Working down to the wire, packing at the last minute to head to the airport. Had a bit of the “hope i packed adequately”-itis as heading out, but oh well – worst case scenario I hear they have shops down south.

Drink in the lounge  followed by the short flight from Melbourne (a *lot* shorter than the boat – Jessie said about 11 hours and then a 3hr drive to Hobart – she says she’s not sure if she slept or not, but was pretty tired at the end). The approach into Hobart is pretty impressive (as was the approach into Dunedin a few weeks ago) where you get hills, mountains and trees and not much sign of people. It’s also just great fun to fly into an airport you haven’t flown into before.

Hobart airport is pretty small, but sure enough, you can land a 737 there. Bag came right off the carousel (like the fourth one off) and was out the door in no time. Brilliant.

Oh, and the planes do a u-turn on the runway – there isn’t a taxiway for the whole length. All the stairs also roll up to the plane and it’s sorta like “the terminal is that way” when you get off :)

I got to have the interesting experience of getting picked up by your own car in a different place after just having gotten off a plane. Weird. But nice, as then you don’t have to futz about with a cab or a bus or subway.

Met her brother Mark again – I think we met breifly once in Melbourne… I think…. like for a minute as he was heading out after visiting Jessie. I think… could be wrong. Also met her mother – which was certainly a first. She’s who we’d be staying with for some of the trip. I wonder how Michael will go with the meeting of the gf’s mother? Probably one of the longest relationships without mother meeting among our group.

From what I recall the main events of the rest of the evening was driving home (where home is in New Norfolk – about 30mins out of Hobart – so about 45 from the airport) and dropping Mark off on the way. Had some tea and went to bed (after making some rudimentry plans for the morning)