Friday 26th August 2011
Hard to capture the range of emotions felt as I drove off from Pennant Hills Pharmacy for the last time...
Sadness at leaving dearest friends yet at the same time feeling the stirring of excitement at the possibilites of the new life ahead.
First stop...to pick up Hannah and farewell Jess, Aaron and Lucy...with the promise of a visit back to Sydney in November.
Beautiful golden sunset as we headed south to Gundagai.
Very glad to reach our destination after a long emotional day...
Saturday 27th August 2011
Up bright and early and on the road ...a beautiful sunny morning.
First stop..Albury.. Found a cool cafe called The Green Zebra....Delicious breakie!! Best Bircher muesli we've ever tasted..Yummy
On the road again with Melbourne next stop. Lovely sunny day.
Tom began phoning us at regular intervals throughout the day..(Half hourly!! ..well that's what it felt like)...asking "What are you doing now?" and "Where are you?"
So we began our 'follow the blue dot' series...
Drove past some lovely canola? pastures...such a vibrant colour...stunning..(Narns take a photo of this quick..quick)
Made it to Melbourne in time for lunch. Headed to our favourite place..Brunswick St, Fitzroy and had a delicious meal then headed out to 'girl shop' for a bit.
Next to the NGA to look at the current fashion exhibition "Manstyle" a cuppa and a browse through the Gallery shop.
Jane had rung us earlier to say she and Ali were going to meet us at Station Pier to wave us off...what a lovely idea!! (Thanks Jane)
Said our goodbyes to Jane and Ali and drove on to the pier to await boarding...
This proved to be quite a slow process. First we had a security inspection (basically a quick look in the boot) We were asked if we had any fruit and were preparing to hand over our apples when we were told "just eat them".
It took a good hour of shuffling along in the queue of cars before reaching a gate where we were given our cabin keys and map of the ship..
Finally it was our turn to drive on board.
The cars were tightly packed in, leaving little room to get out of the vehicles.Grabbed our overnight bags and headed up one flight of stairs to level 7.
This deck has a couple of bars, 2 restaurants, a tourist shop(Tom will love the junk in there!!) and our cabin too..Number 7005.
Living in luxury....(Until we hit the swell)
Such a fabulous location in our cabin , right up the front of the ship.
We could enjoy the lovely view of Melbourne lights and when we headed off, we had a fantastic view down the bay..the channel lit by red and green markers extending so far that Hannah sais it looked likje a runway
It took over 2 hours for us to reach the heads
There was quite a swell once we left the calm waters of the Port Phillip Bay...and despite my efforts to use mind over matter....I lost my dinner. Thank heavens we had a handy ensuite bathroom!!!
We managed to get to sleep with the roll and slept well. Woke at 5am to see distant glow of the lights at Devonport...very exciting.
Passengers got a wake-up call at 5.45am.
We were told to prepare to go to our cars when our deck was called.
We headed to our car once we got the call.
A grey drizzly morning in Tassie didn't dampen our enthusiasm
We were off the ship by 6.30...but again sat in a queue for about an hour, waiting our turn to go through security checks...a bit tedious!
Eventually on our way, we headed to ETC..Elizabeth Town Cafe for a tasty breakie.
Morning tea stop at beautiful Oatlands...as you can see the weather improved as we headed south.
Had a quick walk around the restored grain windmill..then sampled some cakes made from ground grain at the local bakery/cafe...yum.
On we drove and reached Cygnet at 1.20pm...yay!!
It was so lovely to be able to come on the beginning of this adventure with you. So much fun :) xxxx
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