An adventure round island trip to Tasmania :
Here is when we started in Geelong
We are on the island close to sea level
We pitched our tent to spend the night with warm and dry weather.
Very interesting Documentary coverage of Tasmania produced in latter years :
After watching the video and extracting the above collage of photos of my Tasmania trip in the Australian summer of 1979, I can recall the following memory of how strange this island was to me. I can share my vivid memories of this trip today at the end of the year 2021 due to my habit of keeping journals of my life since I started in the winter of 1979 in the city of Geelong. My friend Bill Cook decided to get a motorcycle and so we could ride together in this unforgettable adventure which I'm prompted to share now.
We had to cross over the sea in a ferry from the mainland in our motorbikes. I had a Honda CB500 four, a four stroke engine of 500 cc as an experienced rider while Bill was starting off with a smaller 250 cc bike which was good enough to make the journey. He would wear a waxed cotton motorcycle jacket like mine to keep us warm and dry in this out door trip wearing leather gloves. It was summer time which is really hot in Australia but riding in Tasmania was a totally different experience for me, though I was the more experienced rider.
While in Malaysia as a student of 16 years of age, I was only riding the small Honda cubs. When I came to Australia, the country was larger so I started with a 175cc Honda Scrambler to later get the HondaCB500 four, both pictured below in the garden next to my room in an old wooden panel home I lived in with half a dozen other students :
After watching the video above, I felt impressed to share this unforgettable trip that we made. All I was told was that Tasmania was an island that had 4 seasons in a day especially when we were riding all round the island after getting off the ferry. The weather changes depending on our elevation whether we are at sea level or up in the mountains. Also from the video, I am informed today that the Western part of the island had more rain.
Here is the unforgettable experience. We were up in the mountains wet and cold. We were well dressed with our special jackets etc to keep warm and dry. When we stopped at a high point of the mountainous part of our journey, I took out my leather gloves that were soaked due to the rain as they were not waxed like our jackets. I was shocked that my hands were dark or black in color. At first I thought my gloves were stained with black oil somehow but as I tried to wipe off the stain, it wouldn't be wiped off. To my shock, my hands had turned 'blue-black' due to the exposure to the cold holding on to the handle bars!
As the journey continued round the island, returning back to sea level or the dry part of the island on the eastern side, what I thought was the dark stain on my hands disappeared! At the sea level, my hands can be seen as normal feeding the Tasmanian tiny kangaroo or Pademelon who came close to be fed.
Return trips to Australia in latter years were made shared in this Travelogue post.
