Day 45 - Sorell to Swansea - 261km

Today was 100% dirt and we put some significant wear and tear on the bikes. We followed logging trails through the woods and up and down mountains. We turned down a particularly rough road trying to get to the bank of Toons Lake. It never led us to the bank but we did find some difficult trails where we had to cross a stream on a bed of basketball size rocks with a poorly built rock wall in the way. After we crossed the stream all the trails dead ended in creepy houses. We approached one house to ask for directions and a bald kid playing a banjo just stared at us. An older guy came out, told me I had a pretty mouth, then the banjo music started back up.
OK, I might be mixing up reality with a movie I saw but there were creepy houses and we decided to get out of there. Unfortunately the rock wall/river crossing was much tougher to ride up than down and my dad had a good wreck there. (see photos) I made it over with the engine redlining and my feet paddling but managed to stay upright somehow. Now past the main obstacle we rode up the steep dirt road with drainage ditches cut across it. My bike started to make weird noises as we bounced and jumped over the ditches when I saw the strap snap on my dad's saddle bag as it swung up in the air and hit him. As we were fixing his broken straps with zip ties I inspected my bike and found that I had snapped the brace for my spare fuel tank and both the tank and brace were dragging on my chain. It was lucky we stopped right then as the fuel tank would have been spraying fuel on my chain and red hot exhaust in about a mile. My KTM isn't a big orange pile of melted plastic now and I have the spare tank drained and strapped into place. Our day finished at Swansea where we both had big plates of fresh Cray (lobster in the US), Prawns (shrimp in the US) and Oysters (same same). Our room had a porch right on the beach so we enjoyed the view and a Tasmanian Whiskey while we discussed life, love, work and politics.