ABDC: From the inside

My dear mother decided a few years ago that she would go on a driving tour of Tassie with her sister and brother-in-law. All three were so concerned that they would fall victims to sea sickness that they ensured they were first aboard, had dinner before the ship left the dock, shared a bottle of red and a jailable amount of sea sickness tablets and went to bed before Port Phillip Heads.

Next thing they knew; Devonport.

“I don’t know what the fuss was all about,” said my newly-minted drug-dependent mum.

Being asked along to a large scale test such as #ABDC (yes, still using the hashtag!) when you’re a fan of cars and great driving roads is one of those questions where you’re saying YES! YES!! YES!!! before the questioner (…in this case Sinclair, M. esteemed editor in chief of motoring.com.au) has finished speaking.

And while to the outsider it would appear to be just about the best fun you can have on four wheels, the reality is IT’S EXACTLY THAT AND MORE. YES I AM YELLING!!!

Mercifully I had zero involvement with the enormous and surely painful task of organising the whole shebang. It was like a continental sausage; I get to enjoy it without concerning myself with how it came to be.

My first inkling that this epic journey was going to be beset by the tyranny of evil weather was the forecast for the trip over. I’m not an old salty sea dog like Sinclair (who was an Able Seaman on the First Fleet), but I’ve done my share of horrible days at sea. The forecast that I was staring at on my phone looked like we were in for one of those nights where you wake up and the weather leads the morning news: “Grandma’s house blown away in storm shocker while handsome, bearded, loveable, part-time motoring scribe fatally injured by massive waves”.

So with this wonderful forecast in mind I arrived in Port Melbourne to board the Spirit of Tasmania with the Volkswagen Golf GTI. I was late as usual and had oddly chosen to travel without my drone batteries and charger (that's not odd for you Tommy – Ed).

My dear (and yes, long suffering) wife put all three of our small children in the car and rushed the missing items over. I suspect she hung about to ensure we actually boarded and buggered off.

Sinclair waited with me and we idly speculated who would be first to keel over (cliché bingo starts here) once underway.

So, this 'Grand Journey' started with the weather being the dominant discussion point… And some five days later, the weather was still front-page news for us.

As the self-appointed #ABDC 2015 class clown, it has been decided that I must offer you, dear reader, my 'Top Five Things' that came out of this trip/adventure.

5. The Cars
It may seem crazy to rank the glorious transportation devices we enjoyed so thoroughly at five, but hear me out; the cars are nothing without the top three. So shuddup!

The cars were a delightful mixed bag. Each had its own personality and that’s actually pretty cool in an era when you could be a cynic and say, 'We’re heading towards a single, white goods automobile.'

Testing back-to-back can be cruel to a manufacturer (jumping from the Kia pro_cee’d GT to the Nissan GT-R for example), yet no one felt any car was significantly ahead – nor significantly behind.

4. The Ship
The Spirits of Tasmania (both I and II) exceeded my lowly expectations. This delight may have had something to do with the fact that we were in cabins (and not in the vomit comet of the great unwashed ‘ocean recliner’ area), or perhaps it was the red wine talking, yet it’s more the simple spectacle of the whole thing. Being on a ship makes an adventure feel even more like an adventure.

You have to go through a fair bit of mucking around to transfer your car from land to ship, but that only built the excitement.

After an hour, however, excitement levels peaked and when it became clear our support vehicles were to be loaded first, the first signs of a mutiny began to emerge. Thankfully, before we had actually lowered Captain Mike into a row boat with just a sextant and an old Playboy, we were moving to our allotted spots.

After an extended ‘Journos on a trip BS session’, the boss and I retired to the delightful confines of our cabin/cell. The wind was blowing around 50 knots across the ship, causing it to list slightly. After we got into our cots (sadly hammocks were not provided), Mike realised that the best course of action was to spin 180 degrees so our heads would remain above our feet.

Sometimes we listed so far over I felt like I was standing up.

