Spirited away to Melbourne town

With little time to spare, we packed up and hotfooted it along the top of Tasmania to Devenport.We stopped in Stanley for lunch and to climb 'the nut'- a big, nut-shaped rock behind the town. Bill and the kids took the chairlift up while Kate nearly died climbing up an insanely steep path. The view from the top was spectacular and before Kate could catch her breath we trotted off to walk around the top. We started to kick ourselves for not allowing more time in Stanley because it was pretty cool.

But it was time to rush on to Devenport for dinner with Coles Bay friends, Tony, Dana, Tia and Will - and to meet Tony's wife, Karri. We had a lovely evening of pizza, wine, conversation and a (long but funny) play performed by the 5 kids. Wierdly we discivered that we know Karri's cousin, Andy, in Melbourne! Tony and Karri were kind enough to let us stay in their shed/bar/musicroom/artspace/cinema/wrestling room... We had an early start next to catch the boat back to Melbs so when we arrived bleary eyed in their kitchen we were astounded to find a spread of pancakes, stewed fruit, muffins and more! Our lovely new friends were even kind enough to come and wave us off on the ferry!

So after a great day trip on the Spirit of Tasmania (including movies, face painting, badge making and more...), we arrived back in Melbs. It was lovely to see family again and to meet 2 beautiful new babies, Freya and Henry. Bill and Big Sasha made lots of electrical improvements to our set-up, and we sorted all our stuff, managing to offload a good amount of things we had decided we didn't need.

Bit of excitement when a film crew for the upcoming movie about Julian Assange came to suss out Jane and Sasha's house to use as a set. Despite our best efforts to swan around looking glamorous, none of us were offered a part...

We had decided to have our rebuilt engine looked at while it was still under warranty because it had been burning up oil while we trekked around Tassie, but we didn't want to stay in Melbourne for more than a couple of nights (going backwards instead of forwards...) so we arranged to camp in the beautiful Grampians while we waited.

Melbourne, we love you, but we were pleased to be off again!