CAMPSITE # 63 - Longford Riverside Caravan Park

Site : Longford Riverside Caravan Park

Caravan Park Rating : A solid 9 / 10

Facilities : Tasmania just continues to impress us. This caravan park is the best yet... without a doubt. The only reason it's not a 10 is because you had to pay for the showers and we were very lucky to have a great spot on the lawn under the willow trees, right on the river. There were some powered sites that you wouldn't be very excited about. But for us... it was magical.

 We had friends!! We love having friends! Ben & Soph flew in to Launceston and we were more than happy to collect them from the airport. They were to stay with us for four days... how could we possibly squeeze in the many beauties of Tasmania in just four days?! 

First things first, we needed to arrange a campsite that met “Princess Sophie’s” requirements. And I certainly wasn’t complaining. Princess Sophie had some very strong requests.. she must have flushing toilets & hot showers. Wahoo!! Soph can come and stay with us more often, because I scored a hot shower AND flushing toilets for four whole days... my body was in (clean) heaven. If it wasn’t for the demands of Princess Sophie, we would never have found such a great Caravan Park as the one in Longford, just a 20 minute drive from Launceston this riverside caravan park is absolutely blissful. As we had an unpowered site, we were blessed with paradise, right under the willow tree on the banks of the Macquarie river on lovely fluffy manicured lawns... my favourite!! Sophie can come and stay with us more often. Ben on the other hand.....

I’m only teasing! Ben is more than bearable. He certainly provides some fantastic entertainment for the rest of us but I’ll get to that in a moment. Our first day as a foursome was to go out with a BANG. Afterall, it was Sophie’s 24^th birthday. Tom and I woke up as the sun was rising to quietly attempt to blow up 45 balloons from our tent without awakening our neighbours. It was a long and hard battle but, thanks to our neighbouring sleepy heads, we got there in the end. Tom cooked us all a lovely breakfast and Princess Sophie, the birthday girl, sat in her throne (a camping chair decorated in colourful balloons) and gave orders to the boys along the way. I, of course, had to assist Sophie with her ordering and the girls managed to not lift a finger for the entire morning.. WHAT A GREAT START TO THE DAY!! As we knew our plans for the afternoon probably wouldn’t tick very many tourism boxes, we decided it was probably best to get a bit of the tourist thing out of the way for the morning.

Cataract Gorge was simply amazing. We caught a chair lift up the hill and made our way back down along the pathways. With a centre span of 308 metres, the Cataract Gorge chair lift is reputably the longest single stretch of chairlift in the world. 

When there are local festivals or functions on in a town that we are already visiting, we see it only fitting for us to join in the festivities... at least that was our excuse. The Launceston’s annual Festivale festival was just 20 minutes up the road and featured a food, wine &; entertainment festival. The four of us prepared ourselves for a rather long afternoon, with no idea of what may have lay ahead. We did the responsible thing and arranged transport to and from the event, afterall none of us were really excited about the idea of having to chauffeur the other three around. Looking back, the four of us really could have just gone to the bottle shop, bought 9 bottles of wine, put some fancy table cloths on the table and played live music in the background and stayed at the caravan park but that just wouldn’t be cricket, now would it?

We had a rather eventful afternoon but Ben’s antics definitely took the cake. We had arranged to meet up with our driver at 8:30pm to make route back to our camp site. Ben took it upon himself to make use of the 3 minutes we had spare to drain his bladder of any fluids. His mistake was his choice in location. Did he choose to disappear behind the bushes? No, no he did not. Did he choose to sneak around the back of the car park? No, no he did not. Instead, in the fashion of many other young gentlemen under the influence of (just a very small amount of course) alcohol, Ben decided it was best to just stand on the side of the street. He thought it was a little strange when two men very smartly dressed came to spark up conversation with him while he was half way through his business. But, being the polite young man he is, he of course returned the conversation. The penny finally dropped when they flashed their badges and Mr J.B.Corrigan was literally caught with his pants down and was run the riot act by two men with nothing better to do with their time. Once Sophie got involved, I’m pretty sure she was trying to talk them in to giving Ben a fine, just so we could use his felony as a talking point for the rest of the afternoon. Instead, his details were jotted down in a little black book and he received a rather stern warning. When asked if he would reoffend, Ben just shrugged his shoulders and looked at the police officers with a rather confused expression. Apparently, he’ll be serving jail time if he’s caught indecently exposing himself anywhere in Tasmania. Now, I’d like to see that!

For some reason, February must just be festival month in Tassie. The wooden boat festival was held over the weekend in Hobart. We figured, we were best off setting camp for the entire four days at one location and just commuting daily to wherever Ben & Soph wished to go. Really, we spent probably 6 hours driving and 2 hours touring but there was certainly a lot of scenery along the way for Ben and Soph to soak in all of the beauties of Tassie. The Brits in the car (everyone except me) had a real chuckle at the towns we drove through on route from Launceston to Hobart. Firstly, we ventured through Perth and then made our way down thru Melton Mowbray to Bagdad , we then crossed the Jordan River and turned in Brighton. There are so many towns in Tassie that feature an even more famous location elsewhere in the world... someone wasn’t being very original during the naming ceremonies.

 Sometimes, I wish my bladder would time itself a little better. For goodness sake!!!! The 3 minutes in the entire afternoon that we spent sitting along the riverbank and a stupid platypus just so happened to pop its head up while I was watering the horses. That’s the second bloody time Tom’s seen one and I’ve missed out. I’ve seen one platypus in my life and I was about 8 and can barely remember it. In this incidence, it swam within 5 metres from where the Troopie was parked and Tom, Ben & Soph sat with front row seats as it surfaced itself on the riverbanks. Tom says it was glorious and absolutely lovely to watch. I say it’s a stupid platypus and needs to get its timing in sync with my stupid bladder.

The day of love, Valentines Day. While others were spending their Mondays sitting behind their desks at work waiting to see whether they would receive a delivery from their loved one, the four of us where in absolute paradise. As Tom and I were so absolutely blown away by the beauties of the Bay of Fires, we thought it was only fitting to take Ben & Soph back there. And what a gorgeous day it was. We had a lovely picnic on the rock followed by a swim in the ocean. The ocean was a lot calmer for Ben & Soph’s visit than our last visit and we spent the day in awe of its beauty.

The final day of Ben & Soph’s visit, we thought it would be best spent doing a very touristy thing. Every information centre Tom and I had been in to since we first came to Tasmania, we always saw a hedge maze brochure popping up, begging for us to visit it. I had never been to a hedge maze before, and you could tell. Try as I might, I was typically the final person aimlessly lost amongst the maze being teased by her so-called-friends for not being able to find the middle. What can I say, I was just too busy appreciating the fine trimming of the hedges to find the middle. If I was totally boring like the other three, I would have just stuck together in one big group following each other and just hoping it paid off. This time, for them it paid off. But next time, they won’t be so lucky!!

Yay! I (finally) made it...

Saying goodbye always sucks. It was so hard for me to get back in that car and drive away, leaving them at the airport. I just got a little taste of what it was like to have friends around, only for them to leave such a short time afterwards. It didn’t help that I knew they were flying home to my home town. They were going back to being just a short drive away from my family & friends. They were going back to a real bed. They were going back to having a shower without wearing any thongs, having to insert any coins, and praying to god that time wouldn’t run out with a full head of shampoo not yet washed out. After feeling somewhat miserable for a short while, I realised... they were going back to the real world. And we, we weren’t going anywhere backwards. We had such a huge adventure ahead of us. It was so lovely to have friends around again and I really hope more come to visit us soon. But we, we’ve certainly got a lot more touring to do before we go... back... to the real world.