Tasmania 2

First of all, look what I found in my duffel. A toad must have crawled in one night. Dry now. Well, still a bit bendy but almost dry. Business card for scale. It’s going home to someone I’ve been collecting things for recently

The day’s track from Strahan to Hobart

I’d heard the ride through the forest out of Strahan was good. It started like this and stayed like this for maybe the first 30 miles

With a couple of views over the forest

Then back to more twisties

Up higher the road was faster

And wove through hills above Queenstown

Great road

Later, a stunning lake. We’re in a world heritage site. There’s no development at all. Central western Tasmania is immaculate

Despite the overall blue, up close the water was almost toxic with tannins, reducing visibility to maybe 6 or 8 feet depth

Later we saw purple in the ditch and stopped

The most astonishing semi-aquatic plant

A tiny flower stem maybe 8 inches tall with bloom on top, hundreds of them. No sign of the foliage which we’re guessing was preceding, given it’s summer. They looked like an army of tiny sentinels and almost alien

Up close. I looked it up and it’s Utricularia dichotoma, a carnivorous bladderwort. Fantastic little thing

We stopped for the short 10 minute walk to Nelson Falls. The ferns below are about 10 feet high. The rain forest

The falls

And that was the end of the best paved riding we’ve done on this side of the Pacific. It was nothing short of brilliant. Rarely tight, 2, 3, 4, 2 without a break, mostly good sight lines, good camber, a very aggressive road surface, we let our guard down and rode at 90% of our abilities, instead of the promised 70% maximum. In the top couple of dozen paved rides of the whole trip, possibly top 10. Ride this road.

Put her in 6th and relaxed through here, though fast. Australian indicated speeds are generous. What’s posted as 100kph here would be 80kph at home

This is a purpose-built structure around a long mural/shallow relief sculpture. 15 years of carving full-time by one man and very good. No photographs allowed. I’ll post them when I’ve left Australia if I remember. Here’s a link, worth a click, an impressive solo project

The environment is drier the further we move east. So back to Eucalyptus forest

How fast is this little road? Very fast. A great surface, you’re stuck like glue

One of the many ponds we pass

Back into civilization, farmlands

Outside Hobart we stop when we see this

Park and walk down to a roped off area

It’s little mini powerboats. They’re being sent off by a flagman in small timed groups

Zoom!

We chat with a local couple and their dog. They tell me this is kid’s racing. Dads ( and a Mom or two) raced earlier. It’s a family thing. The event I’m watching now is children under 12 years old, boys and girls. The boats are all custom, none are off-the-shelf

Proud Dads stand in the water and watch little Timmy or Elspeth fly by at 30 mph. The youngest boys and girls racing today are 9

The top mark

You can see the guy with the checkered flag bottom left. Some little tyke has an awesome lead. He/she will be a hero at school tomorrow

I’ve mentioned before, Aussies are motorheads so I’m not surprised my this. Heavily worked American muscle cars in particular are the thing. But anything with an engine really.

Soon, we’re into Hobart, and as is tradition we ride down to the water first