Reviving the blog - Tasmania

Well, here we are again. I've decided to dust off the old travel blog, and make some new literary contributions to it. While I have been on a couple of trips away since my last post, as you could clearly gather I didn't bother recording them here, which I afterwards found myself regretting. There's a lot you can forget in the months and years after a trip.
So I thought this trip to Tasmania would be a good opportunity to pick up the old habit again.

This first post will probably be reasonably short, as I'm not, actually, you know in Tasmania yet. Currently I'm typing this in our cabin in the ship "Spirit of Tasmania", but you have to start somewhere!

The day leading up to the departure was quite hectic. My girlfriend Ally and I have quite a few animals that need to be taken care of, but luckily one of her uni Buddies was willing to house sit for the week and a bit I would be away. (Ally is gone longer, because the holiday will for her be immediately followed by two weeks of placement).
This is particularly fortuitous because they are both studying veterinary science. No having to worry about the fur babies not being properly taken care of!
So the afternoon consisted of Ally and I splitting our time talking to Louise about the feeding routines of our various pets, trying to get the last of our recently washed clothes dry, and then packing said clothes.

Then, when we realised it was getting a lot later than we had planned to get away, we finally bustled out the door and drove off...
Only to have an excruciatingly long wait at the terminal to get on the ferry.

The "Spirit of Tasmania", waiting for us to board.

In order to make the best of our time away, we took Ally's car. She also will need it for her placement, so it definitely had to come over with us.
But once you arrive at the terminal, you still have to wait in queue for a very long time... first all the other vehicles coming back to Melbourne have to get off, then you can slowly inch your way on, the vehicles being squeezed together in the hold like sardines.
Once we could finally get out of the car, it was a matter of squishing between the other cars with whatever luggage we wanted to take on board and making our way onto the decks.
Ally, being of a somewhat overprepared nature, chose to take eight of the thirty-seven bags, backpacks, duffel-bags, suitcases and shipping containers she had packed with her on the boat. (Actual numbers may be exaggerated for comic effect). I, taking just my medium-sized sports bag, laptop and camera, was already wondering if there wasn't a fair number of superfluous items I could pitch overboard as I struggled to carry it past the lines of parked cars.

Soon, however, we had found our way to our small cabin. Modest though it is, especially at the price, I think I greatly prefer it to the slightly cheaper option of airplane-style seating. It is some luck that we found it at all actually; upon reaching one landing in the middle of a flight of stairs, a lady, seeing the slightly bewildered expressions on our faces, kindly pointed us in the direction of the fore of the ship, where she assured us we would certainly find the cabins - and where, upon our venturing, we discovered no such thing. The cabins, as we presently discovered, were in the exact opposite direction.
Until it came time to finally retire to our tiny dorm for the night, we spent a good two hours exploring the ship. A number of minutes were well spent up on the deck, trying (mostly in vain) to coax our cameras to take a decent picture of the night-time skyline of Melbourne.

Me, with Melbourne vanishing in the background

Out of curiosity, we also ventured into the small gaming lounge the ship sports. In my normal life I am an attendant at such a venue, and I found myself wondering which gambling regulations a ferry would follow. I didn't get a satisfactory answer to my question, except to gain a fair level of certainty (due to the lack of appropriate signage) that it was not the Victorian regulations.
As luck would have it, however, I spotted a single dollar coin left in the tray of one of the poker machines by the previous absent-minded patron. Upon gifting it to my girlfriend, and warning her duly about the dangers of gambling, she promptly wasted it in the nearest slot - one belonging to a Geisha themed game, which she assured me was my favourite. Not a sausage did it give us either.

After this unsatisfying experience, and a few more minutes aimless meandering, we finally decided to have dinner. The restaurant on board, I'm sad to report, is expensive and nearly as disappointing as the gaming lounge.
Our final destination before heading back to the cabin was the in-house entertainer. With his shiny metallic guitar and banjo, he certainly looked the part for cruise-ship entertainment (a sparkly suit and keyboard may have been more appropriate, but his persona was also not out of place), but the small crowd was only able to muster a somewhat lackluster cheer to his old-timey blues songs.

I guess that is what you get on a cruise to Tasmania in the middle of winter.