Monday
Our coach was scheduled to depart Sydney at 6pm, so as ever, we had a quite a bit of time to fill before leaving. We freshened up and got some breakfast one last time in the horrible kitchen, filling our bowls to the brim with Crunchy Nut and milk, in an attempt to use up everything we had bought. After breakfast, we packed our bags and dropped them off to the luggage room, as we still had a couple of jobs left to accomplish in Sydney. First up, was a care parcel back home to Charlotte's brother, Michael. It contained a selection of related gifts we had picked up while moving round Australia. We hunted down a post office and squeezed the items into a Jiffy bag and sent it on its way to jolly old England. After that was sorted, we walked all the way to Sydney Harbour for one final time. Partly for something to do and partly because on our previous 2 visits we had failed to get a decent photo of both the Opera House and Harbour Bridge together. It was a pleasant walk, if a bit humid. We walked through Hyde Park, admiring the cathedral and then turned off and headed straight for Mrs.Macquerie’s seat, as that seemed to be the place with the best views. We passed the coach loads of Chinese tourists on their own way to take photos but still managed to find a vacant spot on the harbour front. After what had been a 45 minute walk, it only took us about 5 minutes to get the photos we wanted and we were heading back to our hostel to relax until our departure. It was another sweaty walk until we reached the tall buildings of the city, where it cooled considerably. We got back to the hostel and chilled out in the common area to pass the time. We did some blog writing and Tasmania planning which made the time fly by. We also prepared our lunch for the overnight greyhound journey ahead. We were pretty certain that with Marmite, cheese and onion wraps, there wouldn't be many people clamouring for the seats around us. Soon enough, 5 o'clock hit and we collected out bags and walked the 200 metres to the bus station across the road. Despite Charlotte ripping the ticket in half by accident earlier in the day, we still managed to board without a problem and sat in the same seats we always seemed to pick, one row from the front. The first part of the journey was only a short 3 and a half hour trip to Australia's capital city, Canberra. After initially struggling through the Sydney rush hour traffic, we picked up the pace and made good time to Canberra. There, we had a 90 minute stopover and despite the same bus we had just been on going all the way through to Melbourne, we had to take all our things off with us. There wasn't much to see in Canberra bus station, so we ate our strong smelling wraps and loitered on the platform. We had been worrying about getting a seat together on this journey as the driver had said it was likely to be busy but when we showed our torn ticket again, we were designated 2 together. We settled in for the 8 hour journey through to Melbourne.
Due to the late hour of departure and there being a food break at 2am in the morning, we got very little sleep on this journey, compared to previous ones. When the drivers voice came over the tanoy at 10 to 7 in the morning, we just wanted to turn over and go back to sleep. We retrieved our belongings at Melbourne bus station and then had to consider what we were going to do for the 12 hours before our ferry departed. We were returning to Melbourne after visiting Tasmania, so we decided to leave any sightseeing or general browsing until then. Instead, we sat around the station for a short while, until the sun came up fully and then headed out to try and find a café to get a reasonably priced breakfast. It didn't take as long as we had anticipated and we were sat down and ordered within 10 minutes of leaving the station. The big breakfast for $14.50 (£7.25) seemed like a fair price and we picked up a coffee on the side. We hadn't been expecting much from the breakfast but were pleasantly surprised by the generous portion that was delivered to us just a few minutes after we had ordered. We were also sceptical about the quality but that didn't disappoint either, so we were pretty pleased with our find. The food and drink was polished off pretty quickly but we made sure to make the most of our stay and watched the news on tv, as well as the world go by until 10 o'clock. It's not like we were in a hurry anyway. As much as we wanted to make the most of the seat, we didn't want to overstay our welcome, so we had to decide where to go next. The ferry port was a 50 minute walk from Melbourne city centre and we didn't really fancy working up a sweat before sitting on overnight transport for the second day in a row. From what we had seen and read, Melbourne had a pretty robust tram system so we figured we'd get to Port Melbourne that way. We found an information desk at Southern Cross station where we had arrived earlier in the morning and the man there got us set up with a myki card each, which you can top and use to travel on public transport in the city. They cost us $6 dollars but we figured we'd try to sell them for a little bit when we got back to the city. He also pointed us in the right direction of which tram to get and where to get it from but we did struggle slightly to find the station. We got there though, the tram came along and we tapped our shiny new cards as we got on. It was only a short