Tasmania had long been on my bucket list but I kept dilly-dallaying due the expense. Putting my money into overseas fly and ride trips always seemed a better option. But a steady stream of ride reports and moto vlogs convinced me that I really should go and with school holidays coming up and nothing really planned I though it was time for a ‘keep her sweet’ tour. The plan was that I would ride to Geelong and catch the ferry and meet ‘the pillion’ in Launceston, then ride around Tasmania catch the ferry back to the mainland, do the Great Ocean Road, spend a few days in Melbourne, ride some more choice Victorian roads and take inland roads back to the Gold Coast. And that is pretty much what we did. It was a great trip.
2024 was a big year: by the time I got back from Japan in late October I had already done 3 overseas trips and I realised the pillion rider might start to get a bit stroppy with my recent Bunburying and that I had better do a ‘keep her sweet trip’ sooner rather than later. And so it was that with school holidays approaching and the pillion being able to get away, I started looking at a trip that would combine Tasmania and some roads in Victoria I had not ridden before. I did not go to either Tasmania or Victoria on my Big Trip Around Australia in 2021 and there many roads in the Top 200 still to scratch off the list including the Great Ocean Road.
I had of course looked into going to Tasmania before but it always struck me as being rather expensive. Fly and ride options seemed out of the question due to the exhorbitant cost of renting bikes in Australia and the return crossing to Tasmania via the