Spirit of Tasmania

We left the mainland on Tuesday night and boarded the "Spirit of Tasmania" for our trip accross Bass Strait. It was hard to know how to feel, terribly excited, and a bit nervous at the same time. We weren't sure what was going to happen or what we needed to do.

We had spent the previous 5 days staying with Steve's brother and his family in Melbourne. We didn't have a lot of trouble getting our van into their back yard, but a couple of days before we were due to leave, we realized that it was not going to be a simple task of driving the van straight up the lane and out onto the road. We discovered the the road up the lane did a very sharp 90degree right turn. We could barely turn the car around the corner, never mind getting a van around it.

It meant lots of measurements by the Mathematicians (Steve and Shane) The van had to be driven out, pivoted around in a very small area and then driven straight out along a side lane. The whole process took a couple of hours. Even getting the van out the side lane was an ordeal as there was only an inch or two to spare on each side of the van. Some fancy rope skills were called for but we finally managed to get it out.

We left Shane and Sarah's around 2pm to head down to the wharf. We figured that we would feel less stressed if we were close by even though we didn't have to board until 5pm. We left our park on the Esplanade around 4.50pm and drove onto the Ferry Terminal - we had to go through Security first, line up then to get our cabin allocation, and then we sat in another line for possibly an hour until we finally started moving to load on the board. It was all terribly exciting.
The ship was huge. I could not beleive how many cars they took on - not only cars and caravans, but also semi trailers and buses. It all went very smoothly and it wasn't long before we were locking the doors on our car and caravan and heading up to our cabin.
There were ten levels on the ship, and we had a porthole cabin on level 7. It was the main level, also housing the restaurants, lounges, casino, theatre. Our cabin number was 7024. It wasn't large but it was comfortable and we did manage to get some sleep. I must admit I was really worried about whether I would get sea sick or not.
As soon as we had settled in our cabin and had a test run of our bunks, we headed up to the deck to enjoy the views of pulling out into Phillip Bay. It was so pretty to look back and see the lights of Melbourne as we pulled out to sea.

By now dinner was being serviced, so we headed inside to have a meal. It was a smooth sail, you couldn't even tell that you were on the water, just felt like land, Mind you whilst I was enjoying my dinner, I was secretly hoping that it wouldn't come up later in the evening.
After dinner, we wandered down to the back lounge and listened to some live music before heading to the tourist information centre and organising our pass for the National Parks in Tasmania. We also got loads of travel brochures to pour over later as well.

We then headed off to the Theatre to see the movie "Dear John". This finished about 11.30pm, so we just headed back to our cabin and off to bed. By this time there was a gentle sway and rock on the boat. You could no longer walk without holding onto something. Even thought I still felt good, thought it was time to take a second sea sickness tablet just in case.

Didn't had a lot of trouble falling asleep and had a good 5 hours sleep before we were awaken by the crew informing us that we would be arriving in Devonport within 40 minutes, so we needed to get up and get ready to disembark the boat when our level was called.
It didn't take us too long to get ready and we headed out to the deck to get our first view of Devonport. It wasn't long before our deck was called, and as we were the third caravan to drive onto the ship, we were one of the first to drive off. Steve spotted Macca's accross the river when we were up on deck, so we decided that we would head there for breakfast. That is not a lot more you can do at 6.30am in the morning. Mind you, it seems like most others on the boat had the same idea.

AROUND DEVONPORT.

We left there about 8am ( before we had to pay for parking) and went looking for a Caravan Park. Found a lovely little park right on the ocean from at East Devonport.
It wasn't the flashest park we had stayed in but it's location was lovely. These are some of the views from our Caravan park. There was also a lovely walk along the headland and beach.
The park did though have some beautiful native flower gardens. The flowers were gorgeous and all in full bloom. Couldn't help myself, went for a lovely walk through them, snapping photos. Once Steve saw them, he knew I would have the camera out.

One of the first sights we saw as we got off the boat was this little Cafe. It looked so good that I just had to photograph it. It has a good reputation, so we are thinking that we might just have to pay it a visit before we leave in six weeks time.

After settling into the van park, we headed off to the Information Centre to get some info for things to see in the local area. We drove past this gorgeous building on the way to the tourist info centre, Turns out it is the Backpackers Hostel. How lovely is that. That is one of the things that I am lovely about Tassie, is all the very beautiful and very old buildings. We just don't see these sort of buildings in Qld. It was one of the things I enjoyed about Melbourne also.

We visited some of the local beaches just outside of Devonport. Here we are at Turner's Beach. One thing we have noticed about the beaches up here is that there is not a lot of sand. In fact the beaches are mainly these rounded pebbles, you only get to see the sand when the tide is out. The rocks are lovely though and we have already collected some of the pretty ones.

Our last two days have been busy exploring some of the lovely little towns outside of Devonport, places like, Sheffield, Railton, Wilmot and La Trobe. Just loved them all, in fact I could spend a month or more just in this area alone. Will upload those photos and memories in the next couple of days as this post is already way longer than I intended.

I also need to get to bed..... very excited, our two eldest kids are flying down from Brisbane in the morning to spend a long weekend with us, and we can hardly wait. Plannig on what we can see whilst they are here, although the forecast for the weather has not been good.

Will be back in a day or two with more highlights from our holiday.