Ride Like Hell and You'll Get There (18 page)
Turned out my mate had never seen snow before, so we had an impromptu session involving all the snow stuff. If this were a film it would be the bit where you’re looking at the ‘snow montage’, with us throwing snowballs, putting a helmet on the snowman, laying down on the roadside and making snow angels, etc., with a nice background sound bite of chirpy and sickening pop. Instead, it started raining, hard, the snow instantly turned to slush, then cold water, the music stopped and we were now standing in the pelting rain, soaking wet and getting mildly hypothermic miles from anywhere.
Out came the wet-weather gear. As we attempted to dry off a bit under the trees and pull on our waterproof suits, I suddenly realised there was something different, and it’s not something you get on a road trip that often. Apart from the occasional clap of thunder in the distance and the rain itself, and our bikes occasionally popping and pinging as their hot steel cooled in the cascade, it was quiet—total silence. The only two vehicles we had seen on the road that day were the trucks that nearly turned us into hood ornaments.
Diego had noticed a sign just up the road and wandered over to take a closer look. ‘Pol, how big do the kangaroos get here?’ he asked, pointing at the sign.
I looked at the sign and it, combined with Diego’s quizzical face distended in real concern, made me laugh. The sign was definitely not to scale and I could see how it could be confusing for a foreigner. It appeared to be saying three things to the happy motorist: first, you should be doing 65 kph; secondly, under the heading ‘Wildlife’, there was a visual warning of giant albino kangaroos as big as your car; and lastly that they will from ‘dusk to dawn’ leap out of the bush and perform a snatch-lift on your front bumper. All it needed was a Monty Python foot smashing down on you as you read the sign.
We rode on. I was getting worried about my fuel; my tank was on reserve and good for less than 20 kilometres. Diego was infallible when I started honking on with my fuel concerns. ‘Do not worry, my friend, there weel be a station for petrol just up the road,’ and with a big gesticulation towards the west he belted off deeper into the woods. My bike coughed after five minutes, then hacked like a fish gulping in air but looking for water. I pulled over straightaway, rummaged through my saddlebags, found my fuel flask and poured in the one litre, hopped on and started praying for a roadhouse. I had a length of hose to drain fuel from Diego’s ample tank if I needed to, but that was a last option. Just as I was about to run dry again I saw the pot of gold at the end of the petroleum rainbow, the Derwent Bridge roadhouse.
We fuelled up, pushed our bikes round the side, went in and ordered a big lunch then sat in the corner to wait while slowly drying out and heating up. The place was deserted; no one else came through, there were no other cars or bikes around. After lunch we wandered outside with big hot mugs of tea and lay on benches watching the sun slowly blink through the windblown clouds, not a sound, just the wind in the trees, our bellies full of homecooked pasta and properly brewed tea. Both of us promptly fell asleep.
I woke with a start, almost rolling off the bench. Diego was snoring, his empty mug still sitting on his chest slowly going up and down. I checked my watch; two hours had gone by, we were losing daylight fast. I gave him a shake and we both lumbered round the corner towards the bikes, only to discover two large salty-looking possums trying to hotwire my Harley. They had already dumped the contents of one of my saddlebags on the ground and had a good look through my shaving kit, managing to also cover each other in shaving cream. Sprung, they ran off into the trees and sat there above us, chewing on my muesli bars and smelling of lemon.
The sun came through for a look as the road shook the last of the slush off its gravel shoulders and began to dry out. Daylight slowly turned orange as the sun dipped behind the hills, setting off the landscape in rich deep purple and green. As the light faded, so captivating was the view luxuriously opening up in front of us that I didn’t see the possum. (You know this story isn’t going to end well.) We’d just rounded a corner at the top of a forested hill, a long dry straight forcing Diego to downshift and gun his bike well past the limit. I followed suit and tucked in over the tank. The possum had, evidently, waited for Diego to fly past then decided to run into the middle of the road and plant a face-first kamikaze headbutt straight into my bike; there were perhaps two seconds between me seeing and hitting it. The bike took a terrible jolt, I veered off to the right with a high-speed wobble and a little tank-slapping then straightened up and continued on. It was pointless stopping; Diego had streaked ahead and would have no idea that I nearly came off, and the possum, well, let’s just say at least its death was instant.
So I caught up with him, then we crossed the Lake Burby bridge and stopped next to an ominous-looking concrete building in the middle of nowhere called ‘The Linda Valley Cafe’. Diego was chatting to several other riders who all stopped talking and started laughing when I pulled up. ‘What did you hit, mate?’ one of them called out.
I looked down; the poor possum had basically exploded when hit by my Harley doing about 140 kilometres per hour. It was like someone had just thrown a bucket of red paint over me, and when I took off my lid it was to the smell of slow-cooked possum baked on engine and pipes; there were only a few chunks left clinging to the underside.
Joined by Diego’s new friends, we rode on in a small convoy down to Queenstown. The road was a dream, opening up into a deep valley, with a steep twisting descent of corners that switch back all the way down. The other lads waved as they continued on and we pulled up for a beer and a motel bed.
Our last full day in Tasmania was going to be our best—I didn’t know it yet but I was about to have a truly great ride. We started with another wonderful sunny morning, the hills steeped in mist as the day rose. We stood on the motel’s porch and pondered our route back to Devonport and the evening ferry to Melbourne. We mapped out a big ride that took us south from Queenstown to Strahan, then back up to Zeehan, Rosebery, up the A10 to Wynyard on the coast, then left all the way to the bizarrely named ‘Dismal Swamp Forest Walk’—there are loads of forest walks to do in Tasmania but we knew we had to do that one. From there it was a run straight to the ferry, about 600 k’s and eight hours in total.
