Big city lights

In the act of getting off the Spirit of Tasmania in Melbourne we discovered just how much we had slowed down to Tasmanian-rural/wilderness-time. It should have been very obvious to us that we would struggle with Melbourne a little when we arrived in Launceston at about 5pm the day before and found it very busy and the traffic all a bit much.

Driving Elsie through busy Melbourne roads and negotiating the trams for the first time ever was pretty stressful. Just ask Tim who was driving. Nic meanwhile was giving the Jesus-bar a bit of a workout.


But we managed to negotiate the city relatively unscathed, we just increased our stress levels significantly. Which we weren’t that happy about, given how hard (!?!) we have worked to create our very chilled-out demeanours!!

To minimize further stress risk we checked into a hotel in St Kilda, somewhere we’d visited before but never in depth. A funky, happening kind of place (especially if you’ve just spent 2 months in Tasmania!)

It was fantastic to catch up with old friends in Melbourne, and to meet new friends (babies)! And thanks especially to Julie Red for hosting a bunch of people at her place so we could catch up with a whole heap of people all at once. But ultimately, we were both pretty happy to leave the city and get back to a much quieter life, and in particular one that doesn’t involve spending so much money. Where does money go when you are in a city? It just bleeds out of your wallet doesn’t it?