Saturday, 2 November 2013
Trust me, I'm not one of those folks who get towards the end of a trip and doesn't want it to end. Living in what amounts to a sort of timeless continuous present, as one stream of events starts to wind down, I tend to look forward to the next batch of interesting occurrences rather than hoping the current stream can go ad infinitum.
For a start, I need to get home and see what can be done in terms of winging the sort of substantial Melbourne Cup trifecta that might allow us to spend extended spells in the Tasmanian autumn and/or spring.
Then there's the minor difficulty associated with completing the current Travelogue and getting it up on the website with day by day sections on the LHoC Hits the Road Blog, which meant I started the day around six, tapping out the Travelogue and checking the email in the early morning gloom is a room that seems much smaller than the Orana House website led me to believe.
With all that in mind and an afternoon devoted to flying to Townsville with a two-hour stopover in Brisbane and a Blue Bug that needed to be returned to the car rental people by midday the Day Thirteen agenda was fairly straightforward.
One might have been tempted to sleep in and start the process of readjusting the body clock from Daylight Saving to Eastern Standard time, but a five day gap between the reasonably complete Travelogue details and Saturday morning meant a six o’clock start was followed by around an hour and a half catching up on the backlog.
In fact, I was up well before six, and started by scanning the email with one more task that needed to be tackled before the actual writing began. Last night’s dinner at the Beltana had been accompanied by a rather good Sauvignon Blanc from Stefano Lubiana that would more than justify a visit to the vineyard.
We’d passed the vineyard, which is situated just west of Granton in the Derwent Valley, on Day Three, and, possibly, if we hadn’t been waylaid by the futile quest for Bridgetown, could have called in then, but we didn’t. Checking the website revealed the place was open to the public between 11 and 3, Sunday to Thursday, and doesn’t necessarily open on public holidays either so that put the kibosh on that little notion.
So, having ruled out the only new option, there was around an hour and a half devoted to tapping out the Travelogue in the early morning gloom is a room that seems much smaller than the Orana House website led me to believe. Lada, the only B&B operator I've encountered who shares a name with a Soviet era motor vehicle, had informed us breakfast would be available in the Iris Room between eight and nine.