At last, we made it to Tasmania. This is the place that I was going to visit the very first time I came to Australia back in 2000 and the only state in Australia that Tom hasn't seen.

The prospect of the boat trip alone was very exciting- 8 hours to pootle about on the ferry, or the 'fairy' as Oscar called it! We tripped out from Wilsons Prom on the 2/2/2012 and stayed the night at a free camp near Pooyong on the Bass River. Difficult place to find and a bit odd when we finally found it. There was one caravan with a middle aged friendly couple there, a couple of campervans which appeared to have no one staying in them and some sad looking tents. The evening was a bit wild and we went to bed early, but we did not see a soul from about 8pm and the next morning, the campervans left - apparently driven by some invisible force, and the tents remained undisturbed. I did not want to look inside them in case there were dead bodies or something, but the mystery was eventually cleared up by the nice middle aged couple who told us that one was used by a lady from Pooyong who apparently came to escape her husband occasionally, and the other one by some itinerant road workers now and again. This in depth knowledge led me to wonder whether Pooyong was a regular, if unlikely, favourite spot for them. They said that they stayed there en route to seeing their daughter who lived on the other side of Melbourne, and they were in a sort of holding pattern - waiting to fly through the city at the weekend, which of course is a much better time for traffic and the like.

Anyway, we spent an uneventful Saturday catching up with Ned's schoolwork and left for Melbourne Port around 4 pm. We executed a finely researched plan of semi camping out in the car-park of what was rumored to be the biggest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere at Chadstone- it certainly took a very long time to drive around the outside in search of the outdoor carpark- and having dinner. Then on to the Port to try to scab a free park until boarding at 6.30am. It all went well, until St Kilda. I was driving and made the mistake of following the tram. Following a tram is fine, as long as you know when to stop. I didn't and found myself following a tram in to a major tram stop, caravan and all, with another tram coming towards me! People were pointing and laughing at us so I pretented not to notice and blithely continued, squeezing between the tram and the platform and found my way back on to a normal road, whereupon I managed to run two red lights! All I can say is that thank god it wasn't peak hour…

Arriving at the Port, we were further discomfited to realize that far from the large area with masses of deserted, caravan friendly spaces that Google Earth had led us to believe existed, (curse you, Google Earth!), we encountered car parks full of Saturday night revelers and a locked gate to the Ferry terminal. Fortunately, salvation awaited around the corner in the shape of an unlikely double space in a res area which we swept in on ( Tom parking, me holding up the traffic!) Not a moment too soon, as ferret 2 declared an urgent need to visit the loo which was located next to a conveniently nearby tram stop-( well its good to know that they have other uses apart from almost fatally confusing tourists)

We awoke unreasonably early the next morning to board the ferry, which I must say, was achieved with maximum efficiency and minimum fuss, right up until the moment the Ferret 2 needed the loo (again!). The toilet was unbelieveably inaccessible- go back down the line of cars, cross the concrete divide and then walk down the other side of the barb wire netting for half a mile until you come to a jetty, dive in the water and swim to the island where you will find the mens, or something similar and so he and Tom got stranded as Ned and I were directed to drive car and van on to the Boat. They did catch up shortly before we actually went up the gangplank (i think by ignoring the directions and just weeing on a post somewhere...) but it was a close run thing.

Deck 10 became our haunt for the voyage with the ceiling to floor windows providing excellent view of the seascape without the vagaries of the weather. Easy access to the outdoor deck at the back of the boat (for me), easy access into the games arcade(for the boys) and a bar (for Tom) enhanced its appeal. Not to mention the long bench seats and wide tables providing super napping and schoolwork territory for me and Ned respectively. We got lucky with the crossing as the swell was small, but I still felt moderately queasy. Apparently, on the crossing from Devonport the night before, the swell had been so rough that you had to hang on to the railings just to walk along the corridor.

We didn't get off the ferry until 8.30pm and so we spent the night in Coles Beach free camp on the outskirts of Devonport along with 8 or so fellow ferry travellers. This was a large carpark on the edge of a small cliff with a nice, clean toilet and a cold shower. Dinner was frittata we made the night before and sleep came easily to all of us. In Tassie at last!!

The next morning dawned clear and bright and we were up and about early in order to avoid the ranger (we were meant to have a permit to sleep the night, but the info centre was closed when we passed it and we had no intention of paying in the morning for sleeping in a carpark!). We parked up in the surf club carpark under the protection of a large headland. There were some very hardy souls up and about kayaking in the bay- it was a beautiful, sunny morning. The surf club was a work of architectural beauty. It was a modern building, two storeys with a generous verandah. The toilets were open to the public and cunningly concealed behind a curving steel wall with long windows cut out of it to let in the light and blend with the main building. Best of all, there was a hot shower in the disabled toilet! Scungy tightwads that we are ( well you try living on a budget of $600 a week including fuel, food, gas and fun!), we hadn't had a shower since Wilsons Prom last Thursday. I had hoped there would be facilities on the ferry, but no such luck. So we leapt at this unlooked for gift! (Its an interesting life when a hot shower can be viewed as a gift from the universe... ) The surf club also boasted outdoor gas barbies and a cool childrens playground, and so the stage for the day was set. Our caravan brake controller had malfunctioned a couple of days earlier, so we were keen to get it looked at whilst in Devonport. We also had a pile of mail to pick up from the post office- thankyou Mum for sending through the wetties and to Telstra for a hassle free replacement of our wi fi dongle which inexplicably stopped working the day we left- curses! All these little jobs were eventually accomplished by midday along with a growing and pleasant realization of just how helpful and nice people are in Tasmania. One example- We were parked in the carpark across three spaces and a gentleman form the council approached us. "oh-oh" I thought," he's going to have a go at us for being parked illegally and ask us to move on." This would certainly have been the outcome in NSW. Far from it, I am happy to report, he was a lovely chap, out for a chat about where we were headed and where we were from and how the weather had been and how great it was living in Tasmania. After 10 minutes, had he mentioned that we were perhaps cluttering the area with our van a little, I would have been delighted to have moved anywhere he suggested. But he didn't and I think that all beauracrats should be shipped to Tassie to learn how to interact with the public. Anyway, we reluctantly left Devonport, what a lovely town, and drove deep in to the Tasmanian countryside, aiming for the wonderfully Hobbity sounding West Kentish, on the banks of Lake Barrington.