a Bushpig in your group anything can go wrong and it usually does.

We got off to a slow start today with no one seemingly having much enthusiasm for a ride. The great Ocean Road was suggested by we would have had to leave 3 hours earlier to get that happening. So the group decided to head over the Sorrento - Queenscliff ferry and then get lunch. By the time we fueled up had breakfast and actually left it was getting late. The ferry leaves on the hour every hour, we just rolled up to the ferry toll booths right on 12pm, there were still a couple of cars being loaded and we just made it onboard. Phew how was that for timing.

File photo from the Internet - Sorrento Vehicle Ferry

Bikes on the Ferry

Sorrento Wharf

Two handsome Roosters

Getting off at the other end we were a little seperated and I thought that our fearless leader Doug would stop so we could regroup somewhere soon. Well that didn't happen and after about 30 minutes I noticed there were only 4 of us instead of 6. Yep that's not good. A little while later texts and calls were made and Dave and Bushpig were in Geelong and would meet us for lunch in Torquay. So we had made it to the beginning of the Great Ocean Road, but are unable to actually ride it. So close yet so far.

We were waiting in the bakery in Torquay having lunch when Dave and Bushpig pulled up, Dave ordered some lunch but Bushpig was outside frantically looking through his pockets and the ventura bag, Stu laughed and said 'look he's lost his wallet'. When he finally came in and dropped the bomb that he actually did loose his wallet we all laughed then thought, Oh Shit!

It was just after 2pm by now and what happened next was a frantic ride through the quite busy streets of Geelong looking for a mystery Petrol station and mystery car wash the only 2 places the guys had stopped and used their wallets. Time was ticking away whilst we were getting lost looking for these places as both guys struggled to remember how to get there, google maps was consulted several times slowing us down considerably. We had to be boarding the ship for tassie by 6:30pm and it leaves at 7:30. By the time we had visited both places it was after 4pm now and we weren't sure how long it was actually going to take to get to the ferry. The wallet was lost now and we had to make a dash for the ferry otherwise we were going to miss it. We arrived and there were only a couple of bikes and cars waiting to get onboard so we didn't have to line up and wait at all, we were just about the last to board the ship.

Spirit of Tasmania

Bikes loaded and being tied down

Leaving Melbourne Docks

Melbourne

Whilst we were sitting having the beers pictured above Bushpig received a facebook message. The guy that had found his wallet tracked him on facebook and messaged him. He was going to send it back to his address via post. It just goes to show that there really are still some good people in this world.

We retired to the gaming lounge before hitting the sack for the night.

Gaming Lounge

Oh yes those little cabins that you couldn't swing a cat in and with 3 other guys that snore heavily I knew I was in for a night of no sleep. This reminded me of the nightmare we had in Queenstown NZ 4 years earlier. There was a symphony cacophony of snoring, Recordings were made and used in evidence. Everyone was red eyed in the morning when we were awoken by the ships PA system at 5:45am pronouncing the 6:30am departure.

I cant really put a map reference up for today as I've no idea where we went for half of it.