Ride the best biking roads in the world
Tasmania has amazing tarmac, little traffic and friendly cops. Let’s go!
Tasmania has been largely unmolested by modern life. Villages are Trumanesque quaint, the people are genuinely nice and Garden of Eden-like countryside is picture postcard perfect. Perched under Australia’s chin, 10,000 miles away, this apparently small island is the size of England. But with a population of less than half-a-million and barely any traffic to speak of, it’s the perfect place to retire, if you crave the isolated quiet life.
But right now things are a little livelier. Blasting through a seemingly never-ending sequence of exquisite corners, my ears are being treated to the glorious racket of a Ducati Streetfighter S, lent to me by a good
Aussie friend. You can ride here for hour after hour and burn through (cheap) tankfuls of fuel without ever seeing a straight piece of tarmac. Tyres wear out on the edges before the middle and after a few days my Metzeler Sportec M7 RR’s charred shoulders have that track-abused look about them.
Put simply, Tasmania is biking nirvana and like no place in the world to enjoy any kind of motorcycle. Sure, we can all think of our favourite roads, whether it’s that blast you had across the Swiss Alps one summer, or a morning scaling the Pyrenees, but here it’s like all the best roads on earth have been scooped up and laid down spaghetti-like, in this far away continent.
Tracks like Ascari in Spain, built by the wealthy, contain the world’s best racetrack corners, but they have nothing on Tassie. A day’s ride down here can replicate stretches of the Alps and Pyrenees for breakfast, a scaled-up facsimile of the TT course for lunch and for tea, a dreamy selection of the finest roads from all over the globe. It’s that good. It’s as otherworldly as a computer game, one minute you’re riding through dense, tree-lined forest roads, littered with dizzying second gear flip-flops and the next you’re treated to gently undulating, heart-in-the mouth fourth-gear sweepers. On the odd occasion you find moonscape-clear straights, without a car or side road in sight, where even a superbike, flat in top, would feel lost.
Tasmania is a bit like the Isle of Man: obey the speed limits in builtup areas and you’ll be largely left alone everywhere else, so long as you’re not being an idiot. Not that there are s many police to keep an eye on you, anyway.
Aussies go mad for the place, to escape their over-zealous state coppers. Many bring their sportsbikes here in the back of vans, kitted out with spares and extra rubber, like they’re off on some dystopian dawn till dusk trackday. Tassie regulars have their favourite haunts and spend days doing big loops on their favourite roads, TT-style.
‘It’s like all the world’s best roads all in one place’
‘A day’s ride replicates the best of the Alps ’
A super naked, like the Streetfighter, is the bike to have, for me; man enough to handle relentless corners, cheeky enough for bar-wagging acceleration, but not too fast along the straights. They’re kinder to wrists, too. Over half of Tasmania is covered with national parks and heritage sites. It’s beautiful and unspoilt, with a rugged coastline that’ll melt your heart. Sportsbikes and nakeds might deliver all the adrenalinfuelled fun, but if you want to drink in the scenery and take it easy, jump on an adventure bike and even get your tyres muddy on perfect off-road trails.
It’s easy to get your Tassie fix so long as you’re in Melbourne in the first place and have a bike at your disposal. Just jump on the Spirit of Tasmania overnight ferry and when you wake from your slumber you’re in Devonport on the north coast. Half-an-hour later and you’re in the thick of the best roads you’ve ever ridden.
Of course, it’s not exactly practical to ship your bike to the other side of the world or know someone who’ll lend you one, but hire and tour companies make it devilishly easy (see right). The longer you can spend on the island the more you’ll see, but if time is of the essence you can ride a ‘lap’ of Tassie in a whistle-stop four days, as we’ve done. From Devonport it’s east to the coastal town of Bicheno for an overnighter and on to the capital city of Hobart to end the second day. The third day sees us head to Strahan to the west, then hot-foot it back on the final day back to the ferry, spearing through the Cradle Mountain National Park. All the roads are great but if you had to pick the best track from this ‘greatest hits’ of dream roads, it has to be the A10 from Bridgewater to Queenstown and on to the B24 to Strahan (pronounced Strawn).