Exploring the Tasmania Highlands, solo motorcycle camping - S1-E9

After spending yesterday riding the dirt trails through the forest I needed to clean my chain again and seeing I was in the wash bay I may as well give the whole bike a quick wash and remembering to re-oil the chain. Now I need to sort out this back tyre which was worn down to the wear indicator and had a few slices in it. So off to the Royal Enfield store in Launceston and they were kind enough to put the tyre on for me. The tread on the new Pirelli Scorpion tyre is not as knobbly as the Dunlop 605 it replaced but it will last over double the mileage. Hopefully there's enough grip on it for dirt roads. I'll soon find out. With that all done it's time to get back on the road again. I made my way through Launceston and out to the countryside. I decided to head up to the Tasmanian Central Highlands also known as the Lake Country of Tasmania. The easiest way to get there was through the town of Dellerayne. The area around Dellerayne was first explored in the early 1820s for farmland and today is now a major agricultural centre. The town itself is a quaint little country town with art and craft shows, car shows and a lot of tourists pass through it as it is the connection point for Cradle Mountain, the Great Western Tiers, Mole Creek and where I'm heading the Central Highlands. I made the turn onto Highlands Lake Road. The Central Highlands is over a thousand metres above sea level so it was all uphill from here. Again another echidna crossing the road in the middle of the day. I then snaked my way up the side of the plateau. I could feel the temperature change as I was getting higher. The area is covered by dolerite rock, the stuff you find in roads and the base of train tracks. It's also used to construct dams and levees which is handy as there are quite a few up here. I came across the first lake so I pulled over to check it out. So this is Pine Lake. It's the first lake you get to on the way up from Dellerayne into high country around the Great Lake. This isn't the Great Lake, this is only a small lake but we'll get there. So one of the reasons for stopping was to warm up and actually walk. I have one, two, three, four layers on. I still have three left I can put on. It's the middle of the day and it is brisk in the middle of summer. Oh it's gonna be fun camping tonight. Thermals I guarantee are getting busted out today. You can see how much the makeup of the landscape's changed here. Really rocky. All the trees are quite small. Small shrubs must be brutal here in winter. Beautiful but really really cold. I haven't actually worked out where I'm gonna stay. Probably gonna be near a lake. Probably need a windbreak just in case it gets a little windy through the night. The Great Lake was originally a small freshwater lake fed by the Pine and Brenton streams. It was dammed in 1922 which created its current size of 176 square kilometers and is part of the hydro scheme. You can see why they call it the Great Lake especially if you've gone through Pine Lake first. In a lot of areas of the world if you had a beautiful lake in the mountains you'd see million dollar houses lining the shores but up here it's a little different. There are hundreds of fishing shacks around the lakes. The area is famous for its trout fishing as trouts were introduced in the 1860s. Fishing in Tasmania is the biggest participation activity. It's even hosted the world fly fishing championships. I rode into Laiwini. It is the coldest permanently inhabited place in Australia. It was established in the early 1920s as a base for part of the hydro scheme. In January 2020 Laiwini's population doubled to two. That being the police officer and the internal fishery service officer and appropriately Laiwini's name was derived from a Tasmanian aboriginal word meaning frigid. I pulled into the Great Lakes general store to try and warm up and to search for somewhere to camp tonight. I picked a lake that looked like it would be quiet as it was out of the way. I've found myself a campsite. This is the first spot I've looked at as a campsite. It's Penstock lagoon and I'll take it. I've got a place for a fire which I'm gonna need and I'm gonna start pretty quickly. Pretty quiet there's nobody about so the first thing to do is work out better at the tent. Like normally it looks like you'd probably drop your tent about there but just over here this grass looks way softer. I think the grass is gonna win. I'll investigate a bit more but I think it's gonna win. Now to find some firewood and watch out for snakes. Now that piece of wood would be perfect just don't know if I can get it to the campsite. Maybe I'll find one a little smaller. So I've got the wood to get the fire started at least and I think I'll start it first to see where the smoke's going if it's consistent in the one direction so I can set my tent up not in the smoke. I've got a burger somewhere. In fact it was so good I went back and got a second and anyway these things and I thought they'd be perfect for starting a fire but so far I haven't been able to have a fire because you can't have one in National Park and when I've been stealth camping well fires aren't really stealth so I'm gonna set myself a fire. We'll see how that goes. So this is a flint. You strike it that way into the fire. This is a lighter where it's way more effective. That's just my backup in case things go really sideways. That's just sensible. I know now where not to put the tent. The ground underneath is very springy and soft. Winning! This lake seems like a men's shed. A place to get away and be with your thaws and no one's going to hassle you. So reading the room so to speak when I spotted someone I kept my distance. I had something to eat. My staple when traveling on a bike a tin of tuna. Small, easy to pack and lasts forever. It's nothing like watching a fire for hours. It's so good. It's so quick. As soon as you walk away from it it's a little chilly. I looked outside the tent to see the sunrise but as there was so much dew on the ground the temperature was one degree celsius and I had nowhere to be. I decided to stay in the tent for a while longer as the sun would heat up the tent and dry off the dew hopefully. Well plan worked. It's warmer inside the tent than out. I don't think the fly in the tent is going to dry that quick so I'll probably have to put it away wet. Oh well. Next spot I'll dry it out and I didn't make it through all my firewood. Leave it for the next person. Camp's packed up so on the road again. There's Arthur Lake I might go check out and then just keep heading south. Arthur's Lake is Tasmania's most popular trout fishery. The area was dammed in the 1920s as part of the hydro scheme. It was originally made up of two lakes. Blue Lake and Sand Lake and the Moorash Marsh. So this is Arthur's Lake another stunning lake up here in the highlands and I've just noticed some pretty cool camp spots here right on the water. Last night's one had the grass into the water so I couldn't really get in whereas here it's all rocky right to the edge. I'll have to put this camp spot on the list next time I come through. I noticed on the map that there was a dirt road that ran along the lake so I thought I'd ride down a little bit to check it out. There were a few more fishing shacks but eventually the road finished at a dead end so I turned around making my way back the way I came. I pulled over to see the best way off the highlands. As I zoomed in I noticed a road to the east. With that many switchbacks it was definitely worth heading in that direction. Ah another dirt road. A quick look wouldn't hurt. This was the east side of the Great Lake. I thought I'd better at least check out how cold the water was up here. Okay that was surprisingly warm probably because it's the edge. I'll go on the pontoon and see if it's colder. I mean you could easily get in. Okay the Great Lake's not so cold you could actually get in and swim. I'd have to take my gear off though. The air temperature however is still cold so not today. So far so good with the new tyre. It isn't as knobbly as the old one so I am quite cautious with it. But dirt roads? Fine. Sand? Well not deep sand. I came upon the switchback section dropping rapidly down from the plateau. This pipeline was part of the Powhatina power station. The pipe feeds water down to where the turbines are. Imagine if you could go down it like a waterslide. I think you'd probably get up a bit of speed. Not exactly sure if you'd survive though. They had a lot of rain through here a few months ago and you can see this small stream turned into a torrent washing away everything in its path, even moving rocks the size of buses. This is the runoff from the power station. Travelling down this man-made canal back into the river system. Well look at that. Two choices and one of them's dirt. Not hard to guess which way I'm going.