Back to Chapter Five - Motorcycling to Port Douglas

Chapter Six Motorcycling to Tasmania

On to Chapter Seven - Back to Port Douglas

At one stage I purchased a sidecar. I did some maintenance on it, brush painted it the same bright burnt orange colour Eileen already adored beyond comment on the bike, and bolted them together. When I couldn't ride the thing straight enough to get it out of our driveway, I promptly sold it again.

Thank God for Nana and Granddad again. Eileen and I had decided to ride to Tasmania. In summer. In summer. Eileen drove to Miles with the kids while I rode the bike. We left the kids and the car, and rode south. Tasmania was about 1,600 kilometres (Australia had gone metric by now) away. Taree was about 500 kilometres away, and when we got there it started to rain. We found a bike shop in town and bought some waterproofed waxed cotton overalls. There were two pair in the shop. One was one size smaller than the other. The pair I had to wear fitted Eileen perfectly. Off we set again, each dry, if not a little uncomfortable with the one-size-under overalls.

We stayed with a cousin of mine in Sydney for a couple of days before we headed south again. I asked my cousin to drive to work slowly on the Monday morning so we could follow, and when we came to the road we should take to the south, to give us a wave. This would be fine, and he said the traffic would be light because most commuters would be travelling inbound. Ha! Sydney light traffic to us was terrifying. One particular courier decided to change lanes when he was right beside us. I actually had to put my boot against his door to fend him off.

We crossed the border into Victoria and turned southwest towards Melbourne. Somewhere near Sale we stopped for fuel. The wind had been blowing so strongly from the ranges to the north that I had the bike on a ten-degree lean to compensate. I asked the lady at the service station how long she expected the wind to last.

"About eight months," she said.

We arrived in Melbourne and put on a new rear tyre. I chose a Pirelli because of their good reputation on wet roads, for which I new Tasmania would have plenty. We parked the bike on the huge ferry and settled in for the night trip across Bass Strait. To attach our two duffel bags and tent (which we never unpacked once on the entire trip) to the bike, I had fabricated a frame of galvanised water pipe. This bolted to the bike frame and came to a curved top about head height for Eileen. To help support her back, and our load, I had bolted a piece of Silky Oak timber across the two vertical sections of the pipe. Other bikers on the ferry said that if the ferry started to sink they were going to steal the wood. They reckoned it would float, and was probably the most valuable part of our bike. How droll.

We disembarked at Devonport had rode half way across Tasmania and back in half a day....... Sorry...Well it is a small island. It was a great ride though. We visited Stanley and The Nut. Or are they the same place? I cannot remember. We went to the old gunpowder mill near Launceston one day, and next day set off down through the Great Lake area. This was challenging because the gravel was quite thick on the road for many kilometres, and it was tiring to mentally concentrate and physically handle the bike with its poorly balanced load. We did see many fishing shacks by the trout streams. Most of them appeared to be no better than galvanised iron shanties. We found out later that they probably cost more each than our beachside home. Location. Location. Location.

We joined up with the road that goes from the west coast to Hobart. The bitumen was a relief, especially as we were now in the mountains with continuous corners, and Eileen was fidgeting. I gave her an elbow to get her to sit still. The corners were fun, but I needed her to keep the bike balanced. Next moment the rear end of the bike was out of control slewing across the road. I managed to pull up without us falling off and inspect the problem. We had a very flat brand new Pirelli.

Some workers were heading across to Hobart in their ute (see chapter 1) and offered a lift to the next town to repair the tyre. There was only room for one more passenger so Eileen hid down an embankment in case she was attacked by Tasmanian Devils, and I went with the men. They introduced me to both Boags and Cascade beer on that short trip. God love them.

With a new tube in the tyre, we rode until nearly sunset. We noticed a few fellow bikers with tents pitched down in an occasional gully. 'Bugger that. Let's find a pub'. We pulled into what appeared to be a type of chalet or resort. For the first time in my life I was about to be discriminated against. A lady there made every bad excuse she could to make it be known that we dangerous bikies could not stay at her establishment.

We rode on with darkness imminent. Then we found the pub at Gretna. I had ridden past it, so I turned the bike around and parked out front.

"Can we get a room for the night please"?

"How many of you are there," came the worried sounding reply?

"Just the wife and myself."

"That's alright then. We've only got two rooms."

Eileen unpacked, and I parked the bike in the hay shed before settling into a warming rum session with the publican and a few of the locals around the log fire.

Next morning Eileen helped with the group breakfast, and before we left, their young children showed us their chickens and other farm pets before coming out to wave us goodbye. Now remember I said I had ridden past the pub last night and then turned back. In the morning, I remembered in which direction we had pulled up. Yep! Off we went. The wrong way.

