TASMANIA PART I

by Leigh

FRIDAY

I had been watching the long range forecast for the week. It didn't look promising. Well, it's only a bit of rain and wind. We've seen worse.

I bolted home on Friday arvo and finished packing the bike. Sandy & I set off for the boat. Normally a 40 minute trip, it turned into 90 due to weather, a prang and stupid people on freeways.

We made the boat with time to spare and consequently sat in the rain for 30 minutes waiting to board.

Evel Knievel never had this problem...

The ramp into the boat itself can get interesting. A curved painted cement ramp that drops down steeply onto wet steel plate. Nice.

What followed from there was a night of swaying about even before the booze had kicked in. A rolling swell made the passengers in the bar look as though they had been there 8 hours longer than they had.

SATURDAY

Land Ho! At bloody 6.30 in the morning. What sort of leisure cruise is this anyway?

Tasmania turns on the weather

Off the boat and a quick stop for brekky at the nearest café and we are off.

The day looks somewhat less than tropical. This was expected from the forecast but not by the locals who gleefully informed us that it had been summer for 2 weeks beforehand. Yeah, thanks for that.

We switched off the highway at The Don, all of 2km's out of Devonport, and onto Forth Road. A good introduction to country Tasmania. It winds its way out through several small hamlets with forgettable names. Narrow, smooth and fast. Remember these words; they apply to nearly every road we travelled over the week. Forth lead us to Ulverstone, where I spent my first 5 years. It still looks the same.

"That's not a War Memorial. THIS is a War Memorial"

A quick stop at my grandparents graves and the real run begins.

It's about 95km's from Devonport to my parent's place at Longford. We managed to turn that into about 350.

All roads were designed by a bloke with Parkinson's

The Leven Canyon is on the road off the left of the map and Longford is a long way off to the right.

Once out of Ulverstone the road quickly settles into a style that becomes familiar to anyone who has spent time out of town in Tasmania.

Most of these back roads are wide, well maintained and smooth with plenty of forward vision. I guess this is the heritage of an island that depends on road transport. Making the corners truck-friendly means that they are also bike-friendly. Very friendly.

At Gawler (A on the map above), we switch onto the rather Tolkien sounding Isandula Road and roll on through lush, undulating farmland towards Castra (B).

I was wondering why I felt so cold. The wet I could understand, but it shouldn't be so cold. We rounded the right hander at (C) and found out why. Black Bluff was covered in snow.

Frosty bones explained