It was the beginning of January 2022. We had been planning and discussing our transition from working full-time to becoming grey nomads for one and a half years. We needed something decisive to give us focus. What could it be? In the past, booking flight tickets often had done the trick. Once the ticket was booked, the journey became a reality. Now, we wouldn’t use a plane but the ferry to Tasmania. So we booked the Spirit of Tasmania for 15 November. As we found out, the ferry tickets are in high demand. Making changes to existing bookings is hardly possible during summer except if you are okay with postponing your travel for up to several months.
So, the date was more or less fixed and became our guiding light throughout the year. In the middle of October, the week before we left, a flooding crisis started to unfold in NSW and Victoria, the two states we had to cross. What did that mean for our plans? We held our nerves and left as planned three weeks before the ferry date. You can read more about this here.
So what was it like to go on the ferry? We had a look at it the day before departure. There it was, the massive new ship that could take hundreds of vehicles across the Bass Strait. Fittingly, the weather was very Tasmanian – cold and fickle, switching from sunny to overcast to wind gusts and rain.
We saw that cars and caravans were lined up hours before boarding time and decided to do the same. It was fun standing in line and chatting with other nomads. It was exciting! I felt like a kid – it was decades ago that I had last been on a ferry to an island.
We took the overnight ferry and had a small cabin at the bow with a porthole and a compact shower/toilet bathroom. People had warned us that the ride could be terrible with the recent storms. But mostly it was magical: gliding across Port Phillip Bay at dusk, the city lights at the horizon, and once we had passed through the heads, the ocean rocking us – not too badly. Falling asleep looking at the southern constellations of stars in the night sky.
There was one scary moment: when the ferry left the bay and met the ocean. Huge breakers smashed against the hull with loud bangs; the ferry heaved in the waves. But it all settled down after a while. Woken by general announcement at 5.30 am, we disembarked an hour later at the city of Devonport shining in the crystal-clear, cold morning.
Liz Mike Travels 