I’m not going to blog my whole Tasmania holiday, which is a mercy to my holiday “workload” — and also to my friends, who probably don’t want me exposing our silliness to the entire world! 🙂

But I’d like to tell you about our Australia Day (26 January) in Hobart.

We had arrived in Hobart two days before and checked into a backpackers hostel. We’ve been trying to save money by living in hostels but silly me forgot to factor in the cost of three days of city parking.

We had two cars. James parked on the street, which meant that ever few hours, he would dash outside and put 90 cents into the meter. Vera’s car found its way into a paid carpark, which was convenient, secure and expensive at $12 a day. We hadn’t budgeted for that!

The ever-resourceful, ever-cunning Joel devised a grand plan to scam the carpark. We would leave the car untouched in there and use James’s car to get around Hobart. On the third day, we would show up and pretend we had lost our parking ticket. Then we’d pay the maximum daily charge of $12, instead of $36 for three days. Brilliant!

The five of us viewed this scheme with varying degrees of comfort but in the end, as long as it was Joel doing the fast talking, we didn’t mind too much.

So we had a carefree few days in Hobart wandering the docks, caving and eating steak. Then the Australia Day holiday came and it was time to leave.

When I woke up on Australia Day, James greeted us with the welcome news that we probably wouldn’t have to worry about street carparking, it being a holiday and all. Hurrah. Then I wondered whether or not the paid carpark would be open. My gut feeling was that it wouldn’t be — who would pay for parking when there was free street parking all around?

This turned out to be a crucial question because Vera’s car ended up being trapped in the carpark! What to do? We had accommodation waiting for us in Bicheno that night. We had to leave.

Our options were:

• Drive to Bicheno and waste the next day (and two lots of petrol) to come back and pick up the car.
  

• Leave Joel and Vera behind in Hobart, while Damjan, James and I went on to Bicheno. They would catch up the next day.
  

• Pay the call-out fee so that our car could be released out of hours.

In the end, we resigned ourselves to forking out the $33 call-out fee.

We called up at 9:40 AM and began waiting for the 24-hour security guard to arrive. We sat patiently in the alleyway outside. An hour passed. We had morning tea. Soon, an extended round of hackey sack began. (As the morning wore on, we all got better, so according to the Law of Global Conservation of Hacky Sack Ability, someone out there was getting much worse.)

We called the security guard for the third time. The guard informed us that he had no idea what time he could come out because he was chasing alarms across the city.

We decided to forget our frustration for a while and settle down for lunch in the nearby Franklin Square. An otherwise quiet (despondent) picnic was perked up when Damjan treated us all to ice-cream.

Finally, Joel’s call to the guard triggered good news. Hooray! The guard had arrived. Our troubles were over. We could finally get on with our holidays!

Joel and Vera skipped into the carpark. The three of us waited outside. And waited. What was happening? How long did it take to drive a car out?

Suddenly, Joel ducked out and asked if anyone had tools on them. Amazingly, James pulled out a complete toolkit from his car. What was going on?

It turned out that although the garage door was open, the boomgate was stopping Vera from driving out. We watched as Joel and the guard tried to dismantle the boomgate. Vera hovered about anxiously. To be so close, yet so far!

Finally, after half an hour, the guard was ready to leave. “Sorry, kids. Looks like the car’s going to stay here.” AAAAAARGH! We were all frustrated. There was no way we were going to pay the call-out fee after this fiasco.

“I kept waiting for the security guard to say something about the fee,” the normally easy-going Joel told me. “I was primed, primed for a confrontation. I’ve never been so mad before.” We were so going to rip into the carpark attendants the next day for wasting our holiday with their incompetence.

And so it went like this. I used my mobile to call Bicheno and cancel two of the accommodation places. Joel and Vera checked back into our Hobart hostel. After transferring maps and food to Vera and Joel, we waved goodbye and drove up to Bicheno.

Well, we reasoned to ourselves, at least we saved ourselves $33.

Joel and Vera arrived at lunch time the next day. “Well? Well? Did you tell them off, didja?” we asked.

“Erm, not exactly.” Joel looked sheepish. “It ended up costing us $60. They made us pay for parking on Australia Day too.”

“What?” we gasped. “Didn’t you yell at them for keeping our car trapped all day?”

“It was hard to. They had records of the day we came in. It was hard to act indignant and self-righteous just after they had caught us out lying about our lost ticket. So we just paid it.”

Hahaha! Oh, the irony of it!

Damjan looking despondent in front of a locked carpark.

The alleyway where we waited all morning.

Vera tries to beat the boomgate into submission.