Two Moto Kiwis: Phil, Beth, Ella and Bon At Granville Harbour

Burnie, home of Beth, Phil and Ella the golden retriever as well as 8 Alpaccas.

Arriving to their home we were instantly made welcome and shown to our accommodation, a unit in the end of the shed with everything needed to be super comfy (sound familiar)

Скиппи had vale parking, the workshop had a clean flat and dry floor which was a treat, we had a little list of things to do to Скиппи and Beths bike named Egor ...the big bad Ruski.

Most were only 5 minute jobs and the first one was not even on the list.

Phil had two hydraulic jacks and a flat floor, everything you need to make some slightly major adjustments, our sidecar wheel with a 3 degree inward camber chopping our tires out so the mish was to try and correct it….looking good so far.

With the right gear the job was done along with a few other maintenance and Russian fixits completed yet again flash as Michael Jackson.

Beth wanted to her amo case mounted so I offered to fabricate the mount for her as Phil had his hands full doing an 80k service on his Triumph 800 XCX adventure bike, I was the apprentice when required to assist, Beth accepted this and the resulting rack to hold it completed….nice rack Beth.

I had ordered a new tire for Skippy and the one I had ordered even tho a 4.00X19 so same size had a profile height of 45 mm less, this threw in a large curveball as we are 2wd so I ended up ordering the same tire we had which are slightly more knobbly which we really don’t get the use of because they wear much faster, doesn’t matter in the scheme of things.

The Duro on the left and the K37 on the right.

Beth ran the same one I had bought on Egor so she took it off our hands as a spare.

From being busy to nothing, I had to wait for my new tire to arrive and Uralla did a quick send which was good as Beth and Phil had planned a ride for us and I got my new tire just in time…the original one was spent.

In between it was decided we would hit Cradle mountain and summit it, the morning (5.45am) was cool and slightly foggy, as we hit the mountain it was all clagged in however while walking and making progress the fog started to abate and the curtains previously drawn were pulled back to unveil the beauty.

We are from New Zealand so we partly qualified in beauty ….this was worthy and by the time we summited after climbing the rock faces it was completely clear….OMG what a view.

Next up the local ride, we were misguided around the back of the district through secret little roads, dams, firebreaks and general awesome wee tracks with a whole lot of stunningness thrown in, again we would have no idea at all about 90% of these wee roads of entertainment so once more local knowledge overrules GPS hands down.

We were invited to go to Granville harbour along with Bon another friend of theirs, we hadn’t been there yet so we accepted the invite to camp a few days in a local place with local knowledge and lots of grog and fud.

What a wild place with the weather being awesome to awesomely bad but with a decent camp fire it was no problem we also made an escape to the tallest waterfall in Tassie, although not a hard walk was really social having a yarn along the way.

Phil and I did some tracks he knew of, Phil on his Canam 500 quad and me on the XT250….ALL tracks out of there involved sand varying from firm, short patches to 300 meter long sinkholes one of which was so deep it took the little XT out of 2^nd gear, by the time I chopped into first meant I lost all my momentum as it was uphill, poor wee bike was nearly swallowed whole and I had to do a lot of paddling much to Phils amusement.

I am used to riding sand and the XT250 was mostly enough but the depth and fineness of the sand made it fun testing my skills to the limit, I was very happy to have ridden hundreds of km in Mongolia in this sort of stuff and also having a trials bike at home to practice, great experience leading to relaxed riding.

Having not ridden two wheels since about September 2023 I had to retrain mee ol brain a bit, just simple things like putting ya foot down when ya come to a stop LOL.

The last day we were there mum nature gave us a doozy of strong winds and very rough sea looking more like a washing machine mix than a harbour.

We could see from camp across the harbour and town with the small hill that was behind getting sprayed from the waves crashing heavily on the rocks and blown way into the air upwards to 50 to 60 meters, spectacular.

Some random pics