We managed to get into Launceston last night about 8:30pm. It took an hour of stuffing around at the Eurocar desk to get our car, first of all they'd stuffed up the car seat booking and given us two baby seats. This is despite me ringing up a week ago to expressly confirm we didn't want baby seats. Nevermind, we eventually got to our accommodation at the Penny Royal Leisure Inn. It's an interesting room, every floorboard creaks and groans, the aircon spits water at you. But it's comfortable.
The kids took a while to get to sleep, then an hour after Beth was asleep she woke up crying for no reason that she could explain. And then lots of coughing and howling. Ugh. Eventually she got to sleep again though. Theo meantime was just fast asleep. By the time we'd gotten to our hotel though it was "midnight" for the kids on NZ time. So they did a pretty amazing job. I mean don't get me wrong, they were annoying as all get-out in the drive from the Airport to the accommodation. But they did a good job overall.
Now we're here in the morning after a good nights sleep, we're going to go and see the seahorses and platypuses today!
Hours pass.
Ok now we're at the Madsen Retreat in Penguin, after having left Launceston this morning. We checked out of the Penny Royal and went into town to find some breakfast, once we'd had that we drove to Beauty Point then stopped in to visit SEAHORSE WORLD. Yes, a World of Seahorses. It was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be, the tour was fun and interesting, we learnt that they grow seahorses to sell them around the world for Aquariums, plus all sorts of other seahorse/fish related things. It was really cool, Beth/Sarah really enjoyed it, Theo did for about 15 minutes before it all got too boring for him.
Once we've finished looking at Seahorses we went right next door to Platypus World. This was pretty neat too, not quite as interesting for me as Seahorse world but still quite interesting. We got to see the Platypus swimming around in their enclosures, then we got to sit down with some echidnas while they snuffed about and ate some food. Theo was pretty much quite over this too, mostly he was really interested in what he would be allowed to buy at the shop afterwards. When he was finally given the chance to buy something there was a lot of sadness because "I just don't know what to buy" over and over again! Argh.
Once he'd decided what to buy, and Beth had, we went and had some lunch, then drove to Penguin, where we are at the moment. We arrived at our accommodation (Madsen) and then went down to the Penguin beach for a bit, to see if it's as it used to be. Not much has changed, there's a few new buildings, there's a lot of old ones. I found the old pub that I stayed in with David Bowerman and hmmm, someone else, back when I worked at the Police.
Anyway we played on the playground for a bit, then went for an icecream, then went down to the beach. Beth found a seasponge and played with it for about 2 minutes, then was utterly grief stricken when we explained that she couldn't take it back to New Zealand. In the end we got her to throw it back into the sea, telling her that she'd done the right thing for the sea spounge. Then she told us she'd given it a kiss and a cuddle before throwing it away. I mean we tried to calm her, but far out what a reaction to a sea sponge. It wasn't alive, it was a dried up seasponge. Writing about it now it doesn't seem funny, but it kinda was. I mean not for Beth, but it just went from 0 to crazy in 2 minutes. Should we be worried about these intense attachments to inanimate objects?
We came back home and had a relax, then some dinner. The seasponge seems to be forgotten about, though we fear it may be bought up again tomorrow. I went down and got Sarah and I pizza, I bought a box of Jimmy B's finest, though they're now 4.6% instead of 5% which means they've fucked with the recipe. I knew it tasted different last time I was in Tassie.
Time for bed now anyway, the kids are finally sleep in their room (Theo's on the top bunk, I hope that goes OK!) and I'm knackered.
Tim
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