Tasmania to Tokyo – Cradle Mountain – Day 15 can be found here.
We’re met this morning with cooler temperatures and a generous dollop of rain. It’s almost as though Tasmania is gently saying, “It’s okay. You can go. We’ll be here when you’re ready to come back.”
We need a bit of a push. It’s been a fantastic trip, and we’re sad to be leaving – but we’re also excited about the next leg and boarding the Silver Moon, where we’ll be able to unpack for 47 days. (Yes, there is a mid-journey voyage to Angkor Wat in there, but we’ll be taking a stripped-down set of carry-ons rather than our full battle rattle.)
But first we need to get to Melbourne, which meant one last round of carefully rolling clothes and weighing each of our bags to ensure that we don’t run afoul of Qantas’ extra-particular weight requirements – namely that carry-ons not exceed 14 kg in total, with a maximum of 10 kg per bag. We follow our previous recipe with minimal changes. No sense in trying to reinvent the wheelie-bag.
We self-cater one last breakfast, do a run out to the recycling bin, and then it’s time to load up Stay Puft the Rental Van:
The drive from Cradle Mountain to Launceston Airport should take roughly two hours. We budget 15 minutes for check-out, but they just want our key cards. I ask if they could print a physical receipt, but they promise to e-mail one instead. Easy enough.
The Cradle Mountain Wilderness Village has a whole preamble they provide when checking in that says we should raise issues in advance rather than tank them in the ratings. I meant to mention the dirty carpets, but I’ll just put it in the review – we’re still going to give them a 9 out of 10 though I will say that price does factor into that. At roughly AUD$500 per night for all four of us, this place was a heck of a deal.
And – apart from an occasional carpet smudge – everything was great. The furniture was comfortable, the dishes were clean, the kitchen was functional, and the shower had both unlimited hot water and solid pressure. We’ve stayed in much more expensive accommodations that lacked several items on that list.
Time to hit the road:
Rain comes and goes, but it’s not heavy enough to compromise the roads. Nor is it cold enough to start the tires skidding. (Biggest safety tip for anyone driving in cold weather climates – use winter tires for anything below 7 Celsius or 45 Farenheit. Otherwise your tires turn into hockey pucks…)
The weather eventually clears up:
Our phones’ cell service seems to drift in and out, but my wife is able to find a gas station right on the outskirts of the airport. We stop there to re-fuel and empty garbage. Good thing we had unlimited mileage on this rental – we racked up almost 1,000 kilometers (550 miles) over the past 10 days.
We then drive in to the airport, where the Rental Car Dropoff is clearly signed. It is here that we say farewell to our much-loved and much-maligned Stay Puft.
You were the best of the terrible cars – I will miss the way you carry vast amounts of luggage, but not the manner in which you beeped whenever we got within a foot of road markings
There is a key dropbox on the outskirts of Arrivals, though I opt to drop the keys at the desk just to be thorough. Several of the car rental agencies also have small kiosks set up in the parking lot, but not Budget. Ah, well – they made up for it by having the cheapest rental van by several hundred dollars.
Over to the check-in kiosks, where we go through the usual song and dance of printing and applying our own baggage tags. I’m not sure why Qantas waits until after printing the first tag before asking whether I want to print additional tags – why not just start by asking how may tags I want to print?
It’s here that we receive some chilling news. Apparently our carry-on bag limit is capped at 7 kilograms on this flight, and not the 10 kilograms we were expecting. Surely the kiosk is wrong. Right?
We soon have our bags tagged and over at the self-service bag drop. The first conveyor belt seems unable to scan our bags, but the second works fine. We are again on the hook for some AUD$120 in overage fees, and the machine notes that there are no guarantees that our overweight bags will be loaded on this particularly flight. But what can we do but cross fingers and hope?
We pay the overage at the kiosk – as simple as scanning a QR code and paying via Apple Pay – and then head on through security. No line-up, which helps ratchet the stress levels down a notch. We don’t have to remove liquids, either, though any bag with multiple laptops has have one of those laptops removed. Unfortunately, that bag has already been sent through security. Oops.
We do run into an issue on this flight, as our son’s compass from his geometry kit has too sharp a point to be allowed onto the flight. They initially offer to remove the tip, but instead we offer to let them discard the entire compass. We have others back home, and the odds of him needing it for this trip are somewhere between slim and nil. Kudos to the Launceston Airport for their sensitive security system!
Once through security, we look to find a spot for lunch. We end up at Gatty’s Bar and Kitchen – with a whopping 2.9 stars on Google Reviews – but they are the only option that has something for everyone.
