travellingbennetts

Wedding, work, weather. The three main pillars of a short trip to Tasmania in October 2023, with a 4^th pillar added to bolster the experience: Wriding.

As we’d had the wedding on the Saturday night and catch-up with Best Maid of Honour daughter Kate on the Sunday, we were scheduled to pick the bikes up on Monday morning. Or rather Phil of Tasmanian Motorcycle Tours and Rentals (TMTR) was picking us up in Hobart and virtually plonking us on the steeds at Forcett, almost within sight of Hobart airport, but with the minor inconvenience of the shallow Pittwater estuary in the way. A note here – packing for formal events and motorcycling in almost certainly cold and rainy places on the same trip can be summed up in two words; Excess Baggage. $100 worth, thanks Qantas. So luckily Phil has a big people mover for the smooth transition out to Forcett.

Why do we like TMTR? Phil’s range of bikes is fabulous, and they are kitted up for Cruisin’ the ‘Mania. Luggage, and the Garmin XT GPS are included, and Phil has cunningly bought a 3D printer to make an adapter for the BMW Navigator mounts to fit the XT. Like many of us Phil has a pile of Navigator VI’s that would trip the top horses in the Grand National Steeplechase, so he’s changed over – sending an overseas client out with a GPS that might fail only works if you are running tours in a 1D world, and even then they have to know where on the line to stop.

The matched pair of bikes this time were BMW R1250GS Rallyes, a low suspension unit for Cindy and a pristine as-imagined-by the-design-team unit for me. Another fabulous thing about TMTR is that Phil rides every Wednesday, so knows all the roads. Dirt? No warning off by Phil, if it is a gazetted road it is not only acceptable, but verging on mandatory. Righto Phil, we’ll do that.

A quick inspection of the bikes to satisfy our Alaska Motoquest “you dented the rim so that’s US$1500, oh you sent us a photo showing it was already dented, that’s OK then” psychosis, and we were off. A clear positive about leaving TMTR is that you are literally riding Tasmania before you leave the driveway – pure riding freedom and nothing constraining the experience. Except for Phil’s gate. Firstly back through Sorell, then down the main street of Richmond, then to Brighton. Phil dirt road No.1 was to Hollow Tree, but the GPS refused the jump, and demanded the long way. We weren’t having that, so ended up doing lots of dirt to do the small section of recommended dirt, which was fine because most Tassie dirt is good dirt. Finally conjoined with the GPS, we rolled into Bothwell. Lunch awaited at the combo café and post office, a toasted ham and cheese sandwich each. One sandwich would have fed both of us, for days, but a big effort was made to finish to show the post officers we could do anything.

A split after lunch – more dirt for me via Miena and into Bronte Park, while Cindy sunk into the Ouse. Pronounced Ooze. A bit like living in Soower or in the village of Gang Green. Never too late to change people. My dirt was good dirt, but rain had shown why hiring bikes is always good – the horrendous coating of mud was Phil’s problem, not mine, especially as he’d recommended the road.

Cindy motoring past our highway reunion point soon afterward, we rode into the cold. Horrible cold. By the time we got to The Wall in the Wilderness (amazing carved wood panels, mainly Huon Pine – depicting the history of the Central Highlands of Tasmania) drizzly rain as well as the cold was part of reality. Shivering around the excellent display for the first time since 2015, we tried to use the fire to recover, without success. Onto the Derwent Bridge Hotel, the fire in the main lounge seemed to produce no heat even with the frost-bitten appendages thrust into the coals. Bags were checked for the seventh time for a beanie just in case the packing process which included deliberately not packing a beanie was a false memory. Also hopefully a false memory was the price for a steak; a world record $64 for a 300g porterhouse. Perhaps they didn’t mention that it had come from a wild-caught Golden Unicorn, the last of its species, even then decided not worth it.

Up on a spanking nearly cloudless day, thoughts of beanies were now a complete waste of neuron bandwidth. A late start to let the sun warm up the cockles and the first random plan was out to Lake St Clair just to see what was happening, not much, so after a few artistic photos we turned around and headed back to the Lyell Highway and made a right-hand turn.

The Lyell Highway in good weather is truly one of the great motorcycling roads. The Rallye comes with a large range of modes, including Road, Rain, Dynamic, Dynamic Pro, Enduro, and Enduro Pro. No-one I know has ever used Rain, and I think it is just Road but provided to give placebo confidence in the wet. Dynamic and Dynamic Pro are made for the Lyell Highway, although I hadn’t the skill nor time to optimise the Dynamic Pro settings to suit my “holy swear I’m coming into this corner way too fast, oh hang on I can go faster!” riding style. Down past the famous Mt Arrowsmith with its black ice corners perpetually shaded even in spring, and we were into the lowlands. First a stop at our old fave Nelson Falls, now with limited access to the falls compared with the olden days.