trip to the port, which was a little bit annoying as the fare allowed for 2 hours worth of travel. We didn't fancy riding around Melbourne for the hell of it though. We wandered up to the pier where we could see the New Spirit of Tasmania moored up but there didn't look to be much happening 9 and a half hours before departure. Instead, we wandered into the town of Port Melbourne to find a supermarket to buy some supplies for the crossing. It was a longer trek than we had anticipated and the sweating we had missed walking to the harbour soon caught up with us. We found Coles and while I kept an eye on the bags, Charlotte picked up a few snacks. After getting that sorted, we needed to find the library, as we needed to get our ferry tickets printed off before heading back to the pier. By the time we had found the library near the town hall, the skyscrapers of Melbourne were so close we had pretty much walked back into the city. Port Melbourne library was an interesting place, with incredibly eccentric members of staff, one of which almost got into a fight with a foreign man insisting that he phone around some people that they needed to call. The library worker rightly refused as they seemed like phone calls the man or his daughter should make but they just couldn't be bothered. Eventually, the library worker left him to his rage, as it seemed he didn't want to do anything he would regret. Another worker took his place and tried his best to diffuse the situation but the people were still getting angry and then stormed out. We got what we went for though and then walked back towards the port, stopping at a coffee shop to waste a little bit more time before going to the pier. We eventually got to the pier at about 2pm, so only had 4 hours of sitting around the waiting room until we could board the ferry. To pass the time we lunch and completed a quick wardrobe change and nothing much else. 5pm came and we could pick up our tickets from check in and then the final hour actually passed pretty quickly. We boarded and had to go through rigorous security in which Charlotte had to throw away 3 and a half full bulbs of garlic we had left over from Sydney, which was really annoying but understandable. We had to buy the garlic in a pack of 4 as local, Australian grown garlic is extortionate at $25 a kilo. Rather than book a pricey cabin for this journey we had gone instead for a reclining chair each in a lounge. We ended up with seats A3 and A4 right on the front corner of the lounge, so we were pretty sure we had been the first to book (all the way back in September). Our window was at the rear of the ship, facing out towards the sea and we sat and listened to endless people walk up for a look and say “hmmm, it looks choppy out there”. One man seemed very impressed by the size of the exhaust on the ship a had to point it out to everyone who went up there while he was standing there. We set off into the white capped waves just as the sun set. We sat in our recliners for a while until we got hungry and then wandered around the ship for a look around. The ferry was like any other short haul passenger ferry, wth expensive restaurants, an expensive cinema and room to gamble the night away. We hadn't left the port area yet and it was already slightly choppy and we had to hold on to the occasional chair to keep ourselves steady. We visited the expensive onboard supermarket and picked up an expensive pie and an expensive sausage roll, then found a seat to eat them. The curried chicken pie wasn't that bad but the sausage roll was a bit of a let down. After eating, we walked back to our seats on the 8th deck and settled in for a rough night. Earlier in the evening a tannoy announcement told us we'd be hitting the Bass Straight at 10pm, so with it being only 9, we did some reading and writing to pass a little bit of time. We didn't have to look at our watches to know that 10pm had come round, we could feel it. The wind was howling across the boat and we were rocking around in all directions. Now seems like a good time to explain the title. The Roaring Forties are strong westerly wind that occur in the lines of latitude between 40° and 50°. The Bass Straight is slightly shielded by a few islands on either side but it is still considered one of the most unpredictable bodies of water in the world. The westerly winds are able to maintain their power due to the small amount of land in their way. We tried to sleep but it wasn't just the sea that was making it a struggle. A group next door to us seemed to have no concept of their own noise generation and went from whispering to bellowing every other sentence. We drifted in out of sleep, being roused by the sound of voices and the shudder of the entire boat when we would slam into a wave. I won't lie, I hated it and Charlotte wasn't a fan either but we just had to stick with it until we arrived at Devonport in the morning. The time to look out for was 5:45 as that is when the wake up call was. Time dragged but we eventually shut out all the movement and noise to get a small amount of sleep.
Sorry this one has taken so long to post. We have been camping in New Zealand for the past week or so and there is very little wifi out in the sticks. From now on though, our Tasmania posts will be coming thick and fast probably every other day, so keep an eye out.
James and Charlotte
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