Tassie 2022

Bored on Saturday, so I started looking at when the Easter and the April school holidays 2022 were on.   Easter ended up being in the middle of the school break.  So, I thought this would give us time to drive somewhere without the Easter bun fight, hunker down for long weekend then drive back.   Initially we started looking up around Myall Lake, or maybe Lake Burrendong again.

Then we noticed Anzac day was on the following Monday, followed by a pupil free day.  This really gave us 18 days off school, so maybe we could do something bigger.  Well one thing lead to another, with a brief thought of Fiji or NZ again before deciding to keep it domestic at the moment.  In no time I was looking at the Spirit of Tasmania booking site.   It seemed cheaper than I remembered. 

Anyway after a few checks, and a bit of a family discussion, after about 3hrs we all booked in and we’re off to Tassie in April 2022.  We did think about the July school holidays, but Liam was pretty firm he didn’t want to be away again on his birthday.  

This will kinda put the finish on our lap of OZ, and Liam will be able to complete his capital city bingo card by ticking Hobart off.   Justine and I had our honeymoon in Tassie, right on 20 years ago, so we’re both keen to revisit the place again too.   This has got to be the quickest we’ve gone from idea to booking ever!,  normally we’re such procrastinators.   I think being our 20th wedding anniversary helped here, maybe it’s a little bit of a present to ourselves.

The plan is a little different to normal,  I’m going to leave 2 days early and drive the van down to Melbourne, with a stop half way.  Then the overnight crossing will get me into Devonport early on the Friday morning.  We’ll take the kids out 1 day early and Justine and the kids will fly down on the Friday morning and I’ll pick them up all up from Launceston airport.  It helps that Justine was not keen on the Bass Straight crossing, so I’m kinda taking one for the team here (Boy, I’m hoping for calm seas!).  With the reverse on the way back, that gives us 20 days (18 full days on the ground) and the kids only miss 2 days of school.     We had 18 days including flights on the longer, 2nd NZ trip, so while I’d always like more, 20 days should be enough time.

The boat wasn’t as cheap in the end as I initially hoped, and more around the price I recalled. I’m not sure if they changed it or I’ve always misread the site.  I originally put in 9mtrs as the length of the van + the car details, as I’ve always done.  But on closer inspection it wanted the combined length, which ended up being 13mts and about $1000 more!   That and I ended up splurging on a private cabin to myself.  I deserve it!    So about $2200 for the boat there and back.  The return flights are just on $600, made cheaper for that fact that they won’t need to take any luggage.   Oddly, as it’s only me now, we’re saving the cost of 3 extra passengers on the boat.  This meant that the price of the flights really only added about $20 to the overall cost.    

We did briefly, and mainly for comparison, look at hiring a motorhome, but quotes came in at $8,000-9,000, yes that’s right  Nine Thousand Dollars!  Add to that the cost of flights for all 4 of us with baggage, we think taking the van is much better value.   Not to mention we also have a separate 4WD so we can make day trips a little easier.

So now we’ve got time to plan the overall itinerary, I’d like to say 5 months, but in reality we probably need to book something, if at least only for Easter soon.  It’s all pretty exciting……