I woke up quite early and it looked overcast, so I rugged up and headed off. I was going up the western track towards Smithton and about 100km was dirt. It has been closed for about 7 months due to bushfires and has only been open a week, so I got lucky this time. I fuelled up and grabbed a hot sausage roll for brekky and ate it at the town memorial to the change from a prospector’s camp to a town.

Then off through some nice windy roads towards Strahan. The corners are deceptive with decreasing radius on some, so slow is the word of the day around here. The view of the valleys was good from the top of the range.

After a while I arrived in Strahan where I took a photo of the bay.

I was parked in a no parking zone and when I moved of I was pulled over by a road crew working near by, it turned out to be TassiDave from ADV Rider forum 🙂 We had a bit of a chat and he pointed me to a road to the Ocean Beach, so off I went. The road was dirt, hard packed but it had some loose sections on it, especially on corners, only a few k’s though and not real bad. The view at the end was of a misty beach.

On the return I spoke to him again and he said the western road was better quality than that, so it sounded good 🙂 The next step was to get to Zeehan about 50km away, this is all bitumen still and it was nice and windy as well. But just for a change I took a photo of a straight bit, there not many of these that I have seen down here yet. Zeehan was a mining town, not much else there for me as I was just going through, but I did stop and buy some lunch for later.

The countryside is a bit more barren now but still lots of corners and bends on the way to Corinna and nice views as well.

After about 40km my turn off came up and now it was dirt 🙂 The road was very rough with lots of loose gravel in parts and also logging trucks, just to add flavour 🙂 But I survived to get to the ferry.

The notice said $20 for a motorbike but I was only charged 10, it does not take long, just a few
minutes and I arrived just as it was arriving from the other side, which is the township of Corinna itself. There is not much there that I could see.

On the other side after passing through the town, blink and you miss it, the real dirt section starts and it looked challenging.

From here on you can see the devastation from last year’s bush fire. This is why it took so long to open the road, the trees had fallen all over the road and they only supplied a small crew to clear it, so it took a long time.

The views were getting better and as you can see, they very kindly added bitumen to the real steep parts of the road.

The road was not as good as I expected, but because of all the work done to clear the road of debris, the machinery tracked rocks and gravel everywhere, so it paid to be real careful, I was only doing 40kmh max for most of this section, but the blind corners with no idea what to expect kept me vigilant 🙂 Especially with campervans and caravans coming from the other direction.

I had my lunch near this nice river where it started to rain a bit, not much, just enough to be annoying.

A bit more of an idea of what is on the road can be seen here, this bit was not on a corner so I managed to stop and take a shot.

The last section opened out a bit and I could get some speed up for a change. I am glad the road up that hill was not the one I had to take.

And finally I arrived at the junction of the Arthur River road which was bitumen. All up around 90km, some of it real good, some not so good, but I am happy I did it as I would be riding on dirt roads down in South America.

From there it was a simple run to Smithton where I called Robbie, another Vstrom rider. He came down for a chat but was otherwise busy. This town had no caravan park so I continued on to the small town of Stanley, which has an old volcanic mountain and is called The Nut. I was given an option of a tent site for $22 or a youth hostel room for $25, I opted for the single room, saved worrying about a tent. They also had free internet so that was a bonus 🙂

After unpacking I went up and checked email and updated the blog for a while then wandered up to the pub, which was only a few minutes away. I felt like a few beers to celebrate. I met a number of people there and had a great time.

Day – 311km
Trip – 24,307
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