The best motorcycle roads in Tasmania (why riders fly their bikes over)

Ask a mainland rider where they’d take a bike if they had a week and no other plans, and a lot of them say Tasmania. It’s not a big island — you can drive across it in a few hours — but it might be the best riding state in Australia per square kilometre. The roads never stop turning, the traffic thins to nothing outside the towns, and the landscape swaps from farmland to rainforest to alpine scree in the space of a morning.

That’s why bikes come over on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry from Geelong every summer by the hundred. Here’s what they come for.

The signature: Jacob’s Ladder, Ben Lomond

If Tasmania has one photo, it’s Jacob’s Ladder — a stack of tight switchbacks clawing up a scree slope on the flank of Ben Lomond, the alpine plateau north-east of Launceston. The sealed climb up to it is a brilliant ride on its own: fast, open, sweeping corners up out of the farmland.

The Ladder itself is unsealed — steep gravel switchbacks with a drop on one side and no barrier. On an adventure or dual-sport bike it’s a highlight. On a road bike it’s a judgement call: plenty of riders ride the sealed section, park, and walk up for the view rather than take a touring bike onto loose gravel on a mountainside. There’s no wrong answer there — know your bike and your comfort with dirt.

The wild side: the West Coast and the 99 Bends

The west of Tasmania is the wilderness — rainforest, button-grass plains, old mining towns, and some of the emptiest good roads in the country. The famous one is the descent into Queenstown, the “99 Bends”: a relentless, tightly-stacked series of corners dropping down the bare, mineral-stained hills into the town. It’s unlike anywhere else in Australia to look at, let alone ride.

Two things define riding out here. It rains — the West Coast is one of the wettest places in the country, and wet tarmac is the normal condition, not the exception. And it’s remote: fuel stops are far apart and towns are small. This is the part of the island where checking your tank range and downloading your route before you leave a town genuinely matters, because the next servo might be a long way off and the phone signal patchy in between.

The gentler east: Elephant Pass and the coast

The east coast is the drier, sunnier side, and the riding is more forgiving without being any less good. Elephant Pass, near St Marys, is a classic — a corner-rich climb that’s home to a pancake barn at the top that’s been a bikers’ stop for decades. From there the coast road runs south past the Freycinet turn-off through open, flowing country with the sea on your left.

It’s the side of the island to ride if the west is socked in with weather, and it links naturally down toward the south-east.

The dramatic south: the Tasman Peninsula

Down toward Port Arthur, the Tasman Peninsula narrows to a neck of land with sea on both sides and tight, dramatic roads threading out to the cliffs and blowholes. It’s an easy day-loop from Hobart and a strong finish to an island tour — corners, coast, and some of the most spectacular sea cliffs in the country a short walk off the road.

Planning a Tasmanian loop

The trick with Tasmania isn’t finding good roads — it’s that there are so many that a naive route down the highway misses most of them. The main roads are fine; the roads beside the main roads are the reason you shipped the bike over.

That’s the gap the planner fills. Ask Motoridez for a curvy route between two towns and it’ll route you over the passes and along the ridge roads instead of straight down the A-road — and because it tracks every road you’ve ridden, on a week-long loop it keeps steering you onto the ones you haven’t done yet, so a return trip to Tasmania isn’t the same island twice. It’s the best possible place to have a map that quietly hands you new corners every day.