Day 290: Fifteen Hours Door-to-Door Travel Day — Arrive in Tasmania!

Australia is…huge. And today our plan was to go from top to bottom: Far North Queensland to Hobart, Tasmania. It was about a 15-hour trip door to door:

• 4-hour drive from Mungumby Lodge to Cairns airport; drop rental car.
• Fly 4.5 hours to Melbourne. 3-hour layover.
• Fly an hour and 15 minutes to Hobart, Tasmania.
• Rent car and drive 20 minutes to our hotel.

The team at Mungumby packed us a breakfast for our 6 am departure: yogurt, jam sandwiches, granola bars and juice. They left us a French press of coffee that I used to fill up our new insulated mugs for the ride. 

We spotted four wallabies on the morning drive— two alive and two dead. Sad to see so much roadkill here in Australia. 

We arrived in Melbourne around 4pm and had a three-hour layover. The airport was filled with business travelers. Margaret and I immediately had the same reaction: holy shit, no thank you. We posted up in a nice bar / lounge area, surrounded by corporate Australia, so relieved to be staring down a two-week road trip in Tassie rather than a presentation in a windowless conference room tomorrow morning. 

We poked around a few airport shops and did some mental shoplifting in a bookstore. Willa found the Harry Potter section. She’s read the first five books in the last five weeks or so — but only on her kindle. This is the first time she’s actually picked up one of the paper books and she was stunned by how much she had actually read. I was too!

We landed around 9pm in Hobart.

It’s 1 hour ahead in Tasmania — but only for half the year during daylight savings. Confusing.

We’re staying at The Old Woolstore Apartment Hotel in Hobart. We have a good sized two bedroom that is clean and totally comfortable.

A nice surprise: full washer / dryer. And even better: Margaret noted that since we’re finally out of the tropics it’s the first time in a while she’s walked into a little side room of a house without expecting a gecko or some other creature hiding inside to startle her.

Big day with friends tomorrow! St. Albans buddy and GameChanger legend Phil Sarin is in Hobart and so is Margaret’s Vandy pal Beth McKenzie and her family.