Tasmania- an Isle of great beauty

An early start took us up the peninsula from Mornington to the city, a whole hour even with little traffic at that time on Dec 27th, another hour to get on the ship, we had to surrender our gas bottles as they are classed as dangerous.
With the city behind us, we made out into Port Phillip Bay. It is a lagoon really, and is huge, and we had to traverse the whole length of it to reach the heads, over two and a half hours to reach the open sea.
But very soon there was little to see, just smooth sea all around us for the next six hours until Devenport arose over the horizon.

We were late into harbour, almost an hour at seven o'clock, then we had to go through quarantine. What a performance! Six rows of queues, which slowly moved forwards into the quarantine bay, where we were asked questions about what we were carrying. We had to tell them that we had fishing gear, which was clean, and that we were carrying no fruit or veges. A brief inspection and we were out, but then we had to collect our gas bottles.
So it was near eight o'clock by the time we were on the road to our digs some twelve miles away at Port Sorrell.

But the apartment we had was good, and I managed to get Fish & Chips down the road, and the host cooked Anne a curry which she appreciated greatly.

A quick trip (some 250k) down towards Hobart, then East along the coast road to Forcett, a village about 30k east of Hobart, then up into the bush to a secluded house at the top of a hill. Lovely, and a view to die for over the forested hills.
Julia and Graham are very lucky people to live here!
With two wings off a central living area, the house occupies a commanding view all around. In the centre of a large bush area of around 550 acres,  I can't think of any other I would prefer to live in.

Today we have been into Hobart, it's Saturday and there is an excellent market in the centre. Also today the Sydney to Hobart race is coming in, in fact the first boat, Wild Oats 11, came in yesterday, breaking all records. 50ft of sheer speed, narrow of beam, single tall mast, obviously built with this race in mind.
As we spent the morning there other boats came in after one of the best races in years, with good weather and fair winds all the way.




But we were really there to see Graham and Julia's son Ray compete in a harbour race of 1200 metres, he is a professional swimmer of great promise, he is hoping to win a series of eight salt water races this season, and this is the second.He won the first, and has another one tomorrow of two kilometres in surf.Around fifty swimmers lined up at the start, and Ray soon took the lead. After the first leg he was about 5mtrs in front, and kept that up right to the finish, despite the stiff competition.





There are a number of tall ships around the harbour, which of course caught my interest, as well as the many competitors from the race that had already arrived. It is a huge harbour, I would say almost as big as Sydney, with a lot of activity going on.

A really super day out with a nice lunch, a walk round the market, and a drive home across the water.