Into Queenstown on the Mt Panorama racetrack down from Gormie, and lunch called. The railway station café was perfect for a nice lasagne, and the journey continued via Zeehan just to have a look at our old stamping ground. It actually looked quite prosperous with the local mines open and operating, and the glorious weather provided a momentary pizzazz although the normal dreary drizzle would quickly shunt Zeehan back into the top 10 worst towns. In Australia, if not the world. Continuing down the very familiar road to Strahan, we went into yet more old stamping ground with a quick trip past our old house before landing at the View 42 hotel. Where we had an upgrade so were presented with a view over the grass down into Strahan Harbour.

Dinner plan was the Risby Cove restaurant, with View 42 offering the usual buffet but now at the eye-watering price of $75 per head. Given I once ate 3 dozen oysters (2 for entrée, 1 for dessert) there I could probably make it worthwhile, but would have needed to double that effort because Cindy doesn’t eat them. Risby Cove didn’t disappoint, a fabulous dinner and surprisingly busy given that it was still mid-October and a Tuesday, we were well set for a good night’s sleep.

Wednesday was again sunshine overload, the umbrella hadn’t even got a peep over the rim of the top box so far. With Burnie the target and being only 2 hours away, we had plenty of time to sight-see starting at Ocean Beach. The beach itself was a bit nasty, and we didn’t need to troll through recent Strahan news stories on-line to discover that there had been a whale beaching event. Wandering onto the beach unfortunately involved getting slightly leeward of something one should not get slightly leeward of; a pilot whale over 12 months past its prime.

Escaping, we went back to Strahan and did yet another of the classics – the Strahan to Queenstown section of the Lyell Highway. A bit of roadworks slowed us slightly, as did having to go into Queenie to get fuel because the Strahan servo is out of action, but soon we were onto the target: the Anthony Road which trundles past Lake Plimsoll. An attempt was made to get into the Lake Margaret power station to see the famous wooden pipe, but this is only accessible to people on an organised tour. We were obviously on an organised tour, but not that organised.

We’d actually seen a bit of wildlife, but a wombat was a highlight. Just doin’ wombat stuff by the side of the road, we pulled up and watched its confusion – it knew there was something nearby but with limited visual and auditory senses it struggled to figure out whether a threat existed. For about 2 seconds it seemed concerned, then went back to grazing. Restarting engines caused the confusion to come flooding back, and as they still can’t see what is going on they start random movement in fits and starts. Those with wombat experience know this is the equivalent of DEFCON 2, collision is imminent, although some still suggest initiating thermonuclear war with a wombat is overkill. Not when you’re on the magnificent R1250GS Rallye it isn’t. Riding cautiously past the smoking irradiated wombat charcoal, which was now actually happily trotting along into the bush, we got onto the scenic bit of the road past Lake Plimsoll.

Some sightseeing around the lake, and we moved on to Tullah for a pie luncheon. Heated debate and negotiation then commenced, mainly heated due to the high temperature of the pie and the atmosphere – to Hellyer Gorge or not to Hellyer Gorge? Truly one of motorcycling’s great roads, especially on a nice day, but we are old hands on it so decided to go straight up the main drag to Burnie. A quick trip out to look at an overpriced property at Wynyard even though it did have a good shed, and we were into old stamping ground No.3. A wander around town and discovery of a new craft brewery, dinner with a good friend Paul from the olden days, and we were done.

Thursday or Day +4 for the expedition timekeeping was mainly work, with visits to a mineralogist and a metallurgical laboratory to satisfy the ATO with the various work expense claims. Then to our last destination – Launceston. Avoiding the highway we took the shortcut via Frankford, the Big Potato a.k.a Kenny the Kennebec at Sassafras which had been blown over the day before was missed, probably a good thing as it was attracting big crowds. We got into Launie nice and early, but tragically not early enough to see the City Park Japanese Macaque monkeys who keep everyone amused with their “western suburb family at the seaside caravan park” antics. After a 100km walk to find a supermarket and bottleshop, we caught up with great friends Maureen and Bruce of 2019 Alaska riding fame for a top night of entertainment.

Home day appeared fairly casual – perhaps even taking in some east coast roads was discussed with our plane leaving Hobart at about 3pm. Then we hit the roadworks on the Midland Highway and forward movement was either stopped or very slow. So apart from a coffee in Ross it was go go go back to TMTR. We rolled in about 12:30pm and gave Phil a gushing report about the bikes and everything else Tasmanian including the weather. Within a few minutes we had re-dressed more appropriately for airline travel, and packed all our wedding and wriding gear into 3 check-in bags to avoid a repeat of the excess baggage disaster, even though one bag therefore needed a forklift to get it into the van. A lift by Phil out to the airport, and yet another fantastic Tassie experience was completed. Can’t wait for the next one.