Photo Credit: Launceston Airport
The kids like their burgers:
Though my fish and chips seems somewhat lacking, particularly for it’s almost AUD$30 price tag:
But service is quick, coffee is decent, and they don’t put anything they shouldn’t on the kids’ burgers. Good enough.
While dining, we do a bit more digging regarding the ominous carry-on weight limits and discover that this flight is on a Dash 8 run by QantasLink. So no wheelie bags in the overhead bins. They’ll need to be gate-checked instead.
The diminutive plane in question
We’re not quite sure what that means for us – will we have to pull out our electronics? Are the wheelie bags still subject to a 7 kilogram maximum? We do a bit of research and it looks like the only prohibited items are loose batteries and power banks so we’ll have to ask someone at the gate. (We do not want to be the people doing the walk of shame, like those at the Galapagos airport who’d left electric toothbrushes in the their gate-checked bags and had to be called up to retrieve them.)
It might take us a while to get an answer – the boarding gates are deserted. We wait a while, and I pull the batteries out of my camera bag. Eventually a gate agent shows up and we confirm, all computers and other electronics can remain in the bag. Phew!
Boarding starts soon thereafter. Our wheelie-bags are gate checked, and we board the plane in record time – allowing us to depart roughly 10 minutes early.
Farewell, Tasmania!
It’s a quick flight. There’s barely enough time to hand out salty snacks and beverages – including free beer! – before it’s time to prepare for landing.
There’s some turbulence, but nothing too onerous.
Hello, Melbourne!
We recover our gate-checked bags in short order, and then it’s off to baggage claim. Small hitch here as the actual exit to baggage claim is poorly signed and we end up going right past it. But we soon realize our mistake. Bags are out a few minutes later – even the heavy ones.
We book an Uber, join the Uber line, and await our ride which is roughly 5 minutes away. (And yes, you do need to book an Uber before you join the Uber line – there was an attendant checking with passengers as they went!)
We booked another Uber Max, and have no issues loading our bags into a cavernous Honda Odyssey:
Then it’s a 30 minute drive from Melbourne Airport to the Pullman. Cost of the Uber Max is AUD$85, compared to the AUD$80 taxi fare estimated by the Pullman asked if they organized airport shuttles. (They do not.)
We soon arrive at the Pullman – though we almost go into the Mercure Welcome Melbourne by accident. The Pullman is down the alley, and around the back.
They have an automatic check-in system, but with multiple rooms we elect to check in at the front desk. We’re pleased to hear that our rooms are as we’ve requested. We also gain two free bottles of wine by skipping tomorrow’s cleaning. It’s a good trade in our opinion, particularly since we’ve only just gotten in.
It takes two elevators to get our gear up to our rooms. And what rooms they are:
As always, it feels glorious to finally drop our bags.
They’re even connecting. And an interesting touch from the Pullman – a foam sound dampener placed between the two rooms:
Not sure if the Pullman was supposed to have removed that before we arrived? Still, a thoughtful idea – I’m sure much appreciated by single-room customers who end up in interconnecting rooms.
We drop bags, and take a bit of time for reading / writing / relaxing.
Pleasant view from up here:
Then – time for dinner!
Off to the Ginger Olive tonight, as it has the unique qualifications of having previously been voted Melbourne’s best barbeque and being within easy walking distance.
We plunge into Melbourne’s teeming streets, with their own distinctive pace and character:
Along the way, we spot a line of fans queuing for a show. A bit of Googling reveals that they are lined up to see The Rasmus at Max Watt’s. Wonder if we’ll be close enough to hear any of their show…
We carry on down Melbourne’s sun-dappled streets – occasionally getting rained on:
And soon we arrive at the Ginger Olive:
Photo Credit: Ginger Olive
We start with drinks. I have the Midori Illusion:
As our daughter put it, “It looks like your drink would glow in the dark.” It’s nice, but very sweet.
While my wife has an Aperol Spritz:
Tough to decide what to have for dinner tonight. We’re tempted by the sharing platter but most of us end up going for the beef tenderloin instead:
While my wife has the chicken:
It’s all exceptional – the sauces, the mashed potatoes, the quality of the meats. Very glad we had our first meal here.
The kids spotted a Ben & Jerry’s on the way up, so they stop their for dessert – they each get a kids’ cone of half-baked (not pictured).
I snap a few more photos along the way:
And then it’s officially time to crash out for the night. Glad to be here, but we are wrecked!