Musings on the Tassie Trip, the good, the bad, and the annoying…
Friday the 8th of April 2010
We left Friday morning for Melbourne.
On the drive, it didn’t stop raining for almost the whole 8 hour drive until half an hour from our stop at St Kilda in Melbourne. I remember at about 1:30pm on Friday, it was supposed to be a sunny Friday afternoon but instead it was very dark and the clouds were ominous!
The GPS served us well the whole way to Melbourne up until there were three turn offs on the main highway and I think we took the wrong turn when we we about 7 minutes to St Kilda.
Thankfully the GPS adjusted itself and we managed to make it to our destination without much hassle.
We arrived at our flat of sorts and ended up getting a pizza to eat for dinner.
Again, the iphone came to the rescue and, AroundMe didn’t come through to I used Google Maps to find a pizza place about 400 Metres down the road.
Setting off the next morning, we departed for the port and found ourselves driving about 3KM in 1 hour because of the backlog of cars trying to get onto the Spirit of Tasmania, we left our flat at 7:30am and made it on to the boat somewhere around 9am, what should have taken about 10 minutes, took over 1 hour.
After the stress of trying to make it on the boat on time (after our plane trip disaster with Tiger Airways), there was jubilation when we were able to see the other cars and finally make it through the quarantine.
The boat trip was made all the easier because we had a cabin, this was nice and cosy.
The food on the boat was ok, not fantastic but if you expected plane food then you would be pleasantly surprised.
When we finally made the 8 hours, instead of getting off the boat at about 6pm, it was 8:30pm and like the driving trip, it was pouring with rain when we disembarked from the boat.
Getting to Forth. where we were staying, was quite easy and we managed to be there just before 10pm.
Sunday the 11th of April 2010
Today we had breakfast and headed off to Davenport and we went to a place called Penguin, they have a market there which is quite good, the service wasn’t fantastic but they had some good music and the food was palatable.
Unfortunately where we are in Fort, there is no mobile phone coverage, not for Telstra nor Vodafone! Unfortunate, but I think I could last a week.
Tuesday the 13th of April 2010
Today was a bit of a disaster really.
After leaving for the days trip, we visited what I thought was a wasp sanctuary but was actually an animal sanctuary (Wings Wildlife Park). The service was pretty bad and it seemed that typical of Tasmania, people don’t trust their own seafood and use imitation squid and the like instead of real squid. What the menu says is “Squid” but what they mean to say is “Squid, but possibly something else, not related to squid and possibly not even tasting like squid”.
Quite puzzling about the Wildlife park was that our three year old son had to pay to get in, but our one year old didn’t, as if the three year old would somehow enjoy the outdoor wasp displays more than the one year old.
After that we went to the ‘caves’ which are caves in Tasmania discovered only last century and are the only publicly available caves of their type in Australia (whatever type that is). We gave up on that idea because we would have had to wait about 40 minutes to get in and the stairs looked ominous for a pram.
We then went to Burnie to a park which had the highest and biggest flight of steps and ramps I’ve ever seen anywhere, let alone a park. So big in fact, that a day after we went to the park, my calfs were hurting from walking so much. Thankfully the scenery in the park was amazing and there was a waterfall throughout the park which took my mind off the fact that my legs were burning and my child was screaming.
After getting my hair cut in Burnie, we went to “No. 25 Family Restaurant”.
I’m not sure if it was the number of times your family will throw up after eating the food, or the street number the restaurant was on. Either way, most of the food was awful, if this is what we have to pay for good service (and the service was exceptional) then they can keep their money.
Joy’s food had the consistency and smell of dog food. We could have cut out the middle man and just brought the “home brand” garlic bread for them from Coles, and the pasta was only loosely based on something they could have seen in a cook book.
The saving grace of that meal was the fact that we were alive the next day.
The glory of the morning sun confirmation that possibly our stomachs were prepared for whatever it was that hit them.
Wednesday the 14th of April 2010
After a bit of a disaster yesterday we just relaxed today at the house in Forth.
One of the disadvantages of this position if that there is absolutely no mobile phone coverage here. When I say none, I mean not even Telstra gets a look in here at Forth. Would be a good start before looking at the NBN to be getting proper mobile phone coverage!
I managed to find reception just down the hill from the house thankfully, about 100 metres away, to the surprise of Esther (Joy’s auntie) who long believed that you had to drive ‘up the hill’ (about 10 kilometres away) to get any coverage at all.
That’s where I can check my messages and email periodically.
Apart from that we had a great potato bake and crumbed chicken (from the farm) for dinner, courtesy of Joy.
They have a great TV here as well, High Def, two HDMI inputs, so I could plug my laptop in to it and watch a few shows.
Thursday the 15th of April 2010
