Friday 29^th January 2016

Up early to try to beat the traffic into the city as Melbourne airport is west of Melbourne and Pam lives to the east, so we had to pass right through the centre.  It didn’t work of course, and we sat bumper to bumper crawling along M25-style for a while, but eventually it started moving again and we eventually made it to Tullamarine in good time.

The plane took off on time and it seemed no sooner had we reached cruising altitude than we started our descent.  We landed five minutes early, but then seemed to be just sitting on the tarmac rather than taxiing to the gate.  Then the Captain informed us that, because of the lightning, the ground staff were not allowed out on the tarmac, and so the plane already at our gate could not move off.  And there we sat.  For an hour.

Eventually things started moving again and we reached the gate.  It seemed they finally gave up with the health and safety because as we walked across the tarmac to the building, the lightning was still flashing around us.  Not exactly the weather we had been hoping for, but we were here, in Tasmania!  And looking forward to seeing this island state – now the fourth we have visited.

Bags collected, we made our way out of arrivals and found our shuttle bus ready and waiting.  The heavens opened once again so we lost no time settling ourselves inside, and soon we were on our way to the city of Hobart.  We asked the driver to let us know when we reached our stop, but used the GPS on Google Maps to check where we were just in case he forgot.  Noticing that he was letting people off wherever they asked him to, we asked him to stop at the end of our road rather than the stop, and then it was a short walk to the unit we had booked until Monday when we collect the camper van.

When we arrived at the house, there was no reply, but the keys had been left in the mailbox as promised, so we let ourselves in to what was clearly a garage conversion.  It was clean, spacious and had everything we needed, and we were soon relaxing on the sofa with a nice cup of tea, mulling over how we would spend our two days exploring Hobart.

The self-contained unit had limited cooking facilities but was otherwise ideal, with separate bedroom and a washing machine in the bathroom.