Well, it had been over twelve months since our great adventure, circumnavigating this vast land of ours on Highway One. We had settled back to the mundane life, and our great adventure was becoming an ever more hazy memory.

Until we discovered a fact that promised to open to us the path to greater exploits - The Spirit of Tasmania is part of Highway One, and leads to a heretofore unchartered area of this great land (by us, anyway.) Our mission was incomplete until this too was accomplished.

So we decided to set off for four weeks over the Christmas holidays and set aright this glaring omission. We were to be joined part of the time by our good friends Faye and John, our fellow intrepid adventurers. Since we last travelled with them, they had upgraded to a four wheel drive and caravan, to carry them through the winter months up north, escaping the Melbourne weather.

So on Tuesday the 29th of December, we found them knocking on our door at 6 am, and our slow but steady convoy made its way to Port Melbourne, where our vessel awaited.

After a long and erratic wait in the queue with many small and irregular steps (including a thorough check for contraband like fresh fruit and vegetables, and the confiscation of our gas bottle), we finally found our vehicles ensconced cosily in the bowels of the ship.

We headed upstairs and settled in for what turned out to be a smooth passage, and a great chance to catch up, and make some plans for the coming weeks. We found some nice comfortable chairs, which we had to guard with our lives as they almost got hijacked several times. Reconnaissance tours had to be made singly or in pairs, leaving at least two people to guard the base.

We had thought that on all boats food was free, but alas, it was not to be. They did offer a nice lunch for $23, (a bit steep to our thought). However we discovered that the price covered one plate, which you could fill with as much as you could possibly pile on from a smorgasbord on offer. One plate between two covered us very nicely, and worked out at a much more acceptable figure.

After a relaxing afternoon snooze (we had been up since 5am remember), we arrived at Devonport about 6 pm, refreshed and excited and raring to go. We had booked our first night at a caravan park in Devonport, just to have something secure to settle in to. But that was the extent of our planning. The rest was open to our whims and fancies - the freedom of the open road.