Auckland to Hobart

Once again the flight was very smooth and we arrived in Hobart ready to start our holiday. The plane was only about half full. No wonder Air New Zealand don't have many direct flights from Auckland. When we were taxiing after landing I thought the terminal building was just a service area for the airport! Not much different from a rural airport like Gisborne or Napier. No air-bridge but at least the access stairs turned out to be a ramp rather than steps. Another long walk followed along the edge of the apron to the International Arrivals building.


Once we were through immigration the next step was to get picked up by East Coast Car Rentals and collect the car.

This turned out to be more of a challenge than I had thought. My plan to save on daily roaming charges was to keep our phones in Flight Mode and use local Wi-Fi to allow us to use Wi-Fi calling to make calls since we have free calls to NZ and Aussie numbers. Not so easy! It turns out that Hobart airport's Wi-Fi does not support Wi-Fi calling. Miriam decided to try and help and turned off her Flight Mode (immediately incurring an $8 daily roaming charge) and rang the car company on her phone. Then she handed me the phone and, while waiting on hold, her phone's battery went flat. Great! Feeling quite frustrated, I decided to use Skype instead and this did let me call the rental car company.

With that sorted, we made our way to the shuttle and duly picked up the car. The guy persuaded me to upgrade to a hybrid for another $88 because the lower fuel consumption should more than compensate for this charge. This seemed like good advice so we were allocated a nearly new Toyota Corolla Cross.

Its a great car with all mod-cons including a large screen which supports Android Auto. I can now use my Sygic sat nav app directly on the car's screen instead of having my phone mounted on the windscreen.

Once we had sorted out all the paperwork, we headed into Sorell, the nearby town, to get some groceries and booze. In Australia, these have to be purchased at different shops as supermarkets can't sell booze. The beer is around twice the NZ price but that's life and we are on holiday.

We then drove the 80km to our first Airbnb accommodation at White Beach (near Port Arthur). This is a very quaint three bedroom beach Bach with everything we need (including fast Wi-Fi but not including a dish wash brush!!).


After a long day travelling, we had pre-dinner drinks (a beer and a couple of generous gins) followed by a Bachelor's Handbag (that's a supermarket cooked chook for those who don't know) and salad washed down with a bottle of Chardonnay.

Before dinner, we went for a walk to get a feel for the serenity! It was short walk to the actual White Beach where we met a young local diver who had caught some strange orange sea urchins which he was taking home for a feed. Obviously Miriam decided she would try one! Her verdict - OK , but mostly tasted like sea water.


We then spent the evening watching some YouTube music videos before retiring at around 10pm.

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