After arriving in Devonport, we made our way slowly through customs, and headed out to the Adventist campground just south of the main city. I had organised for us to stay there a few days earlier, to make sure that we could get in etc. We turned up at the gate to find that there was not a soul there. Not one other person staying in the whole campground. We chose a spot under a tree for shade and hooked up to the power. No electricity! I thought I would go and check out the rest of the facilities only to find the amenities block locked, the laundry closed and nobody answering the telephone at the office. So we set about a night of free camping.
The next morning I set about finding out if there was, in fact, any electricity to the whole site, and found that there were a couple of remote locations where you could toast some crumpets and make a reasonable breakfast of it. We had access to the toilets and showers and some electricity, but then the water ran out. It was after lunch on that someone came and made sure the pumps were operating so we had town water supply.
By the time the Spences arrived we had the place sorted and it was good to catch up with them after a week away. There was time to get going on the schoolwork we missed in Melbourne and enough space to get in plenty of cricket practice for the boys too. Isaac and Elijah went blackberry picking and came back with a pretty tasty haul.
We went to see the Lillico penguin colony, just northwest of the town, in the evening when the parents come ashore to feed their babies. The baby penguins came out of their holes once darkness fell and milled around waiting for a feed. We waited until it was almost completely dark and a few penguins did come ashore. Isaac had a great time asking a lot of questions of the volunteers who were quite pleased to share their knowledge with such an interested young man. They gave us a few postcards and a poster after most folks had left to show how much they enjoyed it! Unfortunately, Sascha was in the grip of a cold prodrome and was pretty keen to get to bed and Dom just wore out so we were all a bit rough around the edges by the time we all got into bed that night.