Part One...
Visiting the Island’s Island.
On this journey of haphazard events we left the Island to go to it’s Island and it’s Island’s Island, so you could say we went to this Islands’ Island’s Island. Don’t get that confused with Ireland that’s a completely different this Island and also it’s an Island off another Island where one of the travellers that joined us is from.
The original group of intrepid explorers was originally going to be Myself (TGOTI), Wonder Woman, Trenticles, Spiderpig and the people from the “mountain” family (van den Burg’s) (bones (Vanessa), skinny-giant (Marius) and their son surname-surname (Reyneke)). Somewhere along the line, The Burn (Nicola) and her daughter Thumbelina (Storm) joined in, as well as mommy-ride-to (Maryna) and The-Pom (Paul) with their daughter Thumbelina 2.0 (Caity).
All of a sardine we went from 4 (3 BMW’s & 1 Yamaha) bikes and one car (Honda Jazz) to 6 bikes ( 5 BMW’s & 1 Yamaha) and 2 cars (a Honda Jazz and a “one-times-flaming-red-hot-check-me-out-imma-inna-Mercedes-BenZ-baby”) … mommy-ride-to and The-Duke are from Sydney but we were instructed to not hold that against them as they have also been to many many countries touring on their bikes.
They have a wealth of experience traveling by bike and camping, if that’s not enough there was a promise that they would bring along with them lots of interesting stories.
I was fully prepared to become a brain-leech and absorb as much info as possible and grow my worlds view…..
Well to 101% completely honest. I was just keen to drink beer ride bikes and talk shit, but you get the idea right? Some people actually want more out of life, or so I’m told.
This certainly wont be a day by day account of what we did, if that’s what you wanted then my advice would be to consult Facebook as the clan, except for the burn did daily updates.
Day one: 😊
Previously we (wonder-woman and someone?) agreed to meet on the ferry as it takes a while to board?, aboard?, bored?, get on the boat. On the way there we needed to stop at the servo (BP) to meet the burn and put a chicken in the fridge (yes we had a fridge in our Honda Jazz). I pulled up to the servo and low and behold there was Bones, Skinny-Giant and Surname-Surname.
I pulled up next to them for a bit of a yarn. Wonder woman called to say she had forgotten to pack her Jacket and would be delayed by 15 minutes. I was not perturbed as the banter had already started and we still need to transfer said chicken.
Eventually, we decided to move on and that’s where the kak started.
Nnnhhhnnnnnn ngggghhhnnnnnnn nnhhhggggnnnnnnnn, click…..

One of the bikes would not start.
Bones’s battery was flat, she had left her heated grips on to keep her coffee warm and unbeknownst to her not only did this drain her battery but also her popularity points with skinny-giant whose eyes had narrowed into tiny slits and darted from side to side.
Surname-Surname and I (still fully kitted out in winter our twat suits) tried to push start the 110kg Skinny-Giant, while Bones, standing to one side, coffee in hand, chipped away at her popularity points. Every time we came past pushing the bike.
Somehow comments like, “Maybe you should take a longer run up?” don’t really help……Just saying…… especially when you are building up a sweat in the pants that you intend to wear for the next 10 days…..
After some unpacking , unscrewing, unbolting, connecting, starting, bolting, screwing and eventually repacking we were off. Lucky the ferry (The Spirit Of Tasmania) was an hour late……
This is not some steam boat that crosses the Vaal River carrying an old Jaloppie, 17 bicycles, 19 chickens and 40 passengers…..
AAWWHHHHH HELL No, this is a fancy rust bucket.

