ho ho hoBART

By Duncan Bennett, Member #4171

Nothing says Christmas like the R1200GS, the official transport of Santa Claus. Popular myth maintains he has a reindeer powered sleigh, but even someone completely unfamiliar with physics or any of Newton’s laws can see some big red flags with that mode of delivery transport. Try riding a Harley Road Glide Ultra (hired, with excess reduction of course) off a bridge and land neatly on the icy roof of a Honda Jazz parked sideways on a 45° slope and you’ll get a feel for the reindeer powered sleigh concept weaknesses. Santa needs his GS and Enduro mode to do that. Our normal philosophy is that any time away from home is best spent on a motorcycle - owned, loaned, or hired not that important. A mere week for Christmas in Tasmania ruled out riding down ourselves, and the chance of finding friends willing and able to supply 2 of required items or at least a copy of the key to their garage was not great, so hire was the only reality. Motorcycles for hire in Tassie had me worried; not so long ago there were none or the options were severely limited, and on our first trip in 2015 we’d hired in Melbourne and ridden across Bass Strait. Cindy and google to the rescue - Tasmanian Motorcycle Tours and Rentals (TMTR) popped up, Phil and Christine were contacted, and it was game on. Conveyances? How about a 2018 R1200GS for me and a low suspension 2013 R1200GS for the organiser? Good plan. TMTR is located out past the Hobart airport, convenient for Santa so he doesn’t have to ride all the way from the North Pole, and ideally located for people whose Tassie-based daughter has both a driver’s licence and a car, i.e. in Tasmania. Phil and Christine are both motored cyclists, so understand what is important and pretty much all the crucial add-ons such as GPS and luggage are included. Within a few minutes of the paperwork completion we were on the road, which revealed a minor failing - we hadn’t thought about where we were going to go. OK, to Dodges Ferry for a coffee to figure it out. The chauffeur coffee’d and dismissed, we’d decided that as we were half way to the Tasman Peninsula we might as well keep going. The run through Carlton River was classic Tassie; no traffic, great roads, and glimpses away from the relentlessly upcoming corners revealed beautiful scenery. Over the canal at Dunalley and onto the highway, the traffic heading to Port Arthur bulked up but nothing major before the must-see 200m wide bottleneck of Eaglehawk Neck.

Cindy calming Cuddles, the escaped convict sentry on the dog line

Dog exercise rules seem a little ironic at Eaglehawk Neck

It is hard to avoid convict history on the Tasman Peninsular, which is good because we were trying to find it. Some of the information in the dog line Officer’s Quarters Museum was on the Coal Mines Historic Site, and no-one could resist the sweet combination of mining and convict history at the same site. So off we went up to the less travelled north of the peninsular, lobbing in to Saltwater River at lunch time. Shame that the desire for lunch cannot be requited in Saltwater River, but we accepted this shortcoming and hit the Site.

Better than some pubs we’ve stayed in

Coal mining in the 1840’s wasn’t fun anywhere, and it was typically either convicts with mining or trades skills or real trouble-makers, but either way they were part of the repeat offender Port Arthur system. So conditions were awful. The quality of the coal produced from Tasmania’s first mine wasn’t that great, but the place stayed open for over 40 years and coal was sold to the public as well as used by the government. The information at the site told of growing concern by the authorities that “the love that dare not

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37 speak its name” was getting totally out of control, hence toward the end more solitary cells were built. Their gay-dar may have been way off, but with so many men working and bumping in the dark underground the paranoia was apparently a major reason why the place was closed. Down to Nubeena for a late lunch, and it was back to Hobart for a scheduled dinner via Port Arthur and Copping. Copping got a few laughs over the intercom - everything sounded like the residents and visitors were getting unwanted treatment, such as Copping Community Care and Copping Colonial and Convict Exhibitions.

No Point having a Wrest while in Tassie

The second day plan was to hand everything over (except our right to randomly whinge proclaimed under Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights) to great friends and Hobart locals Tim and Karen Smith, true motorcycling champions we met on the Alaska tour. Karen has lived her entire life in

FEBRUARY 2022 Tasmania, but had never been to Strathgordon. Neither had we, so Tim was tasked with getting us there at exactly lunchtime (Article 25). The weather was exactly perfect, and the ride out was spectacular. A stop for a very pleasant walk out to Russell Falls at the Mt Field National Park was accompanied by refreshments at the cafe (Article 5). We were on the Gordon River Road here, surely purpose built by a sports bike rider working for Hydro Tasmania to access the controversial Lake Pedder and Lake Gordon construction camps.

Strathgordon R1200GS Incognito

Lunch was at the Pedder Wilderness Lodge overlooking the lake. No random whinging was necessary here, we were all familiar enough with Tasmanian weather to recognise that we had hit the mother lode - gentle breezes, cool, and narry a scary cloud in the sky. After the incredibly scenic lunch - covered under the UN Declaration of Expectations Article 3 - we headed up to the Gordon Dam for a look. It is an obvious place to put a dam, but that doesn’t discount the incredible engineering that went into such a difficult build and our only regret was squibbing pushing one of the BMWs out onto the viewing platform to get the ultimate photo.

Gordon Dam

The trip back wasn’t any worse, very hard to get sick of that road. We demanded one more refreshment at Westerway, the temperature had all the zips open so only an iced coffee would do. Then back to Tim and Karen’s place in Hobart for a dinner that won’t quickly be forgotten. Their Mexican daughter-in-law and visiting friend did fair dinkum guacamole for starters, 4 avocado equivalents later we were struggling to fit more than 3 gourmet sausages in. Next day we were picked up by chauffeur Tim at our Sandy Bay accommodation, we’d had to Uber home due to the Tasmanian “don’t guacamole and drive” laws, we were way over 0.05 avocados. This was a mystery tour - Tim had

been given carte blanche on the planning for this one. When he outlined the plan I confess to bringing up the rental agreement; some indicate that if the bike is ridden off the Moto GP quality bitumen then all bets on the insurance claim are off. No worries though with the TMTR situation - doing Dakar wasn’t a great idea (unless you achieved a podium finish, who would care about minor scuff marks then?) but formed roads - gravel or bitumen - were good.

No-one dared ask if we were lost

The Grasstree Hill road was the first spanker on the agenda, no traffic, lots of twisties, just perfect for the 1200GSeses. Then into no-man’s and no-woman’s land at Marion Bay, also nocoffeeshop’s land. Tim had suggested Wielangta Road to Orford, previously only suitable for

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39 people with no nerve endings, but recently upgraded due to an unplanned closure of the Tasman Highway. Reasonable quality gravel with a hint of skatey-ness had Enduro mode in its element; the drifties with traction control cutting in had the insurance excess flashing before the eyes, but great riding. Coffee was re-discovered at Me & Mum’s in Little Swanport, Tim came in hot into the gravel carpark and only his great skills saved a huge crash, with Karen on the back less impressed than I was. Next was the Lake Leake Road to Campbell Town. When in doubt, ride this road. The 120kmh sweepers were just fantastic although we swear we stuck to the limit of 100kmh, your honour. Into Oatlands (which is usually bypassed) for a great lunch at The Pancake and Crepe Shop, and the awesome riding continued down through Colebrook and Campania. A farewell to Tim and Karen who had provided spectacular riding at Richmond, and back to drop the bikes off to Phil and Christine at Forcett. Christine very kindly gave us a lift back to Sandy Bay, and her stories of getting into riding in Sydney made the trip way too short. A fantastic few days all up - bikes perfect, weather perfect, roads perfect, and Tasmanian scenery perfect.

Shot and skun wallabies - Merry Christmas Tassie dogs