Tas - Launceston

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After having a good night’s sleep as it was so quiet here, we took the tent down as quickly as possible to avoid taking spiders and other creepy crawlies with us! I think we got it down in 5 mins - record time!
We drove down to the shower area again and had breakfast before heading to Launceston ( pronounced here as Lon-ces-ton! )
Our first stop was Halls Falls just off the A3. There was a lovely one hour return walk to these waterfalls so a nice way to start the day! The water drops from a man-made weir made by the tin miners a good few years ago! There are also huge trees, felled over 100 years ago here by early settlers. It was a beautiful walk through the forest.
We left by 10.30am and carried along the long windy roads ( well at least they aren’t straight and boring!) to Legerwood. Here are some amazing wood carvings in remembrance of the soldiers who lived here. A row of trees was planted on the 15th Oct 1918. In 2004 the trees dies and instead of cutting them down and replanting them, a local artist decided to carve them with a chainsaw! The carvings are all men from the village telling different stories and how they died - a must see!
We then carried on through Scottsdale to Lillydale Falls. The description we had made it sound alot better than it was - a 5min walk from a picnic area to a small waterfall, a bit disappointing.
We arrived in Launceston around 2pm. Stopped at the I centre to get some info on what to do in Launceston and Devonport. There was a lot to do in the area and up the River Tamar, including seeing the small towns of Exeter and Sidmouth! But as we had been driving all day we gave it a miss. Launceston was really disappointing, not much to do there at all so we decided to go and find the campsite. The first campsite we got to, the one we were intending to stay at was $38 a night for just a tent! So we drove on! We headed toward Westbury, where we had read about a very cheap campsite behind Andy’s Bakery! When we arrived it was only $2.50 each!!!! We were told the showers were broken but the field was nice and it was cheap!
After getting settled in we had a nice cup of coffee and an ice-cream in the bakery and figured our what we were going to do the rest of the time we were in Tasmania. Today hadn’t gone to plan and we didn’t want to drive 3 ½ to 4 hours to Devonport if there wasn’t anything to do. Apart from a few walks and museums it didn’t sell itself so we decided to give it a miss and go straight to Cradle Mountain.
We walked down the village to the local AGI to get some sausages for dinner and stopped in an art gallery. The photo’s were amazing and really good value for money, we got chatting to John and his assistant, after 30mins we managed to escape! We came to the conclusion that they don’t get to talk to many people!!!
Got back, cooked dinner, had a couple of drinks - Chris was loving the JD and coke in a bottle!

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