.: Cath’s Blog:.

I actually forgot how much I hate backpackers…no really, especially Japanese ones!

I was woken up by the girl sleeping on the bunk below me (who either spoke NO ENGLISH or needed a personality transplant) who was messing around with plastic bags for half an hour or so and packing up her gear and then the other Japanese girl in the room decided to open the curtains wide open. I looked over at Lisa in the bunk opposite and told the woman to close them…my head was spinning!

We packed up our gear for the last time, had our breakfast and headed up towards Mt Wellington.

We saw as we were getting closer that there was snow on top of the mountain, but we didn’t think there would be as much as there was.

When we arrived at the mountain, the road was closed, but after a small walk we found it was opened, so we drove up to the top.

Strangely enough, we met up with the same ladies from Chester at the top of the mountain, they had parked next to us. It’s a very small world.

The trip back to Devonport was comfortable, but quick. We took our time stopping off for sandwiches and small breaks and boarded the ship again at 8pm for our return journey to Melbourne.

I could hardly move this morning and didn’t really attempt to move until 10am (check out time).

Since we were running late we decided on not having breakfast and that we would get something when we got into Hobart.

We took a short drive around the penninsula and we drove directly to Hobart.

We arrived at around 1pm, booked ourselves into the Hobart Hostel and headed straight into the town center to the Salamanca Market. I suppose once you have seen one market, you have seen them all!

After a short wall around Battery Point we went for a drive up to Mt Nelson and out to Kingston (we could not find Bob Marley’s grave anywhere).

The weather was just awful, so there wasn’t much that we could really do.

I had made arrangements to meet up with an old friend Emma Slade from the ships, so she collected us at 7:30pm and took us into the city for drinks. It was great seeing her and I was glad she was able to meet up, as she was on nights and it was a little last minute.

We stayed out drinking for a few hours and ended up going to the only gay bar in Tasmania, yes, it was awful!

Again we were not up until after 9am and after yet another breakfast (this time with sausages) we headed out to the Wineglass Bay Lookout for a walk.

When we finished, we headed down the coastal road again to Port Arthur.

We decided that instead of staying in Port Arthur, we could stay just outside in a small town called Eaglehawk Neck.

We stopped at the backpackers and after knocking several times with no answer, we walked back to the car to head towards Port Arthur.

Just as we were reversing, a woman, who I can only describe as looking like Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates from Misery) walked out.

The conversation went something like this…

• Annie: Hi, can I help you?
• Lisa: Yes, we were just wanting to know if you have a room for the night!
• Me: Let’s go somewhere else!
• Lisa: Don’t you want to stay here?
• Me: No
• Lisa: Fair Enough!
• Lisa: Thank You
• Annie: Bye
• Me: Did you see that woman, she looked like a murderer!

Maybe I was rude, but the woman looked so like Kathy Bates in one of her (Misery / Dolores Clairborn) crazy characters I could see myself dead by morning!

We drove along to the Port Arthur Caravan Park and got a dorm for the evening and then we went out for a drive to see the Remarkable Cave.

Lisa dropped me off at a tea shop and I read my book for an hour while she went out for a walk.

When Lisa picked me up we went along to a pub called the Fox & Hound for drinks and a few board games and then went back to the Caravan Park for Dinner.

There was a couple of girls from Holland in our dorm who we had met earlier in the pub who were pretty nice. Thank goodness they knew how to turn on the heater!

Would you call this a Bunk Bunk Bed?

We slept till around line and after another hearty breakfast we headed out of St Helens up along the Bay of Fires to Binalong Bay.

We stopped off at Skeleton’s Point, Grants Point and then on to the Peron Dunes.

We headed back through St Helens and along the coastal road through Bicheno, where we did a bit of riding (including looking out for penguins) and then headed down to Coles Bay & Freycinet National Park.

We had been planning on camping but honestly I found the idea as appealing as a shit sandwich, so we ended up staying at the Iluka YHA.

We went for a walk up the 500m boardwalk to the lighthouse at Cape Tourville and then we went for a walk down to Honeymoon Bay, drank some wine, freezed our butts off and came back to Iluka’s.

I was very surprised, but I slept right through to 9am…even with the wind howling outside and rain beating down on the tent.

My legs though…were not good at all though! I could hardly walk!

We went and had a nice hearty breakfast in the covered dining area and headed back outside in the pouring rain to put the tent down and try and dry off my clothes from yesterday.

Instead of drying off, I ended up getting my second pair of jeans equally as wet and the ones which were already drying in a dryer and had to pretty much strip off in the Laundry to try and get all my clothes dry again.

Once I was all dry we headed along to Mole Creek to the Marakoopa Cave.

We then headed to Launceston to the Cataract Gorge where I was quite happy reading my book while Lisa went for a walk.

We headed along to St Helens and got to the St Helens YHA at around 8pm. When we got there we were starving and ready for a rest.

As I walked into the YHA two women yelled out “I know you!” and I looked at them with a blank look on my face which clearly said “Well, I dont!”. Anyway these women were on the Spirit of Tasmania along with us and remembered my face apparently as I looked like the ladies best friends daughters called Catherine. It was very strange.

Next thing I find out is that the older lady was a volunteer at the Village and was from Cheshire…it is such a small world.

I was quite happy anyway that we were back in a backpackers. The owners were friendly, it was nice and clean and me and Lisa had the dorm to ourselves.

We arrived in Tasmania at around 7am and were off the ship around 8am.

We were pretty hungry, so we decided that the first town we went through we would stop and have tea and breakfast.

The first remotely large town we saw was Sheffield (City of Murals) and we found the cutest little tea shop with buildings which were painted in a variety of Murals.

We went into the Tourist Information and headed along to Cradle Mountain. We stopped along the way to sort out our accommodation for the night and then we headed back on the road towards Cradle Mountain.

We drove down to Lake Dove Car Park and started walking towards Marion’s Lookout. It was supposed to be a medium walk, but it in all honesty nearly killed me. It was bad enough getting up to the lookout but the next park pained me…it was so steep!

We had been very lucky with the weather, apparently…

• it rains 7 days out of 10
• it’s cloudy 8 days in 10
• the sun shines all day 1 day in 10
• it snows on 54 days each year

There was lots of snow at the lookout and it started raining and getting pretty cold. When we got back to the Campground I wasn’t really in the mood for camping, but we put the tent up, had showers, made dinner and I was about ready to sleep anywhere.

My gorgeous friends Lou and Brydie came over for dinner last night bringing me a bike to use whilst in Tasmania.

Lou also brought me over a sleeping bag this morning…I seem to be the most disorganised person EVER to go camping. Thank GOD Lisa did most of the

Lisa came by at 4pm and after a quick stop down at Safeway we came back for a quick dinner with Marion and headed down to Port Melbourne to catch the Spirit of Tasmania.

They fairly packed the cars onboard and we headed to Deck G7 - ‘You can’t sleep on the floor deck’.

After mooching around the boat for a while we headed on up to Deck G10 - ‘Annoying kids everywhere deck’ and we watched ‘Just Married’.

The trip was pretty calm and the ship was pretty clean. I was quite surprised. One thing that did annoy me though was the pages every 10 minutes from the Pursers advising parties that their dinner tables were ready!