I had delayed booking our flights, hoping against hope that they would magically get cheaper. Alas it was not to be and the only flights left that were reasonably priced were not well timed. A 730 am flight from Sydney to Launceston meant a very early start for us. 3 am to be exact for a 330 am departure as it was a 2+ hour drive to Sydney.

The drive was fairly uneventful, the kids thankfully slept, I, thankfully, didn’t. We got to the car park at the airport with, what I thought was, plenty of time. Once we parked and got our gear out we had to catch a bus to the terminal. This is where we encountered some issues. The blue Emu car park has free buses that are supposed to run on the regular. For some reason we had two buses within view that had stopped between bus stops. We waited. And waited. And waited. For 15 effing minutes. When we finally got on the bus we then stopped at every bus stop in the car park, even when there was obviously no-one there. We had parked near bus stop B, it went up to at least S. The funnest part was when we got to the exit and the bus stopped for five minutes for…reasons? Needless to say I was feeling a little stressed by the time we got to the terminal.

As we got checked in they made the ‘check in closing in 5 minutes’ call. We had no time to grab breakfast as we had to head straight for the gate to board, which of course was miles away. The flight had just started boarding when we got to the gate and I didn’t really relax until we were on the plane.

I managed to doze, fitfully, whilst the girls got super excited about the clouds.

The taxi ride to our hotel was rather interesting. The driver was a friendly enough guy, but he was talking to his wife on the phone and would then ask me random questions, whilst he was still on the phone to his wife. I was never really sure who he was talking too, so I panicked and decided the best course of action was to ignore him.

We were a bit early to check in at the hotel but they let us stash our packs so we could go, unencumbered, on the lookout for some breakfast. It was Sunday morning in Launceston, and pretty much every place was shut. Sadly Maccas was the safest bet, so we trudged our way there. After a big breakfast and passable coffee I felt vaguely human again and we spent the rest of the morning/early afternoon strolling around town, picking up some supplies at Woollies, getting another pair of socks for Ellie etc. All in all we walked about 5km.

The walk back to the hotel was a little annoying as it was at the top of a long hill. I know I will be walking up and down hills and mountains when we start the overland track, but I was expecting that.

There is nothing worse than unexpected hills.