The long way home is completed

Up at 4am yesterday (Friday) to get our Tassie e-travel pass. It’s ridiculous that you can only get this 24 hours before arrival. Might work okay for a plane but not so good when you have an almost 500 kilometre trip from the SA border. 

Left Bordertown around 9am with Tassie pass QR codes on our phones. No cars, just a couple of trucks on the road as we headed for the SA/Vic border. We just breezed through but all traffic headed into SA was diverted into a layby.

Got to the Port of Melbourne around 3pm. We had been advised that the Spirit of Tasmania would only begin loading at 5pm, taking three quarters of an hour to load rather than the normal one and a half hours. We should have hung back a bit and not gone on early as we ended up in number one car deck. There are six car decks and number one is down in the bilges.

Despite the high winds the weather report for Bass Strait looked okay. The Captain came on the PA and said it would be a bit rough which seemed strange considering the weather report. So confined to our cabin we got stuck into the food we had brought with us.

Confined to our cabin

Going through the Heads the ship was lively, as is often the case, but certainly not rough. What it was like during the crossing I can not say as I slept soundly until we came alongside in Davenport.

We were the last vehicle off the boat as deck three had to discharged before the hatch to deck two could be opened. Then deck two was discharged before the hatch to deck one was opened and out of deck one we finally emerged.

There was a long queue to go through quarantine and health check but finally we had our temperatures taken our QR passes scanned and we were free to head off. The ship berthed at 6:30 and we headed off at 7:45 so it was pretty quick. The police had about half a dozen vehicles pulled to one side. Must have been the “naughty wall” for those without the correct permissions.

Once we left the check point we could take our face masks off. What a change it is now not having to wear masks.

Driving South on our East Coast

Thank heavens we have no more borders to cross. I was starting to feel like George Smiley from John le Carre’s books about the Cold War and clandestine border crossings!

Arrived home around midday. We already have a load of clothes in the washing machine with lots more to follow.

I reckon it will take us about a week to clean up our travelling gear and settle once more into life at Orford. Then we can begin planning our NEXT TRIP.