After about five minutes I realised the scenery looked a bit familiar, and the sun didn't seem to be where it should be often enough. Then I saw a signpost. Oh dear. Silly silly me. No one was outside the pub when we rode past again, so they either had not realised which way we should have been going, or decided we would figure it out eventually and come back. Either way there was no point to standing around worrying about dumb tourists.

We arrived in Hobart in glorious sunshine and found by accident the Salamanca market. I parked the bike in the middle of a lot of other bikes, and kept a lookout for burly bikie types. I was not afraid of any evil intentions by anyone. I wanted to find someone who could take us to a bike shop to get a spare tube in case of another blow out. This did not take long, and not only did our new friends take us to a bike shop, they took us to their house too. For three days. I think our tent was getting a complex, if not mouldy.

We were going to go to the casino at Wrest Point. This was to be a new experience for us, as the rest of Australia did not have any gambling venues like it at that time. Unfortunately after more than a few warming rums, I feel asleep in the bathtub before we got to leave the house. After saving me from drowning, they put me to bed. Don decided not to waste the night, and so he took his wife and Eileen to a buck's party.

It snowed on Mount Wellington while we were in Hobart. "This is summer"? On the day when it was time to leave, our early morning departure ride had us in shadow for nearly half an hour. The first bit of sunshine I saw was the signal to pull over, get off, throw my gloves on the ground, and rub my hands together in the sunshine. My fingertips were freezing.

Further north I spotted another pub at a place called Weldborough. "Don't stop here. Worst little pub on the coast. Hot beer. Cold pies." We did what most other tourists must do. We stopped. Here I saw my first Irish dog carrier. A carpenter's brace with a muzzle at the bit end, and the bit at the handle end pointing inwards. The sign said, "Adjustable for any size dog".

The ferry ride back across Bass Strait and the trip home was uneventful until we started off again after refuelling at Tocumwal on the Victorian/NSW border. Traffic police can skip this paragraph too. After speeding up to about 135KPH, the back end of the bike started to catch up to the front end. It corrected itself, and then tried to overtake on the other side. Eventually this mayhem settled down with some tempered wrestling from me, but by the time I had control of this we were off the bitumen and leaning at a very unrecoverable angle. Thankfully we were nowhere near a roadcrossing culvert, and we slid into the dirt and grass gutter at about 20KPH before stopping on our side.

"Get the bike up", I yelled.

"I would if the bike wasn't on top of me," replied Eileen.

"Well it's leaking fuel," I said.

The thought of a fire from fuel on the hot exhaust got us both motivated to scramble ourselves to get the bike back up.

"That $#?*^%! tyre."

I got a lift back to Tocumwal and got our spare tube fitted. I seem to attract little old ladies, but the nice one that gave me a lift back to Eileen and the bike surprised me with her comment when she saw them. I was wearing the black, waxed cotton overalls, with my black leather jacket over them, and a denim cut-off jacket with various motorcycle patches sewn all over it. I had been rolling a spoked wheel with a noticeable sprocket on one side along the roadside.

"You're on a mmmotorcycle," she fearfully trembled.

Without going "Boo," or doing a Gene Simmons from Kiss impersonation, I gently replied, "Yes," and thanked her for being kind enough to offer me assistance.

At a service station in Forbes, we were refuelling with two other touring bikes. Both had Kawasaki 900cc motors in the most radically stretched frames I had ever seen. As well as having the front wheel so far in front of the rest of the bike so as to make normal handling difficult, they were so low to the ground that road bumps that were insignificant to us, would have sparks flying from their rear fork swing arms as they scraped the bitumen. We were all heading north so we rode together. The two choppers only had peanut tanks, which ran out of fuel every sixty kilometres. Unfortunately towns with service stations were about seventy kilometres apart. The riders would have to pull off the bitumen into the gutter to top-up from a five-litre can they carried. The entertainment began when they had to get these choppers back up the gravel incline to the bitumen road. Eileen and I would have the standard Honda up and onto the road in seconds, but they would take forever as they rode parallel to the road and inched their way up the slope. A bump by one largish stone and they would be back where they started from.

At Goondiwindi on the NSW/Queensland border we said goodbye. They were heading east to Brisbane, while we were heading north to Miles. Just as we were preparing to ride off, Eileen said she could hear air. Sure enough our rear tyre was going down again. This was the last straw. We found a bike shop and bought another brand of tyre. Under close inspection there was a fifteen-centimetre slit in the old tyre running along inside one of the tread grooves. How it got there, and how it could have caused our problem, I do not know. As the slit was all the way through the compound rubber, I surmised that maybe as the tyre and tube squirmed against each other, the cut wore through the tube. I made Eileen carry it around her neck all the way back. I wanted a warranty claim, which we didn't get.

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