Day 2: Melbourne on Sunday

It’s Sunday evening. We have good music on our little digital radio (thanks Alice!), we have finished dinner – traditional Sunday-night chicken soup :-), 

Special one-finger preparation of chicken soup!

done the dishes and are now sitting back with a well-deserved coffee.  

Yesterday we viewed the rain in the morning with some dismay. 

Dismay-causing rain.

We had a hill to get up and down (West Launceston) and did not really need a slippery road. However, though it was pouring when we picked up the caravan at Roelf and Tiny’s, it dried up nicely by the time we got home. 

We finished off the packing etc. at our leisure, said goodbye to Niels, and toddled off to Devonport mid-afternoon. With its heavier-than-ever load and new tyres the caravan handled really nice and it was a smooth ride into the ferry terminal. It was well into twilight by the time we were lined up to go on board.

Twilight at the ferry terminal.

Boarding went smoothly. We were directed almost to the front of the boat, which meant we would be one of the first ones to get off at the other end. Our cabin was also at the front of the boat. It was the size of a roomy walk-in wardrobe, but it had everything we needed plus two spare bunks. 

Lifejacket drill with realistically simulated panic.

We had a meal and bumped into my colleague from St Lukes, Deb and her husband. They were on their way to Cape York, and hoped to be in Cairns by Wednesday, whereas we need to get there by 22 June. They were going to travel 900 kms today. We, on the other hand, enjoyed our day of rest!

Sleeping on the boat can be problematical, but we managed a few hours between us. The hot-and-cold-again air conditioning didn’t help – at one stage I was so overheated that I thought I was joining Joke in the overgang! But the ferry did its job, and woke us at 10 to 6 to tell us so, and could we please get ready to up and begone by 6:30. In the very quiet of an early Melbourne Sunday morning with almost zero traffic we got to Ashley Gardens Caravan Park in Braybrook just on 7 a.m. While Joke was getting out the makings of breakfast we were invited to enter the park and make ourselves comfortable. By 9 a.m. we were all done, so we decided we would attend the morning service at Box Hill Christian Reformed Church, 27 kms away. We got there in good time, enjoyed the service led by pastor Albert Esselbrugge whose sermon on Acts 5 was well worth listening to. We met all sorts of Dutch types at the coffee counter afterwards, including a Mr Visser, whose brothers are all members of our churches in W.A.

It took us much longer in time and kms to get back to the caravan park as we chose to ignore the GPS. When we decided we had better take note, we managed to misinterpret its instructions and found ourselves on the freeway going in the opposite direction. Don’t you hate that?

The scribe at work.

Tomorrow will be an early start and then we’ll see how far we get.