Five go driving around Tasmania

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December 1983 if memory serves me right.

We were in boarding school by then. I think that it was the last big holiday before BushBabe's last year of school - or maybe it was a year either way?

Anyway, I was at that rather gangly age where society and I weren't gelling all that well, and my beautiful mother decided she would try to make my awkwardness better by getting a local dressmaker to make me some clothing that would make me feel that much more uncomfortable out and about all over the nation.

It took a full day of driving for us to get to Brissy, where we stayed with the wonderful Grandma Mart.

She met us at the door, cigarette holder in one hand, hat and gardening gloves in the other.

Several times she stressed the importance of booking two taxis to get us to the airport at 5. There were two very good reasons for her not to offer her services.

The first was she had only obtained her licence the decade prior, in her sixties and newly widowed, and coming back from the airport into Brisbane peak hour traffic required a level of insanity it took years of practice to even attempt.

And the second was she didn't do Five AM.

However the taxi telephonist and Dad knew better, so it was at the ungodly hour of five am that we learned what Grandma was trying to save us from.

Whilst the taxi did indeed have five passenger seats, it also had newly converted to LPG per new taxi legislation, which meant that approximately half of his bootspace had been given to the tanks.

For a moment the taxi driver and Dad both believed that they could convince Mum to leave half of the luggage behind rather than look for a better solution.

When we got to Launceston, however, it turned out that the hire car was a sedan. Mum had not had a sedan for years for good reason. She was an awesome packer of cars but preferred to err on the side of more than enough room rather than anything resembling minimalism.

The thing about Launceston is there is so much history involving sinking buildings - PLUS it rained so much that the buildings that we were in felt like they were sinking.

The drive South involved a lot of historic sights, and then Port Arthur (pre-massacre but still gruesome enough) and the arguments regarding the Casino.

Nowhere else had a Casino in the country at the time, so Dad was petitioning Mum for them both to attend, as he didn't want to attend alone. Mum was pulling the "but I am a mother of children and I never could leave them alone" card. BushBabe threw in her offer to accompany Dad and pretend a 3-15 month older.

Again, nobody won.

Rounding the bottom of Tasmania, we drove through amazing forests with strange little timber towns that travellers dare not stop for fear of the locals.

One experience that I will never forget is rounding one corner of those woody hills to the stark nudity of the hills around Queenstown, Tasmania. Due to some fallout from mining - or the industry surrounding it - vegetation had all fled. It was cold and windy and miserable and the car was silent for the Queenstown to Strahan leg of the journey.

The Gordon below Franklin argument had just been had, and even hardened country voters had paid attention to the plight.

All I remember of the cruise that we went on is seeing some more historical sites, relics of man's inhumanity to man.

All I remember of the last leg of our journey was there were poppies - and big signs saying not to stop. I got apple perfume from somewhere.  Oh, and Mum nearly got blown down by the draft of a big truck and someone had snails or spatchcock or something French and fiddly at an overly dark restaurant.