Day 1: Longford to Triabunna with Motorhome

Longford (up the road from Launceston) is a beautiful place. A lovely river rolls gently by the camping ground. Oh, for a kayak, but we had decided to leave them behind, on the basis that we couldn’t safely leave them in Hobart with the car, and we couldn’t take them in the motorhome. So, of course, the trip will be full of wonderful kayaking opportunities. Naturally, since Longford is such a lovely place, we won’t be seeing it again this trip.

We packed up and headed south for Hobart, destination Hobart airport at midday. Our first stop was Ross, historical city and multiple tidy-town winner. We found a lovely bakery for morning tea. One of the tourist attractions in Ross is the “Female Factory”. Well, it’s not actually what it sounds like – I was wondering whether to ask for instructions there. Instead, it’s a factory that was staffed by female convicts – more, I think, a place to keep them in safety.

Then back onto the highway for our quick run to Hobart. One thing I’ve noticed a lot in Tasmania is many road side sculptures. There’s a few real ones, but there’s many more ‘informal’ ones, made using straw and balloons and old clothes and second had props. There’ll be a picnic, and then further down the road, a fellow mowing the lawn, followed by a string quartet. I’ve even seen a flock of ducks flapping in the wind. It’s quite fun, actually, and adds interest to the road trip.

At Hobart, we exchanged our car for a 6 berth Motorhome. We only have 4 of us, but I’m sure glad we have a 6 berth - we have just enough space. The girls sleep down the back, and we are sleeping up over the top of the cabin.

There’s more storage in that thing than you’d expect. For instance, my bike is tucked in down below. And I could add a few more surfboards and so on yet. It took us about half an hour to get instructions and get all our stuff transferred out of the car. During that half an hour, a front came through, and we had ferocious winds and heavy rain for a few minutes. Fortunately, the rain came after we’d moved everything out of the car, but unfortunately it came just after I’d parked it out the very back of the airport carpark, and I was caught outside with no cover.


We’d only been on the road for a few minutes when copious quantities of water started sloshing around the back of the motorhome. We stopped in alarm – what had happened? Was this some storm leakage?

No. Kath had investigated the bathroom, and discovered that the tap wasn’t working. Because the water pump switch is backwards to standard (down is on) and what we were told. The last thing I did before we left the airport was turn the water pump off. Except I turned it on, and it started to fill the sink down the back of the motorhome. Eventually, we were bound to notice. What a mess to clean up… at least it was clean water, not some of the other possibilities I first feared.

Our first stop was a super market, to stock up for the next two days (Christmas and Boxing Day). As I walked into the supermarket, who should we meet but Bernie and Alison Caudery. We knew they were in Tasmania, but didn’t expect to meet them until much later in the trip.

We finished the day walking along the foreshore of the little fishing village called “Triabunna”, (another recent winner of Tasmania’s Tidy Town award) listening to the fire engine making its way slowly around town. Eventually it came our way, and the girls got a wave from Santa, along with a handful of lollies. A lovely ending to a somewhat trying day!

Tasmania Day 0: Melbourne to Longford

Like all good programmers, our holiday started counting on day 0, with us dragging ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn in order to arrive at the Spirit of Tasmania early in the boarding process. Unfortunately, we did not arrive early enough – all the waiting space is long full. And it’s particularly unfortunate because a cruise ship has just docked before the Spirit of Tasmania arrived from it’s overnight trip, and the place is just chaos. After going around the block a few times, we gave up and went for a walk along the beach. We finally get to board 5 minutes after the ship was supposed to leave, and the ship finally left nearly an hour late.

The crossing was fairly quiet – the weather was good, with a light swell. We discovered to our surprise that there’s not a lot to do on the boat. The kids playground and games rooms were very disappointing, so we had to entertain the kids for the whole trip. Not only were we an hour late, the trip lasted an hour extra too.

Grrr.

By the time we got to Devonport at 8:15 pm, we were pretty tired, and looking forward to a quick trip up to Longford, our destination for the evening. But no, Tasmanian customs had other ideas. Every car that comes off the boat has to be ‘inspected’ – which seemed to be largely an honour system, in that they asked us whether we had any unmentionables such as apples (from, say, Tasmania). They insisted on me opening the boot – so I had to take the bike off – but when I popped the boot, the guy looked at all our stuff, and said, right, thanks. So why make my pop the boot so you could see what you could see without opening it? Beats me. Took us 45 min to get the front of that line, and we were about a quarter into the queue of cars getting off the boat.

But we did, finally, get to Longford, to our little cabin for the night.