a tastE oF tassiE

decommissioned and is a museum, is incredibly knowledgeable and gave us (as the only visitors) a very detailed and interesting insight into the early days of hydro in Tassie but most particularly this site. Well worth a visit for sure.

island, our focus changed. We moved from the wilderness to rugged coastlines and excellent seafood. Visiting the Port Arthur area (not the actual site this time as we had recently tackled Auschwitz/Birkenau in Germany and felt that we had experienced enough of man’s inhumanity to man), it really got me thinking about the impact this environment would have had on the first internees at Port Arthur. What would they have made of this incredibly stark and craggy coastline, the weird and wonderful flora and fauna (including Thylacine which would have been in abundance), the climate?

On the dock awaiting loading onto the Spirit of Tasmania for our overnight crossing, we met a group of 3 Kiwis (older than us) who keep their bikes stored in Melbourne and fly over from NZ from time to time to tackle a new route in Australia. They were incredibly loaded with massive amounts of camping gear. I asked them if they had enjoyed the camping - they hadn’t camped even once because it was too cold! Still they looked impressive.

Len had really wanted to visit the historic first hydroelectric power plant at Waddamana built in Tasmania in 1916. The road to access it was gravel, but a great last dirt road on this journey. I have to admit to being a bit reluctant - power plants are not usually high on my list of ‘must-sees’ but I was proved so wrong. The guy who oversees it now that it is well and truly

In total, we rode 7,700kms, 6 gravel roads of varying difficulty, and saw a very large amount of Tasmania in our just over 3 week visit. The coldest temperature we rode in was 4°C. We will be back next year for sure for another hit of Tasmanian wonderfulness.