Melbourne and the ferry

Wednesday 16th Augutst 2026

Nina and I enjoy coffee in her sunroom, people watching on the fairly busy street on which she lives.

I cook a rather good scrambled eggs (even if I do say so myself) for breakfast and we continue chatting. 

I do a few chores for Nina as she's somewhat invalided after her surgery and very restricted in what she's able to do at the moment. I certainly don't want my visit to her to generate any extra work at all for her. 

I leave in good time to allow for any traffic delays to travel to the Spirit of Tasmania terminal to board the old Spirit for presumably the last time. 

As Murphy would dictate there are no delays or diversions apart from my missing a right-hand turn because I'm on the service side road rather than the road itself and I cannot turn right, so I end up going through the Westgate tunnel which I thought I would be able to avoid. Still the tunnel is better than the bridge.

The check-in process is, of course, tedious. The security officer checking me determines that the quarantine officer needs to speak to me because I have some fruit which I plan to eat on board and she fills out a form and marks my car as needing checking at the other end, which is fine but it seems to be a new process. I comment about this and she tells me it's because people don't follow the rules. And certainly I agree, we don't need mainland fruit bought into Tasmania without being appropriately checked, treated and quarantined. 

I eventually move from my queue in the shed to queue outside in the waiting area. By 5:00 there seems to be some boarding action so hopefully I won't have to wait too much longer. 

Onboard and settled into my cabin, I procure a glass of bubbles and with it consume the blueberries that necessitated the quarantine notice for inspection in Devonport.

Apart from passing the Heads and a while thereafter, sailing was fairly smooth.