Above: Girdlestone Park Camping
February 16-19 Devonport
Girdlestone Park is a Council owned sporting grounds less than 2km from the Ferry Terminal and is available to self contained campers for up to 72 hours for a fee of $10/night. This makes it extremely popular with both arriving and departing travelers. There are toilet facilities, rubbish bins and a dump point here but campers have to be self contained and not dump grey water on to the ground. Our new Sunland van has a 135l grey water tank so this was the first time we had to actually utilise it.
When we arrived off the ferry on Saturday evening (about 7.15) it was reasonably full and we had to go to the farthest point around the oval where you can reasonably still fit a caravan at the top of the banking. Many of those here were waiting for the next day’s ferry and so it thinned out considerably and there was not much inflow from those coming off the ferry, being the beginning of the day rather than the end.
It remained reasonably quiet over Saturday and on Sunday we had a Little Athletics meeting take place in the afternoon. We were also constantly aware of the many Tasmanian Native Hens which live around here and are particularly loud at dusk and dawn – a good morning alarm!
Sunday night, however, we started to hear noises of people arriving long after dark (turned out the ferry was over 2 hours late) and a couple of vans trying to reverse into place close to us. Opening the door in the morning we were greeted with the sight of a “full house” with vans at all sorts of angles after trying to park up in darkness!
We decided to stay until Tuesday morning as we had to phone an agent in Launceston to look at our air conditioner which had refused to work in heat mode when we arrived in Melbourne. We subsequently arranged to go to him first thing Tuesday and left here at 7.15 for the one hour plus drive. We will certainly come here again when we are leaving Tassie as it is such a convenient spot for the ferry.
