Leaving the Island on my Solo motorbike camping adventure aboard a Royal Enfield Himalayan - S1-E14

I woke up well before the sun to give myself enough time to pack up camp and get to the ferry terminal which was on the other side of the Mersey River. I made my way through the sleepy streets of Devonport. I checked in and then there's a lot of waiting around but finally they let me on the Spirit of Tasmania 1, up the ramp and into the bowels of the ship. Not the easiest place to do a u-turn but somehow they managed. Crossing takes between 9 and 11 hours depending on how wild Bass Strait is. It is 448 kilometres from Devonport to Geelong. There are 300 cabins on the ferry or you can just sit in the lounge area. It carries roughly 500 vehicles, well whatever can fit in 3.7 kilometres of vehicle deck space. As the ship sailed away from Tassie, I thought about the difference between the rough idea of the route I might take, basically sticking to the coast, and the path I did take which looks more like this. Not having an exact plan can sometimes bring up issues but imagine all the cool things I would have missed out on. Leaving room for chance, serendipity, the unknown. That's what brings excitement, discovery, surprise, challenges and makes it more an adventure not just a tour. We passed the Spirit of Tasmania 2 about halfway across. The ferry docked in Geelong so it was time to leave the ship. It was late in the afternoon so I called up an old mate who lives in the city of Melbourne which was about an hour away. It would be good to catch up and not have to worry about finding somewhere to pitch a tent for the night as cities aren't really designed for pitching tents. After a good night's sleep I headed off through the city. I needed a new oil filter and being in the city would give me the best opportunity to pick one up and not have to wait around for it. I thought it was best not to mess around and just go straight to the source. Melbourne does like a colourful abstract um whatever these are. I pulled up at Royal Enfield's headquarters in Australia. I'm pretty sure they'll have an oil filter here. They seem to have everything else. While I was there I checked out a couple of sweet rides. I would love to take this one over the Himalayas or through Mongolia. Not the ideal bike for the job but it would be so much fun and a challenge. Chase Hearn, the head of all things mechanical, kindly offered to have a look over my bike. I'm pretty sure he would have been shaking his head with the weight I had on it. You can see how worried he was about the weight on the back of the bike. He tied it down to stop it from falling but he was kind enough to fix a few issues like loose spokes, a damaged bash plate and just generally checking over the bike. Sort of around 40-42 and then when you get into the gravel sections and stuff like that then drop them down. So yeah on the front you can yeah run up to say 38 on the front um and then you know yeah let it down you're sort of into your 20s when you go off-road. You don't have as much vibrations like unless you're on a really badly corrugated road where when you're sitting on 110 on a highway you've actually got some really high frequency vibrations going through it and that's when this thing will just be like that and that's what will cause it to fatigue. With everything sorted it was good to know there were no issues starting the next part of the journey. I made my way through the centre of the city. My destination was the Victorian High Country. I didn't really know anything about the region just what the description said and it said the High Country is located in the northeast of Victoria. It is an area that features national parks, Victoria's highest mountains, lakes, snow resorts and a rich history including gold discovery, cattlemen and bush rangers, which sounded intriguing enough for me to check it out. I had to ride through the Yarra Ranges to get there which looked promising with tall trees, giant ferns and narrow winding roads. I was riding along I'm thinking I need a break and then saw this cool little stream so this is my lunch break. It's probably a bit after lunch but how good was going over the Yarra Range? I'd never heard of it. Obviously thousands had but I hadn't and it's awesome to ride so if you're in the area want to check out and also I literally don't know any of this area. I've been up to Mount Buller once snowboarding with some mates and they drove so and that was over a decade ago so I'm going blind here. I'll probably miss all the good bits. I have to come back for another trip I think. Any excuse. So I'm going to head towards Mount Buller. I think there's some dirt tracks from what I can see after that and then head towards Falls Creek but it's definitely not a direct route. I'll probably get lost. That's okay I'm going to fill up my gas cans the extra ones on either side just in case I have to turn around. Pre-prepared but yeah it should be fun the next few days. I filled up the main tank and both jerry cans at Eldon. I made my way around the southeast of Lake Eldon to find somewhere to camp for the night. The roads were empty. I didn't come across another vehicle. The road kept snaking its way across rivers and streams. Then I spotted a few places to camp so I went down the dirt track to check them out. This one wasn't quite to my liking so I backtracked a bit to another spot. So I found somewhere to camp for the night. First spot I looked at if you looked at the water there was the bugs on the water because the water was so still so I thought there might be a high possibility of mosquitoes so decided to change it up. This is I think called the pines because there's pine trees and just down the little path is the water. The water's not bad at all. It's not that cold. I guess I should get in. First setting up the tent and again there's nobody about. Even the other campsite I had a look at no one there either. All to myself. Have I mentioned this yet? 29 bucks. Saves you a bit of effort and it's tiny. Way easier than blowing it up every night. With camp set up I made my way back down to the water. Today was a good day. Got to catch up with my mate in the morning and then out to Royal Enfield which is pretty epic and then to the busy city then was it Yarra National Park. Going up through that range it's pretty awesome that road and then through this section the big river I think it is and now all by myself again and finish off with a swim but the one thing about going to Royal Enfield besides them having a quick look over the bike and that just the I guess the education from Chas, the guy that's working my bike, gave me some good information about managing tyres as well so if you have a look at the back one you see the tiny little splits in the rubber it's got to do with I'm carrying a bit more weight in my gear than just an average rider being on the bike so the tyre's just being uh squashed a bit more so it's fraying on those edges so he said to just a bit more tyre pressure up to I think up to it was 37 standard and up to 42 he said and if I go through yeah off road and that I can let them down I've got a pump with me so I can pump them back up and the same on the front he's actually showed me where you can see where the wear is there's some knobs that are further down than the other ones so yeah just stuff like that and just managing weight distribution a bit better and yeah just to look over the bike and he just kept saying yeah the bike the engine's fine it'll go forever he also did the spring adjustment on the back shot it was only one click in so he cranked it up a bit and I can feel the difference I've a lot more of the suspension before it sort of started halfway down so again another great help so as I said it was the education out of that was really good for me and tomorrow as I don't know this area at all it's like saying yeah I'm going to Africa and it could be north to the south to the west to east I'm being very general it's the Victorian Highland anyway I'm thinking of going up to Mount Buller and there's some from my the maps it says there's some dirt tracks on the other side and I'm gonna try and make my way to Falls Creek I don't know how successful I will be again I've put in extra fuel because I may have to turn back somewhere if I get yeah just can't get through so it should be interesting fun day fun day just don't get too lost