Up in the early light and off to Banjos Bakery for breakfast (having checked the night before that they open at an early hour!). Breakfast pide were appealing - ham, cheese and tomato for me and egg and bacon for Eric. I enjoyed mine although I felt it was a little light on fillings - and being a minimalist kinda gal, that is seldom my complaint. Eric was not keen on the sweet mayonnaise that his egg was mashed with - but apart from that, nourished and happy. Off to pick up our hire car. Last time here we had a Hyundai Getz and were hoping for the same again but instead we are allocated a Kia Rio. We soon discover it sounds like a buzzy kinda racing car under acceleration. Back to the hostel to ... read more

Not very restful night of sleep - waking every ten minutes concerned about over sleeping and missing our flight. Woke at midnight to thundering tropical rain (usually one of my great joys) and spent the next few hours concerned that our little access road to the outside world would be flooded and prevent us from accessing the airport, even though it adjoins our suburb! I booked our taxi online for the first time and so was also concerned that this system may not work and no taxi might appear. At the appointed hour (4am!) our turbanned taxi driver appeared through a break in the rain. He was extremely friendly and chatty and we both felt embarrassed that we were almost completely unable to understand anything he was saying in his beautiful singsong accent. Didn't want it ... read more

Received an email from Jetstar advising that our flight details for our flight home from Melbourne had changed. I don't fly all that often and this came as a bit of a surprise. I expected that flights would be rescheduled due to bad weather, aircraft trouble, strikes...but I did not expect that airlines would reschedule flights months in advance. Anyway now I know they do! The new flight had us leaving Melbourne 12 hours earlier than scheduled, flying out at 6am Saturday instead of 6pm...obviously the Jetstar folks have not consulted my delightfully detailed itinerary in the previous entry, or they would have realised that there is Much Planned for that day. A phone call revealed that our alternative was to leave at 6am the next day. Done, and Saturday's itinerary expanded to include another 12 ... read more

Exciting Plans for a Summer trip to Tasmania My husband and I are headed to Tasmania for our second visit on 14th January. We will spend 12 nights in Tasmania and then fly to Melbourne for a whirlwind 3 night stay. Our last visit, in July 2007, was a very freewheeling affair, the cold having kept most visitors away from the state so we had little need to book accommodation ahead - as with our winter road trip through Victoria and NSW in 2000, we would pull up at caravan parks and find them sitting empty and silent, inhabited only by a couple of hardy permanents, who were always bemused and perplexed to discover that we had left the tropics and headed south in midwinter! We love the cold and we seek solitude, so travelling out ... read more