E124 - Roz’s Moto Adventure Ride Australia - VIC, Melbourne, TAS, Devonport, Sheffield, Latrobe

This episode takes me up to day 243 of my year long adventure ride around Australia and OMG the twists & turns on this journey are unbelievable! I say farewell to my beautiful friends Brendan & Zerlinda and head off to get the only Dunlop 606 rear tyre in captivity! I get there and intercept with my buddy Mark! Yay! He too needs a new rear tyre and later plans to go checkout another 2007 BMW G650X Challenge for sale with only 3,500kms on the clock (which he ended up buying!). We duck off for a coffee whilst the bikes are getting their new rubber and I have an opportunity to explain to Mark how I feel about wanting to start my Tasmania journey solo. Mark & I have spent the past 2 months riding together and having an incredible time doing so but I was feeling fatigued from the constant pace of chasing trails and I felt like I’d lost the essence of my solo journey. My journey was always about taking a year off to not only discover Australia on my new found passion, adventure bike riding, but also to re-discover myself after a difficult past few years. I gave up my businesses, family, son, dog, friends and worldly material possessions to embark on this journey of self-discovery therefore the solo part of my journey was a huge component of the adventure. So I explained to Mark that I’d spent almost 50% of my journey with him on the ride but was really missing the other 50% of riding and exploring alone. Added to that, Mark has been to Tassie 5 times previously and his excitement about going there was the opposite end of the excitement scale to my excitement...which was off the Richter scale! So I was anxious that his familiarity with the island would dampen my experience which I’d been highly anticipating for 8 months now! So I suggested that I take off first and if he wanted to join me in a week or two, that’d be awesome. Mark, as best friends do, understood where I was coming from and so decided to continue to visit his family & friends in Victoria as he was originally born & bred here. After we got back to the tyre shop, we said our sad farewells and as Mark was ready to fire his music up, he spotted an article about Victoria considering going into a 1 week coronavirus lockdown but it didn’t mention when. I panicked! My ticket on the Spirit of Tasmania was booked for Monday night and it was only Friday! So I had 3 nights to go and was at risk of blowing my $498 boat fare plus getting locked down! As soon as Mark took off, Steve at Pablos Tyres confirmed the lockdown was due to hit at midnight! In a panic, I tried to call the ferry ticket office to bring my booking forward to tonight but with no luck. I then tried to change it online and again hit a brick wall. So my only option was to gun it down to the Harbour and find a human to talk to and try and get my booking changed! So off I went in a panic! Best move ever! 15 mins in the ticket office and an extra $230 later, I was booked to sail out of the Melbourne port at 7:30pm that same night! Wooooo Hooooo! BUT now I had the anxiety of not knowing whether or not I’d land in Tasmania straight into a compulsory 14 day quarantine at a cost of thousands! Yikes! Everyone waiting to board was in the same boat...nervous! The information on the Tasmania Health website wasn’t crystal clear as to whether or not we’d be locked up when we land 5:30am the following morning! So with our hearts in our throats, we all boarded anyway! At 8:13pm we all got the magical text! Yay! Tasmania health confirmed that because we were in transit prior to the midnight lockdown, and so long as we declared truthfully that we had not been in any prescribed hot spots in Victoria, we would not be required to quarantine for 14 days! Wooooo hooooo! Freakin awesome! So I disembark in the morning in Devonport with an excitement that was off the Richter scale! Straight off the boat, I decided to do a Tassie climatizing ride to Sheffield and surrounds to get used to the blacktop, gravel, roadkill and cold! Several hours into this SPECtacular island, I’d made the decision to start my journey in the northeast of the island and work my way around clockwise. That’s when disaster struck! A noise & vibration started to appear from the rear wheel of my bike. I pulled up to inspect it but failed to find anything obvious! I met some great locals and after a chit chat and great advice, I limped my way back into Devonport to the bike shop. It was midday by then and the first 2 bike shops didn’t have mechanics on duty but 3rd time lucky, I found a gem! Turns out it’s the rear wheel bearing that I had replaced not so long ago in Brisbane. Bugger. Given no bike shop will be open until Monday, I set up camp at the Latrobe Mersey River Caravan Park until Monday. It’s always an adventure....carry on...