It's Time For A Holiday

Here I was thinking the dog loved us, and then his owners came home and he made it abundantly clear that all along we had been nothing but place holders. Grappling with doggie rejection we said goodbye to our jetlagged home owners, left them to fight off the loving attentions of a needy (and flatulent) 66kg puppy, and took ourselves off to the comforts of the Glenelg Comfort Inn for the night.

Glenelg was in full summer mode. The Ferris wheel was up;

the jetty was busy with fishers and teenagers daring each other to jump into the water;

and the palm trees had dressed up in fairy lights.

Not that I saw much of Glenelg. We were up way too early and on a plane to Melbourne.  I watched the sun rise from the plane, or I would have, had I had a window seat which I did not. I sat in the aisle seat instead and during take-off I held hands with a woman who was exceedingly nervous but trying very hard to hide her fear from her daughter. Not that her daughter cared and, given she had her face smooshed against the window in order to fully experience lift-off, she didn't share her mother's nervousness in the slightest.

My hand-holding buddy took this photo for me.

Not that I saw much of Melbourne either, spending exactly 8 minutes in the airport: just long enough to run pell-mell from one gate to the other and catch a plane to Hobart. I didn't have to hold anyone's hand on that plane, and I had a wondow-seat neighbour who was nice enough to let me lean across and take the odd photo myself.

Goodbye Victoria.

Hello Tasmania.

Yes, that's right. We got tired of looking after other people's houses while other people went on holidays, so we got some of the holiday action for ourselves and took ourselves on a Tasmanian adventure the first part of which (after the planes) was driving a very nice hire car up to the top of Mt Wellington for a stickybeak.  

Back when I lived in Hobart 30+ years ago, the top of Mt Wellington was pretty much a rock (lots of rocks, actually), a viewing platform, and a hikers hut. You could stand on a rock and look at the view and have the place to yourself.  Now we  shared the place with lots of tourists all wanting to stand on rocks and look at the view and take lots of photographs. 

I can't complain: I did it too 

The view from the top of Mt Wellington was very nice, if a bit hazy. There were lots of mountains,

and Hobart away down beside the Derwent River.

Tasmania was partaking of its version of the heat wave affecting Australia, so we enjoyed a sunny day with benign 22C temperatures and a crisp little wind.  We looked at views and stood on rocks and eventually, having exhausted all the possibilities of Mt Wellington that could be achieved without hiking boots, drove back down the hill to the Hobart City Apartments where I settled in to polish of the last hours of my mandated Professional Development and Roger went shopping for breakfast and all the things we had forgotten to bring with us to Tasmania.

Home for a couple of nights.

Mt Wellington from the Hobart waterfront.