Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in
Australia and New Zealand
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Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in Australia and New Zealand |
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March 26 - Devonport to Queenstown, Tasmania
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The ferry overnight turned out to be a good choice, with some rough weather, but mainly smooth sailing. (Jack was awake for some of the rough weather, but Deane slept right through it. Guess the previous day's activities made us pretty tired.) Landing from the "Spirit of Tasmania" ferry at 7:00 AM (with a wake-up at 5:00 AM), we had breakfast in the dock area and then headed out on our planned route for the day. We had chosen a route to first give us a sample of the north side of the island, with several towns along that shore. Then we headed down through the western part of the island, to hit the "Cradle Mountain" national park. Our day was sparkling clear and sunny, so we were lucky. I had read that this area of Tasmania gets rain 8 out of every 10 days, so were very lucky. Actually, that part of the island appeared to be the worse for drought, because it was not nearly green as we expected from what we expected from our prior study.
We played leap frog with the "group of 8" motorcyclists we met the night before, had lunch with them, and had a scenic ride. Tasmania has had clear-cut logging for more than a century, so many areas are not as attractive as I thought we would see. However, with mountains of solid rock, there was quite a variety of scenery and riding. The mountainous sections made for a lot of curvy roads and fun riding. Overall, a fun riding day. Oh, a little about riding temperatures. Today and yesterday have been quite cold in temperature, being very close to ocean areas. Yesterday the temperature was about 60 degrees F, for the whole day. With typical ocean humidity, that felt quite cold, what with the wind chill factor with our Suzuki V-Strom motorcycles, they lacking very much fairing protection. Today the temperature leaving the ferry dock was in the low 50's (F), going all the way up to 60 degrees F, and then back down to 50, especially when we passed through heavily forested areas with overhanging tree cover, so it was quite cool all day. It is certainly good that we both brought our good riding coats and riding pants. This is quite a change from our ride of a few days ago, when we had a high of 96 degrees F in riding from Canberra to Albury. I also wanted to comment on "Round-Abouts" (Traffic Circles). We have gone through many of these per day, and they pose no problem to us, perhaps because they are so logical. Its safe to say we have passed through literally many hundreds of them by now. They are well marked, on the mainland, as will as in Tasmania, and our GPS units even tell us which exit to go out, so that makes it easy. One has to "Look Right - Circle Left", and "Give Way" to the vehicle to your right, and it works very well. |
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