The Spirit of Tasmania II.

We left our caravan park at 6 pm last night and set off to find Station Pier - the ferry terminal in Port Melbourne. Oce again owe GPS worked flawlessly to get us to the Terminal by 7 pm. Boarding was from 7:30 so we waited in a queue for almost an hour. We and the vehicles were subjected to a security check before proceeding to the queue

Because we have the van we had a very straightforward drive onto deck 3 along with other oversize vehicles. Cars on the other hand were directed up a type of flyover arrangement that serviced decks 5 & 6. We didn't mind giving that a miss.

Deck 7 had the usual fare - purser, gift shop, travel guides, as well as bars, a restaurant and cafe.

Deck 8 was all accommodation in 2 bed cabins. We had a porthole cabin although we were in the dark leaving and arriving so not much to see.

We were woken at 6:15 and showered and dressed and went to have a coffee while we waited for our deck to be called. We were called first and so we made our way down to deck 3 and almost as soon as we got in the ute the line started moving. Going through quarantine slowed six lanes of traffic down to two. Again the vehicles were checked and passed.

So here we were in just-light Devenport with a caravan site booked for 10 am (3 hours away). We parked in the street and tried ringing the park, and a few others but all we got was message bank. Just then a chap approached us with a flyer saying "This is the caravan park you need." It was about 10km out of Devenport at a village called Latrobe and is very new and very quiet and here we are on site by 8am. As soon as we had power I emailed the other park as to what had happened. With a shipload of vehicles arriving each day by ferry the parks need to be a bit more proactive eg handing out flyers like our park did.

The people next door were getting ready to leave but advised us to walk into town for a cafe breakfast. This we did and enjoyed bacon and eggs on toast with tomatoes and hash browns. It certainly was as advertised - a big breakfast for $9.50 each.

This has been a longer post - hope it's of interest. As you may have guessed there are platypus here.