Miena is a small lakeside town at 1000 metres above sea level. The Aboriginals pronounced it ‘my-enna’, translating to ‘lagoon-like’.
Miena was cold! We stayed in a hotel room the night before, had warm showers and washed our clothes.
We set off in overcast conditions across the plateaus. It would of been about 4 degrees with no sun yet. We had all our layers on and pedalled hard to warm up.
We headed towards Bronte Park on the main road, crossed Ouse River bridge and passed Little Pine Lagoon dam.
We soon turned off this nice road into the bush. We got to the sign at Handsome flats.
The guidebook (and obviously the sign) recommends bikes to not use this track but as you can see it starts off fine. Darb suggested we just have a look and then turn around when it gets bad.
So we rolled along this fire road for a few hundred metres looking out for trail markers.
Aarrrrr so this is the track they’re (trail organisers) talking about! I was hopeful the skinny single track would continue as it first appeared. We discussed whether we should give it a go or not. We ended up having a vote. Two out of three voted yes. “Let’s try it, it will only add to the adventure!”
Well, it was interesting to say the least! We pushed the whole way for kilometres and successfully followed the trail markers. Each time we questioned our direction, we scanned for a marker in the distance and found one.
Finally after hours, we got out alive with no snake bites. However our legs were scratched up a bit. We wish we had gaiters. I had these things stuck all over my shoe covers.
We kept moving towards Bronte Park.
Then just as we got to the Roscar-Borough road we ran into the chief volunteer, John Shoebridge! We were captivated and jubalent to have met John. John has spent countless hours on the trail, words aren’t enough to credit him.
We discussed trail conditions with John and a bit of history.
After a few ups and downs we came across another flume, the Bronte flume, a smaller one with water in it. The water eventually reaches the Tungatinah power station some 20 kilometres to the South.
We then turned left looking over Pine Tier Lagoon.
You can see two fisherman enjoying the serenity.
We continued on for Bronte Park as we knew there was a shop there. On the way we crossed this really old interesting bridge
We got to Bronte Park and enjoyed the coffee with some toasties. Our legs were now getting pretty tired but the coffee and food recharged us.
We had planned to camp at Victoria Valley that night and time was getting on, so we kept pushing through undulating but delightful scenery.
Darb and myself went down to the water’s edge of Dee lake and topped up our water supply.
We eventually rolled into Victoria Valley. It has a very interesting history. The marsh you see to the left of the road is called ‘Nine mile marsh’. In 1842 the Colonial government established a convict penal settlement here.
The area was disbanded by 1845 and then this house was built in 1874 and occupied by the British police. It was built with many of the man-made bricks that the convicts constructed by hand.
You can read more about the probation station here.
Just on the other side of nine mile marsh up on the hill is our campsite. Wth the overcast conditions it was getting cold fast. Eric the fire master got a great fire going fast and we all set up our tents.
After this I shot some happy snaps of some of the plants and enjoyed some Tasmanian cheese. Yum!
Today we rode 69 kilometres and climbed 836 metres of elevatian gain.
We went down more than up today however due to my legs feeling very tired, I would rate today as 7 out of 10 on the tough-o-meter.
Click here for a link to the first day of this Tasmanian Trail blog
Adam Lynch Mountain Biking 