Day 51: Greens Beach to Devonport to the ferry

More beautiful Tasmanian water: Bass Straight

On our last day in Tasmania we drove east as far as we could at Greens Beach (not far), parked, and walked on the Beach. Then we drove to the end of the road in the nearby Narawntapu National Park, out to the west of where we’d slept. From there we walked a short way out to a lookout on the coast, overlooking Badger Beach. Another gorgeous beach, but we didn’t feel the need to walk on it too!

Badger Beach

We then took off for our final destination in Tasmania, the place it had all begun: Devonport. We had a lunch date there with a mutual friend from our uni days, someone we hadn’t seen since the mid 90s. She was on her lunch break, so it was a fast and furious, yet good catch up.

Final beach walk in Tassie: Greens Beach

Then we still had hours to kill because the ferry was scheduled to depart around sunset. We filled up with petrol, encountering the only petrol station on our entire journey with a roof too low for our 3.25 m high home-on-wheels. We were problem solving this very thing when one of the staff (or owner?) ran out and told us about the roof (several vehicles had run into it in recent times).

Then we headed to a familiar-type destination: a seaside park with free parking. We were not the only ones doing this: several other motorhomes came and went during our hours there. We went for a short walk out onto a jetty, admiring a final seaside view, before we headed to the ferry.

Looking across the mouth of the Tamar River to
Low Point where we stayed earlier in our journey.

While we waited in a car park-shaped line to board the ferry we watched the sun go down and listened to the audio book we had only a few “pages” left to finish. It was a nice ending to our time in Tassie.

Our final Tasmanian sunset: over Devonport

Driving onto ferries is interesting in a tall vehicle. We, along with others our height, squeezed between the lower deck, the side of the ship, and a movable deck on our right. It was tight. The vehicle ahead of us nearly stripped the top right side of his van by veering too far away from the side of the ship and into the deck that was lower than the top of his vehicle (and ours). When you’re used to driving a car you don’t easily think about where the top of your vehicle is located in space.

Mersey River, Devonport

Then we packed our bags quickly in the dim lighting of the bowels of the ferry and headed upstairs to our cabin for the night. We enjoyed a similar meal to the one on the way over: a pie and salad followed by ice cream, all bought from a little shop that reminded us of Japanese convenience stores.

If you enlarge you can see our motorhome and
in the distance is the ferry we would later board.

We hadn’t had a quiet day for over 10 days by this point, so were very tired. In the latter part of our journey it was common for us to go to bed around 8.30, lights out by around 9.30. Part of that was fatigue, but also cold in our unheated van. We sat out in the quiet reading room for a while until the ferry felt cool. I wonder if someone turned the air con down to encourage people to retreat to their cabins for the overnight journey? We slept well, if a bit short, due to being awoken early for disembarking the next morning.

Reading room on ferry