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Crossing Australia by Motorbike Part 2 - Adelaide to Hobart
#1

I just noticed that I only posted photos from the first half of my ride across Australia earlier this year.
So for anyone who's interested, here's what I saw after leaving Adelaide heading east....

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1. After spending a morning riding the fantastic roads through the Adelaide hills, I headed south east to camp in the Coorong National Park. A very long narrow national park on the coast full of wetlands and large exposed clay lakebeds that looked really inviting to ride on, but were actually tretcherous due to unpredictable areas of very soft, slippery, wet clay everywhere.

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2. I met some friendly locals along the way. This big old Koala was climbing the gum tree right beside where I was sleeping.

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3. And there were some less-friendly locals too.

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4. Eventually I crossed the border from South Australia into Victoria and started riding on the legendary Great Ocean Road which hugs the southern Victorian coast offering spectacular scenery, great surfing, and fantastic roads for riding a motorcycle.

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5. I managed to rediscover the same secluded little spot on top of a cliff that I camped in my kombi back in 1997 when I was making the reverse of this journey, heading west to Perth.

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6. And of course it's criminal to traverse the Great Ocean Road without taking the obligatory photo of the Twelve Apostles. Wink

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7. After spending a bit longer than I originally planned on the Victorian coast (enjoying every second of it), I eventually made it to the Mornington Peninsula to stay with some friends before heading up to Melbourne to catch the overnight ferry to Tasmania.

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8. The ship pulled in to Devonport in Tasmania's North West the next morning and we were greeted by a spectacular sunrise. I was about 350km from my destination of Hobart in the south, but I was in no hurry to get there and had a friend to meet. So I took every windy back road I could, met up with my friend on the North East coast, and we ended up spending 2 days and over 700km to eventually get down to Hobart in the south. Tasmania isn't that big, so it's difficult to travel distances like that without starting to go around in circles.

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9. Finally I made it to my home town of Hobart! Seeing my family and friends never felt so good. The longer I live away from here, the more I appreciate it.

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10. I still had two weeks to spend in Tasmania before flying back to Perth, so I still spent plenty of time riding around to see things. In this case I'm down near Dover, south of Hobart.

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11. This is a forestry hut in the rainforest near Hastings Cave. I haven't been down to see these caves since I was maybe 7 years old, but I remember this hut from my childhood.

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12. One of the side-trips I did while in Tassie was across to the west coast and then up through the Tarkine wilderness in the north-west. The landscape here is pristine and really unique. It feels like you're entering another world.

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13. Here I am riding on the Western Explorer road in the Tarkine. I spent a whole afternoon on this unsealed road and passed only two other vehicles. It was bitter cold and a bit wet at times, but so much fun. The road surface is made of silica tailings from a mine in the north, and the silica mined there is sent off to Japan to be made into camera lenses apparently. There is no fuel, food, phone reception, turnoffs, or any sign of civilization for the unsealed section (about 130km), and the going was very slow at times where steep sections of road had been destroyed by 4WD tyres digging out the road surface in search of traction, exposing the mud underneath and making traction nearly impossible on a road bike with road tyres.

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14. Eventually I emerged from the Tarkine late in the afternoon and headed towards the quaint little town of Stanley on the North West coast, famous for being at the base of "The Nut". I spent the night here and got up the next day to keep riding... heading east and doing a "lap" of Tassie before heading back to Hobart.

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15. And so after 6 weeks and about 8000km of riding, that's pretty much where my journey finished. I left my trusty old Yamaha FZS600 in Hobart and flew back to Perth. I can't wait to head back to Hobart at Christmas and ride the old girl again, and maybe in another year or two I'll ride her back to Perth and do the whole journey again in reverse.

Adrian Broughton
My Website: www.BroughtonPhoto.com.au
My Blog: blog.BroughtonPhoto.com.au
You can also visit me on Facebook!
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Einstein.
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#2

Oh, and here are a couple of videos if you're interested. Apologies for the horrible wind noise in the audio - they were uploaded unedited. Just mute them.

A) Here's a video of me riding into Queenstown in the west of Tasmania.

B) Here's a video of me riding on the Great Ocean Road.

Adrian Broughton
My Website: www.BroughtonPhoto.com.au
My Blog: blog.BroughtonPhoto.com.au
You can also visit me on Facebook!
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Einstein.
Reply
#3

Wow! Excellent story and superb photos. It may be obligatory to photograph the 12 Apostles, but you have done the view proud. In any event, you have to ace the mandatories before going free style... Big Grin

That snake looks like he means business. I wouldn't get in his way. This must have been an amazing trip.
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