Foddrick

The last day of our holiday had arrived. We got up packed and headed for the airport. After some slight confusion and misunderstanding due to the malfunctioning of our E-toll transponder, we were in the air and off to Brisbane.

Upon arrival, we had to wait for a while to get the parking company to come and pick us up. We squeezed into the Territory and arrived home, very glad to be there.

All in all, it was a great holiday and we will visit Tasmania again sometime.

We did not have a lot planned today, so we got up fairly lazily and had breakfast.
We headed out at around 10:30am to Fountain Gate.

Mark and Chris were meeting one of Mark's old work colleages. Meanwhile Mum, Dad and the kids went to a local botanic garden.

After that we returned home to the unit for a swim, and then headed out to dinner with some old friends. One of us may have been responsible for the clogging of a toilet, but no guilty parties will be named here.

We got home and did some packing as tomorrow marks the end of this holiday!

This morning marked one of our earliest starts and we were up and breakfasted and out the door by 7:45. We made the 8:02 train and we were bound for the zoo.

After changing trains at Southern Cross station, we arrived at the zoo about an hour later.

It was a huge day, and we walked quite a distance checking out the many animals on display. Harrison got especially sore legs!

After quite a day at the zoo, we headed home, and all of the adults had a nap!

We then got up and headed for Castello's for dinner to celebrate Mark's birthday. It was another good meal, and we had birthday cheesecake for dessert.

As per usual, we eventually got organised, after having breakfast and set out on a short walk to Narre Warren train station.

We set off for two destinations, the men for the MCG tour and the women for Queen Victoria Markets.

The males alighted at Richmond station and took the MCG tour. It was quite interesting and took you to places not frequented by the general public. We saw some of the perks of MCC membership and learnt that there is only a 15-20 year waiting list for membership.

After the tour, we met up at Flinders St minus any incidents with ticket validation, and set off to check out the Myer Christmas display in their window front. It was very well done, and this year featured “Wombat Devine” - a children's story by Mem Fox. The story chronicles a wombats struggle to take a place in the nativity play.

For once Mark and Chris were the first up and after finding out that it was not a total fire ban day, we all headed off to puffing billy.

Mark, Chris and the boys rode the train, while Mum and Dad followed by road, taking photographs at every opportunity and providing much entertainment to those on board the train.

Campbell really enjoyed the ride, spending most of the time with arms and legs outside of the carriage, while Harrison spent most of the time concerned with his brother's well-being.

The half-way point was Lakeside, where we stopped for 45 minutes and had a brief play in the park. We then boarded the train for the return journey, with Mum and Dad again going by car.

After breakfast, we hammered out a rough itinerary for the rest of our holiday and decided that since we enjoy packing the car so much, we'd stay here for the balance of our time in Victoria.

Eventually we all got ready and motivated and headed out to visit Ellen and Ralph. We stopped at Fountain Gate shopping centre for some clothes and a quick bite to eat.

We arrived at Ellen and Ralph's place after a quick stop at a reservoir, and stopped for tea and a chat.

On the way home, we stopped again at Fountain Gate to pick up some pool noodles. We were planning a swim but when we got in, found that it was too cold, so the boys just played for about 15 minutes.

Today was our last day in Hobart. In the interest of hauling less luggage around for the remainder of our journey, Chris and Mark got up early, went to the post office and sent about 7 kilograms of luggage back home. Then they went back to the hotel via Starbucks to pack the bags.

We checked out at around 11am and headed for the airport. Once our luggage was lodged we sat around and waited for the plane.

The thankfully short trip to Melbourne was on a 727-800, which was more cramped than the 727-700 that we flew to Hobart on.

We touched down in Melbourne on time and collected our hire car. It was a Tarago, as was our hire car in Tasmania, but a later model. The complication was that this model had less luggage space! It was quite a struggle to get our bags packed into it. After about half an hour we had our bags packed at headed for Aunty Gwen's place in Cranbourne.

Those of us who slept, got up and everyone had breakfast. We packed and informed reception that we would not be staying another night and the woman at reception suggested that we fax a list of our quarrals to management.

With that, we set off to find new accommodation. Although we had planned to check out a few potentials, we decided to hang the expense and check into the Grand Chancellor. It was very nice and despite having possibly the most expensive in-room internet in the entire world, even quite affordable.

Having been sleep deprived the previous night, it was a restful day, filled mostly with washing and watching cricket. We eventually motivated ourselves to go swimming in the heated pool for an hour or so, and then we returned to our room for showers and to prepare for dinner. Before we got to dinner however, the trademark ultrasonic scream rang as one of the kids hurt themselves! This time it was Campbell getting his fingers caught in a door! After soothing him, we did make it to dinner.

Owing to the fact that Mark and Chris had packed the night before, we were heading off from Launceston at about 8am. We called into McDonalds where the Reids had breakfast.

We headed for our next destination, Hobart.

On the way, we stopped in Ross and visited the Female Factory. It in it's heyday was quite a large complex, but only one building remained. It was used for sick or pregnant women convicts.
Amazingly, it was free to look around this building. They just about charge you to breathe in Tasmania. While exploring the building, they heard footsteps, although they were the only ones there! Or was it just the wind??

We awoke and had a spartan breakfast as we had no real cooking facilities in this location. This morning we headed off to Dr Harry Cooper's farm – “Arcadian Downs”. It was about a 20 minute drive out of Launceston. He has a lovely property with many animals and we were guided on a tour by both Harry and his wife Janine. The main business of the farm is a horse stud, but there are also cats bred, plus a large variety of chickens and ducks. We even witnessed the relatively rare event of a mare foaling during the day.

After the tour we had lunch at the Cluck Chook Cafe. It was very tasty. Dr Harry signed a few autographs for us and then it was off to Cataract Gorge.