The ride out of Queenstown to Strahan was just perfect; the sun was shining, the road empty as usual. Huge ferns grew from the high banks of the shoulder straight up with the forest and bowed over, totally enclosing the road; our headlights gleamed into the green tube, like riding through a rainforest tunnel. Breakfast in the small township of Strahan and on towards the north and the coast. The whole day played out in a series of dreamily idyllic places and moments. We started seeing other riders, and Diego was constantly enthralled in the history of wherever we were, asking questions of anyone and everyone who would stop to chat, but our journey was slowly coming to an end.
We rode on in complete bliss, just ambling through the countryside, then we hit the hills again. Diego was in front as the road began to skirt up the side of Hellyer Gorge and down into the almost tropical valley. He was in the zone, faster into the corners, proper supertight hairpin, frame-scraping corners, the ones where the sign tells you to take it at fifteen. It was steep and winding, the inside banks of the road began to camber up in our favour, higher and higher. So Diego began to use them, hitting the apex on the edge of the bitumen at 60 and laying his bike right over, popping up a gear for a few seconds then downshift and high on the camber into the next one.
We started overtaking each other, we could see it was clear ahead so we used the whole road. My head was clutter-free, I was having such a good time, every corner had my pipes hitting the road, pavement feelers long since worn down and I didn’t give a shit anymore; I was actually trying to lay the bike down and couldn’t. The bank of the road was too enticing, something to push against and tease through the corners: it was a lock-in at Disneyland. I rolled the throttle harder and earlier in the turns, only remembering I was riding a Harley when the ground fell away under me and it was only the centrifugal force keeping the tyres on the road, then the suspension bottomed out on the back wheel under the compressive force and I was sling-shotted out of the turn and into another one.
We reached the end, both of us pulled up, paused, silently nodded back in the direction we had just come, and turned around and rode it again the other way, then doubled back and did it again. It was epic fun, on a perfect sunny day in Tasmania.
Our run to the coast was easy and relaxed. We saw the ocean at Wynyard and turned left, riding together all the way to the western seaboard at Arthur River, with just enough time for a cuppa and another stopover for the very pleasant Dismal Swamp. Then it was a blast straight to Devonport with more and more riders popping out of the woodwork to join up in a convoy that ended in the queue to board the ferry.
As the sun started to set we all mooched about talking bikes and where we had been; every single rider, from retirees in their 60s to young lads on slick sports bikes, had the same smile on their face. It was a scene that could play out almost anywhere at any point in the history of motorcycle riding; like surfers standing beachside scanning the waves, so too bike riders bounce the experience off each other in a timeless way, their hands weaving to demonstrate as they describe a corner just taken, in the same way the surfer narrates a nice bottom turn.
THE FERRY NAZI
and my pocketknife were nowhere to be found, so Diego and I finished our meal in one of the restaurants on the
Spirit of Tasmania 1
and settled in for the night. The ferry was very comfortable and catered for the entertainment of its passengers, including a free cinema, where Diego opted to go while I lumbered off to bed.
It was nice to wake up with the sun shining through my window on a big boat, Melbourne slowly getting closer as I grabbed a shower and packed my gear. Diego was already loading up his bike in the vast steel car park below decks when I got there. We rode into the morning traffic, heading directly north for my mate Clayton’s place.
An hour later we rolled into his property. Large and sprawling, Clay’s home is wonderfully peaceful, and as usual he was straight into stories and music. We had a great meal and sat on his huge porch admiring the unspoilt rolling green view. Diego spotted a boomerang hanging on the wall and the next thing I know Clay had him hurling it all over a paddock while his horses pranced about looking nervous. Next was the compulsory bullwhip-cracking session; Diego managed to crack the back of his head and I removed a slice off the top of my right ear.
Then we hit the off-road toys. Clay has a flat-out scary thing called a Polaris RZR, an off-road buggy that merged with a transformer then drank too much Red Bull and went mad. Clay told us to go and get our helmets on and come back in clothes we didn’t mind getting ‘a bit mucky’.
Clay’s toy is the size of a small car, seats four adults in comfort but goes like a dirt bike. It’s got everything you need to go from zero to 100 in ten seconds over rough uneven bush, plus instant selection between 4WD and 2WD—you just push a button on the dash, then get some air. When I say air I mean Clay was broadsiding dirt 20 feet into the air behind us, cresting a rise in the middle of a paddock and hitting his jump, no warning. There was just enough time during the flight for Diego and I to turn and look at each other, screaming, then look back at where we were going and panic. Fun does not begin to describe it.
An hour later we were both fucked with matching internal bleeding and bruised kidneys, and 200 pounds of mud liberally sprayed from head to toe. There was mud inside my helmet, there was mud inside my eyelids.
The next day, feeling a little sore, I waved Diego off. The crazy bastard decided he was not done yet and rode back to Perth from Melbourne. We had been fortunate enough to do some epic rides on incredible roads and have the kind of adventures that I’ll rant about all my life. I know one day when I’m old and kicking about periodically peeing myself I’ll be telling my grandkids about the time I went to Tasmania with a mad Argy called Diego.
That night Clay and I explored the finer points of brandy and opened a nice cognac. He has a limitless ability to stimulate the mind: he writes so well he actually makes a living from his talent; he’s a musician, too, and a bloody film director, amalgamating all this with a natural skill that makes it look easy. Sometimes I can’t keep up with Clay’s brain box when he shoots off in several different directions simultaneously. I struggle with the simple stuff; my own alchemy of writing is, as you know by now, just storytelling. But Clay bends and moulds the narrative into sculpture beyond the word, he sees things in four dimensions and, much to his disdain these days, 3D as well. ‘Fuck 3D,’ he scowled from inside his Tardis-like collection of movies.