It is a funny life living in a caravan. Some days you feel like you are free to explore the world and answer to no one, sometimes it is closer to living in a retirement village, and other days you are only one step up from sleeping on the street. We are trying to stay in Situation No.1 as much as possible, but we opted to slide into Situation No.2 for a few days in Longford Caravan Park, near Launceston.

Our sheets were wet, towels filthy and not a clean sock in sight. The van was also slightly damp from our wet pack up at Fortescue Bay, so needed a good dry and air out. Luckily we happened upon site No. 73 situated metres from the peaceful South Esk River adjacent rolling grass banks. Sunny days were forecast so we settled in, to explore the local area and adjacent Tamar Valley.

We stepped back into the 19th century for a day trip and walk into the Cateract Gorge and a picnic overlooking Basin No. 1, and the beautiful gardens and sprawling lawns. It was perfect period drama with the old Alexandra suspension bridge spanning the gorge, slow moving chair lift meandering overhead, and Theo zooming down the hills on his balance bike. A spectacular gem located in the heart of the pretty awesome city of Launceston.

Torrential rain was forecast for the following day, so we headed out on a road trip into the Tamar Valley. Berries, wine and cheese was on offer, but didn't appeal to the kids, so we opted to visit the Low Head lighthouse and pilot station instead, with a brief visit to the impressive Batman cable stayed bridge on the way. It was the oldest operating pilot station in Australia, with the only remaining operating Type "G" diaphone fog horn in the world. Very impressive, but Theo took to the manual wind-up fog horn instead and for a good 20 minutes we made loud 'honking' noises as the grey nomad visitors looked on. Lucky he is pretty cute, as anyone else would have been told to leave....

It was a slow few days, but Bern still managed to circumnavigate Longford numerous times clocking up over 35 km of running in preparation for the Canberra 10k. To finish off our Tamar experience, we squeezed in a final visit to Launceston to attend their Park Run, before packing up and heading south again down to Mount Field National Park.