Some facts about this boat that you didn’t know you wanted to know are:
It’s 194 meters long (twice the length of a rugby field), it can carry 1400 people (1390 more followers than what I have on Instagram and twitter combined) and 500 cars (no Renault’s were harmed in this count).
It takes between 9 and 11 hours travelling at approximately 50km/h to travel the 429 km between Melbourne (Island 1) and Davenport (Island 2).
If you thought your Landrover was heavy on fuel sit back and balk at the 7000 liters used per hour to move this floating steel monstrosity.
(7000 * 10 = 70 000 per trip) . It has a fuel tank that holds 1,222,000 liters of fuel …..
One million hundred and twenty two hundred and two zero nil zero…… almost as much as Zuma’s Fire pool…..….. and at the current rate of $1.5 per litre of diesel is only just shy of $ 2 mil to fill up….. If you earn point on your credit card, there’s some banking blue bean points for you right there puppy.
As amazing as those facts are, education is boring if you don’t have an interesting story to tell with it. This may not be interesting but at least it’s a story. 😊
After we were aboard the boat, I called Trenticles and Spiderpig to one side and gave them $50 each with specific instructions.
Here are my almost exact words.
“Here is $50, this money is all that you are getting for the boat ride. It should cover, food, drinks and entertainment for the ENTIRE boat trip, which is only 10 hours, there is no more where that came from. Once you have spent it its gone, gonesky, finnish, done, don’t ask for more. Spend it wisely!!! Repeat after me once its gone its gone, there is no more after that”
Trenticles was like shap, shap, see you later dude I’m gonna see what’s what on this floating tub.
Spiderpig’s eyes glazed over, he walked away dragging his feet like someone had super-glued his ass cheeks together. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it’s very hard to generate static electricity on a metal boat… With that done it was time to find the bar and smash a couple beers with wonder woman and the become acquainted with the rest of the gang. Things were going swimmingly well, I was on my third beer and my personality was starting kick in like a KTM almost starting. At some point they announced that food was being served in the kitchen and for $17 you can dish as much on your plate as you can. Amazingly Spiderpig was hovering around when this happened. He shrugged his shoulders and mumbled “hurumph, I’m not that hungry anyway”.
I tried to ignore it, Wonder Woman’s eyes drifted in his direction and she was about to ask if he was feeling ill as that’s the only reason he wouldn’t be eating..
He didn’t have the pallor of a sea sick person, he did look hungry, and he was hanging around like a hyena at a lion kill.
Something was off.
Lucky for us, and you dear reader, this was not a game of “What’s wrong with Spiderpig?”
Trenticles and Thumbelina already had the answer. They volunteered this information it without any prompting. You see, in the arcade room, there was a claw machine filled with “teddys”. It’s claw reached out and hooked spiderpig luring him in, tempted by the elation of success and a fluffy toy to cling too in these turbulent seas, he tried his luck at a $1 pop , 30 times……..30 frikken times….
The boy was broke. And as far as I was concerned he was going to die of starvation on the boat.
It was like watching a national geographic documentary, when a cute hyena pup, with his adorable watery brown eyes sounds the occasional soft whine to get the attention of its mother while avoiding the bloated dominant male, he was persistent and ended up getting food from someone.
All of this drama and we were only in the middle of the bass strait which, fun fact, has an average depth of only 60m.
Eventually we landed in Davenport, it was a short 2 km ride to the accommodation that we had booked for the first night.
The kids were hungry (go figure) so wonder woman went off to get Maccas. I went off to check us in and we were going to have an early night. Standing at the check-in counter The Burn was informed that her room was not booked. She smiled, looked down at her booking paper, looked back up, back down and said “Fack”.
Her room was booked….for the day she booked the room. A month in the past…..LOL.

No problemo we can fix that. She can sleep in our room. The proprietor of the estate was happy with that and hey presto, donesky, probem solved!!
I called wonder woman to let her know the situation, our room number and the directions etc…..
Its 21:00 Saturday evening. Its been a long bat trip and I’m pretty sure that it wont be an issue. As she answers the phone all I hear is “Fuuuuuck!!!” Turns out that one of our offspring had spilt a 500ml coke in the car…….it was now my turn to say it…..“Eish”…. Everyone’s in a bad mood and its only day one…..
