...and a new life begins...

"Well," I said to Mauricio, as I drove the rented ford Fairlane down the Princes Highway towards Narooma, "here we go, living the dream".

Apart from the fact that everything had seemed to go almost magically smoothly up to that point...if frenetic, I was still nervous. Nervous about scratching the car (with a $3000 excess, and no insurance...eek!). Nervous about rolling the car and blowing up in dramatic fashion.

Nervous about having enough money to survive the next few weeks.

But not really nervous about Cape Barren.

We stopped off to see dear old dad and his schizophrenic dog Rastas, in his new digs in Nowra. Rather easy to find after we dropped off at the information centre and he conveniently rang right at that moment and gave us directions with the aid of a friendly woman with a map!

After stopping off for lunch at the local club (one that I had incidentally drunk at aged 5, the first person to actually imbibe liquid there...albeit orange juice) Mauricio and I continued on our way.

We pulled into Narooma just as the sun set, and couldn't find the hotel...turned out we had passed it several times.

After several minutes of ringing the attendant turned up, smelling pungently of marijuana and looking decidedly bleary eyed. But all fine, we got signed in, and then set out down the main drag in search of food. We found that, and a nice bottle of rough red at a local pizzeria, with pictures of mandalas and Buddhas on the walls, and ate a "Souvlaki pizza", so named cause it had minced marinated lamb, feta and tzatziki on it.

Very nice actually....


Next day we went in search of Mauro's friends, the famous Bicho...who lived somewhere off the scenic drive...eventually again after driving up and down the same very long dirt track several times, and with a couple of interrupted mobile calls, we found the place.

Then we set off for Mystery bay.

Just beautiful.

After some discussion, we had a very short speech and Maria tried to open the urn so that we could distribute David's ashes on the beach...but the bloody thing wouldn't come open.


"Stubborn to the end" muttered Maria.

Finally the cap came off and most of David washed away on the next few waves, some blew.

He would have liked it I reckon.

So we waved goodbye to the rest and took off again.


Pulled into Eden for some fish and chips and petrol and refresh some memories. Then Mauro drove us over the border into Victoria...and intermittent rain. At one point a deer lumbered across the highway in front of us.

Bairnesdale was a very Stark sort of town, all car yards and industrial estates, though the hotel was nice enough. We managed to get coffee and food at the MacDonalds (ugh).

Next day continued to Melbourne, with me driving again...well for most of it.

Actually Melbourne was very nice, bit tricky to drive around with all those trams.

WE got a bit lost for a while, actually i lost Mauro for a while, incidentally while looking for a map!!!

after a few hours of wandering we headed back to the car and thence to find the airport. Cause we didn't have a tag for the tollway we had to navigate the back way...and got there eventually.

That was when the fun began!!!

$300 excess on our luggage.


Say no more.

Tired, hungry and with a splitting headache we finally set off. Oh and I saw Peter Garrett alighting from another plane.

Landing in Launceston late, we managed to get a cab to take us into town. I unsuccessfully tried to hie a car, considering that would be cheaper in the long run, but they wouldn't let me because of the provisional license, even after I explained that I had just driven 1000 km on a provisional from Sydney to Melbourne.

Nice little boutique hotel, bottom floor. Heritage building.

Off to search for food!!! 930pm on a Sunday night in Launceston...Pizza Hut and KFC only things open. Oh well.

The next day after an expensive hot breakfast, off we went to do some shopping. And went in the wrong direction. Finally got some fresh fruit and veg to take over to the Island, managed to get back to the hotel with the aid of a skew wiff shopping trolley. Then called a cab to the airport...


little plane...

and then....


WE were home.