way oh a-weigh

Today was B's birthday, which we celebrated in exemplary fashion... if by that you mean swimming, 500 metres again, and tent scrubbing and packing and weighing all our stuff (and us)and um... going to buy another McGyver crate, cause we don't fit.
But in another sense it was a real milestone day with us finally getting our Ferry booking to the island. We used Skype Out and the sound quality was great -like chatting to someone across the room - which is a little bizarre when this person has a strong Australian accent. We... made her day I think. Barbs starts with "I'm calling from South Africa... which was probably not your everyday sheep-and-cattle move call. "We're a freight company, we don't take passengers."
"Yes, we know, we want to take a, um, whatchallit, ute to the island."
"Oh. well it'll be 800 and something return." Barbs: "We don't want return tickets."
Kindly woman speaks slowly (you know, as if to South Africans)"You do need a return..."
Barbs: "We're moving to the island. We're going to live there."
(moment of stunned silence, followed by a snort of laughter hastily contained. "That'll be quite a change for you."
Heh. It will be. By the time we had explained that we couldn't give her a length for the Ute because we hadn't bought it yet, and that while we could give her our phone number, calling it would cost her rather a lot, she was sounding as if she was going to say 'curiouser and curiouser' in an Alice tone. She was laughing as she put down the 'phone ;-). Australia it seems, plainly lacks sufficient loony South Africans, a task I will manfully undertake or you for 4 years (after that you will have make do with loony ex-South African new Australians.)
We'll be sailing from Lonnie not Bridport on the 13th.