Tasmania - April 07

Here is our trip to Tassie in April '07.

I was going to kick it off with a map so you could follow our travels, however, it failed to pass muster with the censors.

Sandy left the packing up to me & once I had placed all the essentials in the suitcase there was precious lttle room left for anything else.

It should be noted that although it took Clarence St Cyclery an hour to disassemble & pack the Trek 5200 in the bikecase it only took Sandy about an hour and a half to put it back together, great effort babe!!!

Our first port of call was Freycinet and we walked up to grab a view of beautiful Winglass Bay. I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to again show the world how well a bright yellow shirt suits my, almost, olive complexion. Since Sandy was still busy putting my Trek 5200 back together I joined Lara Croft for the walk & found myself trailling her up the mountain..

We then hit the road heading towards Cradle Mountain. We were soon confronted with evidence that sheep are a little higher up the food chain in Tasweiga than on the mainland.

Cradle Mt was beautiful, we think. We couldn't actually see the Mt, however, Lonely Planet describes it as "Tasmania's highest monolithic block of sheer igneous granite" which really stirred our imagination. The real highlight though was Sandy's authentic khaki soft Akubra style hat. In fact, the real real highlight was convincing Sandy that all true blue dinky die aussies wear them, getting the photographic proof was merely icing on an already very delectable cake!


The next day, feeling a little sheepish about my faux Akubra sting I decided to make a right boob of myself, literally. Have a look at those things! I think anyone with a rural upbringing could have extracted milk from them that frosty day at the foot of the great mountain. Next time I combine a t-shirt which is two sizes too small for me with a premium brand daypack I will definitely make sure that it has NO chest straps.

Realising that I had to do something, anything, to take the attention away from my man cleavage I wrestled Sandy's authentic, you beaut, soft, khaki, faux Akubra away from her and I think it transformed my look. To what I had transformed my "look" to I am unaware but at least now there were multiple points of focus for bemused passers by. It still failed to cushion the blow against the jibes, innuendo & the odd "moooo". I had gone from Tom Cruise lookalike to Simon Cowell tragic with just two imprecise purchases at Paddy Pallin.

In a desperate bid to put Cradle Mt behind me, about 580km's behind me in fact, I rode my trusty Trek 5200 all the way to Hobart via Strahan. At first I had my soft, trusty, faux Akubra plus my well appointed, premium brand daypack, however I had forgotten one small detail - the TREK 5200. Once I remembered the bike I actually just rode to Stahan, but I had decided that 5 and a half hours sitting on a 3mm carbon fibre seat was punishment enough for my fashion transgressions.

We joined the Harris family in Hobart for a wonderful weekend and thanks again to John & Clare for their fantastic hospitality!! The Harris's were soon doing what they do best and here is an action shot of them tearing across the mighty Derwent river at 25 knots/hr plus (you'll have to take my word for that).

Spending time in Hobart was charming, thanks in no small way to the property developers of the 70's focusing their attention on Sydney's eastern suburbs and leaving Hobart well alone. There are so many lovely houses & not a single (well maybe just a few) haenous unit blocks which resemble upturned cargo ships. The pubs were ye olde, the beer was cold, the markets were as freaky as ever and all the men wore beards, real man beards unlike my prissily manicured version.

And then there was that Mountain. Mt Wellington had been laughing, taunting, sneering & snarling at us as it looked down upon us from an altitude of 1271m. It had cast a pall over our every move and we were soon resolved to conquer her. Relishing the chance to slip back into lycra I was soon fusing shiny black lycra with a flourescent orange rain jacket which I have since adopted as my signature cycling "look".

Mount Wellington, allegedly Tasmania's highest & steepest, turned out to be a real pussycat as we raced up those 22km's in a speedy 12km's/hr. John was said to have put both his bike & outfit together without the aid of his wife, however, I dismissed out of hand the veracity of this spurios claim. Just look how he adds a dash of ocean blue to his sleeves to pick up a deep torquoise in his helmet, pure genious!

Sandy was waiting at the top with fresh pastries which is pretty much the most tops thing ever!! Pastries, I hear you chortle, that I can ill afford to be savouring given the noticable paunch I'm displaying through that skin tight, yet aesthetically pleasing fluro orange number I am sporting. Well where do you think my block fluro orange rainjacket disappeared to?? That's right, I'd stuffed it down the front of my new jacket. Phew, glad I figured that out 'cause I was just on my way to the bathroom to throw up the cheesecake I had for dessert tonight. I might go have another slice right now, back in a moment.

Descending at 70km's/hr plus on 1cm wide racing tyres was clearly the most sensible way of returning to sea level, or at least it was the most fun & Sandy only had 3 near crashes a she attempted to keep up with us, whilst avoiding oncoming busses, negotiating hairpin turns on death cliffs & taking photos of our mad dash from behind the wheel. Awesome stuff!!

That brings to an end our Tassie adventure. Apologies again that we could not provide the map but I'm sure you can use your imaginations..