Leaving Melbourne
April 9th, 2007 | by lissie |Sorry its been a while since I have written, again have had trouble finding the right sort of Internet access. I can find cafes to write the blog on – but I need somewhere which will allow me to upload files or use my laptop to get photos on line!
So we have sailed out of Melbourne at first light – well this was about 7:30am (actually the photo says it was taken at 08:38:53 but what would it know!) but that’s pretty reasonable for me these days! After 5 weeks of experimentation I have discovered that most of my working life I spend sleep deprived – I definitely need about 9-10 hours sleep a night! In fact I have left from this pier before – according to the very interesting Immigration Museum here in Melbourne when we docked here on the way to NZ in 1970 we would have left from the same place. Except now what was a rail link to the terminal is now a tram line. The terminal isl also full of shops and restaurants – we tried to have a look on Sunday but just couldn’t get a park! Luckily we ended up staying in St Kilda manly because the cake shops are great – but it turned out to be an easy 10 minute drive to the ferry. The Easy Jet brand now has Easy Stay – and it was nice renovated ground floor studio apartment with secure parking for $95 / night – not too bad for Melbourne. Its about 20 minutes into the city on the tram and heaps and heaps of restaurants to be had here.
The ferry is quite substantial but it is a 10 hour trip over some of the potentially roughest water in the world, Bass Strait. The original plan had been for me to fly and Paul to take the vehicle, I not only get sea sick but its actually cheaper to fly. However we left it too late to decide when to go so that along with Easter meant that there were no cheap flights left so I took a deep breath and lots of pills and hoped for the best. In fact the sea was absolutely dead calm, the only downside was I was horribly bored the laptop having run out of battery and I didn’t expect to be reading or writing so didn’t have that stuff with me.