Having completed his tack (nautical pun; three points), Mike promptly passed out and turned the snoring to 11 while the awareness of said snoring was somewhat lower, at minus-11.

Once we cleared the heads, the ship really began to rock ’n roll and occasionally a large thump shook down her spine. Walls of white water peeled away from her hull and there was just enough occasional moonlight to catch a glimpse of some pretty big swells rolling away from under our porthole to make it an enjoyable experience.

Meanwhile, two doors up, all hell had broken out. Adam Davis had just thrown up for the first time.

He had eight more hours of vomiting ahead of him. He should have called my mum for advice.

3. The Weather
The weather can be such a simple conversation starter for the desperate and the dull. With this in mind, it was all we spoke about at breakfast each day.

Was it raining? Where might it snow? Whose idea was this bullsh*t (it was Mike) and was black-ice a valid reason to call the whole drive off?

Of course, perfect weather every day would have been ideal. Mike, Adam and I had been in Tassie just a week or so earlier for Targa Tasmania and there was no rain for the entire event.

On reflection, it made perfect sense that it snowed while we were there for #ABDC; it was simple karma for the flawless weather the week before.

At one stage I was at the wheel of the HSV GTS as we made our way across towards the famous Mt Arrowsmith Targa stage. It was cold. The dash read three degrees and then as I rounded a corner as the first vehicle in the pack, there it was: snow. I radioed, 'Oh I think there’s some snow.'

Three corners later I regretted my cutesy, childish comment. There were no patches of snow; there was just snow. And it was snowing. It was in the trees, on the ground and on the road. And I was driving a 430kW supercharged V8 that didn’t belong to me.

I reached over and turned the traction control to maximum and wondered if it’s time I had a crack at the WRX STI.

We criss-crossed Tasmania a few times and visited places I’d been just a week earlier and yet I was never bored, rarely disappointed (though the wi-fi in Tullah sucked!) and regularly found myself pulling over to take a photo or ten. Our re-grouping sessions were sometimes a nightmare of snow and rain, but more often were a chance to just soak up the serenity... And have a wee.

Due to the disagreeable weather, on the final day we hightailed it north, where a mysterious ball of fire I was later told is 'The Sun' appeared in the sky.

We saw this phenomenon while in the town of Stanley, a place I had not been to in 30 years. With the sun out, the wind absolutely howling and the rock of Stanley standing proudly off that northern coast, well, one could find oneself trying to remember an old poem.

Or, more dangerously - trying to write one.

1. The People
I’m fairly certain it was me who once said, “I went to see places - I ended up meeting people.”

While I knew about half of the motoring.com.au crew before I boarded the Spirit, by the time we returned, I’d gotten to know our crew pretty well and to say I had a ball would be to understate it.

We’d roll into town with our 18-vehicle convoy, refuel for 15 minutes, eat everything like an ant army invasion, swap cars and head off again. In those brief moments, people would go out of their way to say 'hello'; ask about the car we were driving; and then tell us that 'you really shouldn’t miss Lune River/Strahan/Rossarden/my mate’s farm'.

Among the crew, our shared love of cars and the journeys they allow us to enjoy meant that the banter, the ribbing, and the outright enjoyment was heightened and shared.

We told tales tall and taller, laughed as Newton got a yellow card for swearing (he was telling a story about a guy who swore; this subtle but important point was lost on the complainant).

Snag was always in form (sadly that occasionally meant crop-dusting form too); Crick was quick with an old (and let’s face it, mostly made up) story; and watching Youlden wrestle eight different cars around Baskerville Raceway in a monsoon while smiling was quite a sight.

As the days progressed I realised that I enjoyed the dinners and the post-driving beers as much as I did the driving itself.

We forgot to pose for a group picture before the end and it’s my one regret from the trip.

Yes, the cars were great. Yes, the weather was pretty average and the island was its usual magical self, but the people I went with and the residents of Tasmania were the bloody best.