A night on the Spirit of Tasmania was an experience. Dani had the girls in a 4 bunk cabin, and Lach and I were in a twin cabin. Having realised that the blog from yesterday wasn’t going to be posted until this morning due to terrible wifi, we turned the lights off at around 1030pm. The ship was sailing, about 45minutes later than scheduled, and we were in the middle of Port Philip Bay. I dozed off really quickly with the rocking motion of the boat and woke up with “Caroline – is this noise normal?” It was Lach, at midnight, concerned that the smashing down of the bow onto the rough seas and the noise of the ‘slap’ wasn’t a normal sound. He then spent the next couple of hours concerned but eventually managed to get some sleep. We were literally at the bow with the girls window looking straight ahead – a pretty great location for views, but not such a great location for a smooth sailing. The loud speaker woke us up 45minutes before docking, so we had a shower and all went for some breakfast. Dani and I compared notes on the ‘rough’ night and I don’t think she slept the best seeing as she had a ‘sleepover’ with the girls and was concerned about Audrey rolling out of bed with the rocking boat.

We were nearly first off the ferry to begin our Tasmanian journey at Devonport. The directions were turn right and head west (not many roads to navigate), it was only 8am, so we decided to stop in Burnie for breakfast, I did some research on the best cafes (limited as it is a Sunday and not many opened) and Food + Brew lived up to all expectations – which was delicious and the coffee was fantastic. 

We stocked up on fresh fruit and vegetables in Burnie and then headed to Stanley along the North West Coast. The girls slept the nearly the whole way, and the weather seemed to be turning from cloud and drops of rain to sunshine. The coast is rustic and reminded me of the north coast of Kangaroo Island, with a couple of industrial factories pelting out smoke – a timber yard and a magnetite and concrete works. We arrived in the quaint town of Stanley and set up the van. A beautiful little caravan park right on the beach and underneath The Nut – Stanley Cabin & Tourist Park. The lady informed me that around this area if we want to go exploring in the national parks and to “The Edge of the World” you need to add an extra 30mins for every 100km you travel compared to normal terrain due to the turning and undulating nature of the beautiful area they live in. A 4hour round trip for what Google Maps tells us is 2hours. Within 30mins of arriving, we jumped in the car as we wanted to do the chairlift up The Nut before the weather changed. The Nut is all that remains of an ancient volcanic plug, and Stanley is at its base. The chairlift was definitely not of a ski standard and extremely slow, but it gave you time to take in the surroundings. It’s a rise of 950m and when you get off the top you have a panoramic view of the surrounding beaches and across the Bass Strait. The western side of The Nut was very windy, but coming back around the east (2km walk) the wind disappeared and the scenery opened up even more. We saw baby wallabies and a tree house made by fairies  – straight from the movie “Into the Woods”. We looked down on the caravan park from a lookout, and trying to direct Ava to see our caravan from 1k up a cliff face is extremely challenging – I must admit I gave up, and zoomed in from the photo I had taken to show her.

We walked around the really cute village and went into a few shops – including a shell shop, a chocolate cafe, an art gallery, a providore and of course a whiskey tasting room (Lach actually liked a whisky which wasn’t from Islay). Neither Lach nor I realised there were 24 distilleries on the island – maybe some additional places to be added to our itinerary over the coming couple of weeks.

A relaxing afternoon with the girls scooting around and sitting in the sun, then the girls were doing arts and crafts, when Dani realised that the crayons they were using were the scrolls Sara’s mum had made for them when Sara came over to visit. Dani’s words were “that makes my little heart happy”. Dani took photos to send to Sara and I wrote down her quote. Whilst I was writing the blog, Dani was editing the photos to ensure we had the best quality ones for the blog. Thanks Dani.

The weather has cleared with blue skies all around, but in the shade it’s still chilly. So tonight we need to look at the weather forecast to decide whether we are to stay here for another day and do some exploring or whether we head down to Strahan on the west coast.

Decisions decisions….