Tuesday 19^th January 2016

Ok, so having said our farewells to Sydney, today we found ourselves back in the very centre.  Why?  Because to pick up a hire car from the local Hertz office would cost $300 more than to pick one up from the main office in the city.  Since it costs just $4.50 each and an hour of our time to get into the city by bus, we decided not to pay them $300 for the convenience of collecting it locally.

In fairness to Hertz, I should say that the $300 is the one-way fee routinely charged for cars picked up in Sydney and dropped off 1,000 kilometres away in Melbourne, and we can only assume the city office has a car they want taken back that way.  Works well for us, so we caught the bus at the stop five minutes’ walk from the marina, and enjoyed a ride along the coast we had recently sailed up, across the Spit Bridge we had recently sailed under, and into the city we had recently bidden goodbye.

We collected the smart red Toyota Corolla which actually had Canberra, ACT plates, politely declining all offers of insurance to cover the not inconsiderable excess if we were to have an accident – even if we are not at fault, they stressed.  We have Brian of Darramy to thank for telling us about the independent excess insurance he had bought, and which we now have, thus saving ourselves hundreds of dollars each time we hire a car.  We navigated our way through the city traffic,  back the way we had come, and parked in the marina car park ready to be loaded up in the morning.

Now, we are not ones for making plans or bookings too far into the future, so our road trip plan has just a couple of definites and a lot of maybes.  The definites are that we have flights out of Melbourne to Hobart, Tasmania on 29^th January, and we pick up a camper van on 1^st February and return it on the 10th.  Everything else is a maybe. 

The things we would like to do before returning to the boat, sometime at the end of March/beginning of April are:

Drive to Melbourne via Canberra

Spend some time with my old schoolfriend Pam who lives in the Melbourne suburbs

Explore Tasmania

Drive the Great Ocean Road and continue to Adelaide

The first part of the plan, then, is to drive to Canberra, stay long enough to have a look at it, and then go on to Pam’s, stopping wherever seems interesting/suitable/convenient along the way, and in time to make our flights on the 29^th.   Thence to Tassie. 

Can’t wait.