Not A Mid Life Crisis (Part V)

 DAY 8

After a reasonable nights sleep with only one train that sounded like it went through my room 😄 we were up pretty early as my mate, Andy had to fly home for work today. This meant getting to Launny, dropping his bike at the local Honda dealer for it's 6000km service and him juggling gear in our storage shed, then getting himself to the airport. I was happy just to tag along and do whatever he needed to do as I wasn't flying home until tomorrow.

While waiting for him out the front of the pub I checked the level on my Tutoro chain oiler. Still pretty full despite 3000km of use. I reckon 2/3 of the oil used so far was spat onto the chain during the Grand Ridge Road ride the other day. I had forgotten to turn the flow off and as suspension movement opens the needle valve to supply oil to the chain....well, all that pounding supplied most of what is now the air gap. Still, it is probably only 20 millilitres, so we aren't talking supertanker loads here and I do have the top up bottle in the pannier.

We decided to shoot across to Deloraine for breakfast as it was in the right direction for later today. I was surprised how many bikes were in the main street, all doing the same as us, scouting or actually partaking in breakfast. We eventually settled on the Deloraine Town Cafe' as the tables outside were all free. By the time we ordered and turned around the tables were surrounded by disrobing motorcyclists though. Geez, don't blink or you'll miss out!

Random motorcyclists wandering the streets of Deloraine.

Maybe this was a jumping off point for the day sailing back to Melbourne for The Spirit? I don't know but holy smokes there were a lot of bikes in town!

After that we headed for Launny, topping up the tanks in Westbury, getting slightly caught up with two different guys who wanted to talk bikes and wouldn't be shaken for love nor money! Funny!

We faffed around in town getting a main gate key for the storage yard for moi, then headed to our shed so Andy could organise his shite. Then it was in to Motorcycle City Honda to drop his bike off. As we were doing that it began to sprinkle with rain. Looking at the radar there was quite a bit of rain coming. Bugger.

We retired to the Sports Garden Hotel, just around the corner from the Honda dealer, to check flight status, drink beer and grab some lunch. The food and general atmosphere of the pub was pretty awesome actually! They had background music playing and one of the songs that came on was by Modest Mouse! First time I have EVER heard one of their songs played in a public setting! Felt like the first time a few years back when I was walking down an aisle in Woolworths and Black Stick by The Cruel Sea came on. Everything radical eventually becomes vanilla-mainstream. FFS I must be getting old.

We wandered back to the Honda dealer and I left Andy talking to the owner about Arrow exhausts and stuff. It was still raining but it looked clear-ish on the radar to the southwest so I headed that way. First to Longford where I cruised the dry streets just looking at the old buildings.

It still looked clear-ish to the west so I kept going to Cressy. I could see the Great Western Tiers raising their head up into the overcast and thought I might keep heading that way until I climbed up into the cloud.

A quick lap of Poatina to see what and why it was there. It looks like an old government hydro electric town and lo, some internet research confirmed it. It just has that look. But the views back to the East are glorious! Shame about the reminder of man's ability to generate electricity....😆

Shortly after leaving Poatina the road became AWESOME climbing the Tiers. Long, sweeping corners soon changed into tight 25 to 35km/h bends. I climbed until I got close to the cloud base and it began to sprinkle. That'd do! I turned around and headed back down but not without stopping to take in the view back to the East. Man, that road climbs quickly!

Getting back down onto the flatlands I stopped to look back at the Tiers and where I had just been. You can cover some rapidly changing terrain in just minutes here in Tassie!

I peeled off onto Macquarie road which was a back road down to Campbell Town because it looked dry down that way. It was a pleasant back road between farms with the odd church dotted along the way.

I had passed a few wheat fields that had just been stripped, with combine harvesters and field bins parked up. Then I saw THE biggest field bin I have ever seen! I hooked the AT up to see how it would go....😜

Rocking into Campbell Town I had a quick cruise around town. The old bridge looked interesting. Apparently it is the oldest bridge in Australia that is still in use on a main road. I bet the convicts building it in 1838 thought WTF are we building this monstrosity for? Little did they know 56 tonne semi trailers would be roaring across it nearly 200 years later! They certainly don't build 'em like they used to!

There was some clever wood carvings next to the bridge. My photos don't do them justice.

Clearly an historic old town worthy of more investigation. However, it was starting to sprinkle. The rain had caught up with me so I decided to just slab it up the main highway back to Launny.

I arrived in reasonable time and still quite dry. That big screen is handy in the wet. I decided to grab a pub room close-ish to the storage shed. Upon checking into the pub it looked pretty rough. There was no way I was leaving the bike outside overnight. I decided to organise my shit and take the bike to the storage shed, then walk back to the pub, taking one pannier as my carry on luggage. 😎

The room itself was decent and I ended up with a very nice curry from a local Indian restaurant, washed down with a few glasses of red, as I edited some photos and video.

In the morning I had a basic (but healthy) breakfast from the local Woolworths and called a cab. Man, those Uber fares can fluctuate wildly!!

Rough distance for the day was a surprising 290km. It certainly didn't feel like that much!

Round One of riding Tassie hadn't really started . This bit was all about getting the bike from Queensland to Tassie. I'd be back in a week or so!!