From a Nobody to a Somebody
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2006
1
36
58
Trip End
May 03, 2007
Devonport, Australia
Saturday, January 27, 2007
So it wa just about time to put a boat into that mis. After all, life is about the journey. One of hte ker-azy things I've wanted to do since coming to Australia is to hop aboard the Spirit of Tasmania - a huge red and white ferry which chugs across the notoriously choppy Bass Strait in 10 hours flat. Wow. You can get from London to Chicago in that time. But here, you can get an overnight seat on the ferry for a $90 steal - so ker-ching! No accommodation needs for my night on the high seas thank you very much!
It was the mysticism of the Spirit of Tasmania I loved. After a cruisy Saturday in Melbourne I clambered aboard a tram marked 'Port Melbourne'. The city centre soon gives way to endless surburbia and you eventually arrive at a massive port where this eight floor ferry towers over everything surrounding it. It's like being the dog on the monopoly board. And why the dog do you ask? Because it's a universal truth that everyone wants to be the dog. The whole novelty factor is supplemented by a Captain Birdseye lookalike who magically appears from nowhere, squints at you, scratches his beard and says: "Are you travelling aboard The Spirit?" All this is done in a decibel so low it's as tough we are on a pirates' mission to trade illicit Melbourne rum in Tassie.
And the charming thing about the Spirit of Tasmania is that I could easily have been boarding the QE11. You ascend up a series of escalators and around every corber is an extra from an Officer and a Gentleman greeting you with 'Welcome Aboard'. I was going to like this.
As I lined up to get through security I got chatting to a woman who was let's say....of a pensionable age. She proudly dangled her cabin ticket in front of me and told me she expected to get a full night's sleep. She then asked me where I was sleeping...and I thought...'I have a backpack, am carrying last season's Mount Franklin water bottle with tap water in it and am wearing flip flops. Where the hell do you think I'm sleeping?!'
Anyway, 'my room' was pretty much like a cinema. But make that a cinema/room shared with about 200 others, all of whom would be staring at the blank projector screen in front of them and trying to sleep, instead of say watching Happy Feet and munching popcorn. I suspected the movie marathon wouldn't be running that night. Sigh.
So in desperation I was driven to the onboard shop to buy a women's magazine. i can't stand women's magazines at the best of times, especially when they have a 50c mark-up just because they're bought on the boat. And, of course, it's inevitable that an article on 'how to be an at home pole dancer' would send me running for cover in te bar.
Once there I met this German girl and we got chatting away about out plans for Tasmania. Before I'd even got close to remembering her name, this flash of white with yellow shoulder stripes on it suddenly appeared towards my left ear. Turns out we were invited to 'the upstairs bar' for a drink.
Now I'm blonde, but I'm not stupid. Never in a million years would I have gone up there on my own, but there were 2 of us, so we figured that we'd have one drink then make tracks. So off we went to 'the upstairs bar', which was basically the staff bar. And there we were, chatting away to the crew members when 'Simon', our third mate invitee told us we could have a cabin upgrade as there were loads of spare cabins.
Once Susan (German girl) and I had asked loads of questions and feigned interest in an -oh-so-exciting life on the ocean waves, we took our cabin keys and politely exited centre stage. Thank you and Good Night.
We tip-toed into 'the cinema' to grab our bits and pieces and saw the impoverished and needy tossing from side to side in their 90 degree upright seats. We both skipped down the aisle and high-fived each other as we exited. See ya, losers!!
Cabin 7007 was like the Holy Grail of cabins. It had its own directional plaque dedicated to it because it was - wait for it - a deluxe cabin. That's right. I was like Leo in Titanic and I'd suddenly found myself on 'the other side'. The cabin was like a hotel room - shower, chairs and TV - all topped off with a chilled bottle of champagne. It was just a shame we were feeling a little too quesy to drink it. The Bass Strait had come up with some real doozies of waves. we lay down on the bed and could feel ourselves being tossed up and down. And yup, I should probably be tried in the Court of Moet and Chandon for leaving that bottle untouched, but we didn't drink it and couldn't take it with us (quarantine rules). We ended up getting about 5 hours sleep in the end, which was considerably preferable to zero hours cinema-style sleep.
We woke up to a gorgeous sunrise over the Bass Strait with the lights of Devonport twinkling away in the distance. After making buffoons of ourselves taking pictures of our luxury abode and waving at seagulls through the portholes, we trooped past the yawning masses, who'd just been released from the cheap seats.
And how I love a story with a happy ending, because this one couldn't have been scripted any better. Ahead of me in the exit queue was 'lady of a certain age' who I got talking to the previous night. "Oh it was lovely in my cabin," she tells me. "It was meant to be for four people, but I was the only one in there and I slept like a log..........But I don't suppose you got much sleep did you? Still, you look well on it."
Not wishing to burst her bubble, I smiled politely and did a fake yawn. I'd showered, watched morning TV and had slept like a (slightly quesy) log.
I felt bloody well.
