Day 10: Travel Day
Welcome
Yesterday we travelled from Melbourne to Launceston.
A severe heat warning had been issued for Melbourne so it seemed like a good day to be leaving. Fortunately at 10am when we checked out of our accommodation this weather was yet to commence and we enjoyed a cool breeze while we loaded the equipment into the van for a final time. There was spare time in the schedule that demanded to be enjoyed and we spent it at Short Round cafe after picking up Gabe, a man who shares our enthusiasm for freshly cooked breakfast food. On this occasion, my second outing to this café, I ordered from the savoury side of the menu choosing the chorizo folded eggs with jalapeno & coriander jam, Yarra Valley Persian feta, and sourdough.
Our two-vehicle convoy departed the suburb of Thornbury and headed west, boarding the M2 motorway and twenty minutes arriving at Melbourne Airport to deposit its passengers and equipment into the capable hands of four pristine smartecartes®. We escaped the afternoon heat and headed indoors, finding ourselves a check in counter that thankfully was familiar with checking in bands and the awkwardly large and heavy equipment they so often carry. After waving goodbye to our equipment we loaded it onto the conveyor belt to be sucked away into the depths of the airport, and we wandered on our way to the gate with plenty of time to spare.
At 2:22pm Our Boeing 737-800 rolled along the runway and took off to the north, climbing gently until we were a few thousand feet up and the pilot began to execute a gentle turn above some very fresh-looking urban developments. We levelled out and headed south, passing to the east of the city, my window seat offering a spectacular view of the metropolis, suburbs sprawling outward from downtown, and the great blue harbour of Port Phillip sheltered behind its natural breakwater.
The flight was short and there wasn’t even time for the stewards to execute a tea and coffee service before the seatbelt sign was lit up and we began our descent into Launceston Airport. Farms covered most of the surrounding landscape, stretching out until they met the jagged spines of mountains, the neat circular irrigation systems and orderly hedgerows juxtaposed against the wandering ridgelines and mottled green forest in the distance.
It was a small, regional airport that we touched down at and there was very little distance to taxi before the aircraft halted and we were disembarked out onto the tarmac, a short walk from the terminal. We headed inside and met our tour manager Emma and soon after that our baggage as it began to emerge on the conveyor belt, and we loaded it onto the four smartecartes® that Emma had found abandoned in the carpark, saving us $32AUD in luggage cart rental fees. There was a festival transfer to take us to the hotel, a Toyota Hiace, king of the vans, with a little baby trailer, and we enjoyed a scenic drive through a countryside that was not unlike driving through rural New Zealand.
The city of Launceston also shared some of the character of rural New Zealand towns, the streets and malls with their awnings and shopfronts feeling pleasantly familiar, with the exception of the monstrous building that we pulled up to at the end of the journey. It turned out to be our hotel, a modern building built in the Georgian style to fit with the city’s architectural character but fitted out with modern comforts like elevators and corridor rest zones.
We checked in and dropped our luggage before heading out to make the most of the beautiful evening, finding a nearby pub and staking a claim at one of the outdoor tables. The streets were surprisingly quiet for a Saturday night, save for when our spot was hit by a pub crawl, a group of twentysomethings dressed in golf attire, out completing the 7th hole of a 9-hole golf themed drinking game that they had been swinging away at since 1pm that afternoon. It was impressively well organised with laminated score and rule cards hanging around their necks so they could calculate a winner.
We started and ended our evening at the pub, dining and enjoying a night off, and making the most of this chance to sample some of the fare of a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, of which there are only fifty in the world, and this is the first we have been lucky enough to visit.
