Spring in the Otways

Thanks to Marty our Tassie trip for February 2008 is now sorted - the ferry is booked as is the accomodation. The last time we went touring Tasmania, back in 2004, we didn't book any accomodation in advance and we often found we were struggling to find something at the end of the day. Tassie after the school holidays was much busier than we had anticipated. There will be five of us in total on a variey of machines - VFR800 x 2, ZX9 x 1, ZX12 x 1, & Buell x 1.

I saw a link on STN recently to a great ride report from a guy from the US who toured through NSW, Tasmania and Vic on a Guzzi. There is good description and some beautiful pics - it's well worth a read at this link

Today was a glorious spring day. Marty and I fired up the two bikes and some twisty roads awaited us - what a great start to the weekend. We did the Otways circuit again. Incidentally the Great Ocean Road is still closed between Lorne and Skenes Creek due to rock falls from 150mls of rain last weekend. There was plenty of evidence of last weekend's storms by way of toppled trees and debris on the road. We stopped at Gellibrand for a drink and to clean the bugs from our visors. I've become fond of stopping here - nice down to earth people, who always have time for a chat.


Approaching Apollo Bay a huge sea mist rolled in. The temp gauge on the Honda dropped 10 degrees C. Fortunately it was sunny in the main street. A pastie from the bakery was just right for lunch.

The Skenes Creek to Forrest Rd was in poor condition after last week's rain. Lots of gravel & clay strewn across corners, which was quite hard to see in the shaded corners - with dark visors!
Of all things, there was a damn speed camera car parked in the shade in the middle of nowhere, on the only good stretch of road actually. This stealthy revenue raising has nothing to do with road safety at all and was farsical considering the poor state of the roads we had just ridden. How parasitic to come revenue raising inland because the GOR was closed. I just hope the State Gov.t spend some of those $s on fixing the roads around the Otways at some stage.