Free camping at Tall Timbers, Smithton

After another night at Green Point we woke up to a lovely but very windy morning. Sadly we had to move on as we had to get the car sorted out. The mechanic we'd been talking to, wouldn't come out as he didn't believe he could help us and so we had to look for help from another source. Rob thought we'd try an Auto Electrician instead.

Car troubles in paradise - our car is stuck on the extreme left

Car Troubles & Blackberries

We found an Auto Electrician pretty quickly just on the outskirts of Smithton. He was out on a job, when we rolled up but we thought we'd stay put and make a cuppa whilst we wait. He soon turned up.

In the meantime there was this huge hedge of blackberries, I had spied bordering his property with a vacant block of land next door and so it doesn't take much to guess what I wanted to do. Yep - more blackberry picking once we had permission and assurance that it hadn't been sprayed. Gosh! I got so many blackberries off this bush that it would keep us going for ages. Truly, I filled about 3/4 of a bucket with blackberries, plenty to eat now, to make a blackberry buckle for dessert and lots to freeze for some desserts later on! Maybe I will make some Blackberry Muffins... oh there are so many yummy things one can make from berries!

Just the start - I ran out of bowls and had to grab a bucket!!!

Oh by the way, Rob and the electrician worked on the car and it got fixed in nearly no time. It was a faulty brake fuse which we replaced. Apparently there's some mistake with the wiring between the wiring of the 24 volt and 12 volt inverter and then when the motor home brakes are applied it does something to the fuse on the car and makes it short out when it shouldn't. (I have told you before that I am not very car savvy!) Anyway the guys have disconnected the wires so that it wont happen again. We'll get our auto mechanic back home to fix it proper when we get there eventually.

Smithton

It might seem a heck of a long way from Devonport or Hobart, but really Smithton is only 135km west of Devonport. It is the largest town in this region with something like 3,500 people. We had lunch in town. We wanted to meet up with the MMM ministry team with whom we worked with way back in Hobart and when we discovered that they were working just behind the main street, we decided to walk there and meet up with them to check out how things were going with them. We were prepared to volunteer again if they needed us. Happily for them they actually had too many volunteers (that doesn't happen often though), so we just said hello to our friends there and let them get back to work and we would continue with our holiday.

Mobile Maintenance Ministry is a worthy volunteer organization to link up with

There is a new and official free camp in close to town but I think many campers don’t like it as it is a large area of bitumen. We didn't not when we had heard rave reviews of a place called Tall Timbers which has only been open to free campers for a short time.

Lots of room for free camping at Tall Timbers - we're on the extreme left

We decided to stay at the beautiful setting at Tall Timbers just on the edge of town. This place is amazing. It is a huge park like area adjacent to the actual resort. There's a duck creek running between us and the resort proper. There's plenty of room to park on the beautifully mown and well maintained lawn. We can use some of the resources of the resort if desired for a small fee, such as the restaurant, laundry, indoor heated pool/spa, the gymnasium and the tennis courts. (The pool/spa/gym was just $7 each for 2 hours use.

The Robbiebago II at Tall Timbers, Smithton

I can't say that there was anything that grabbed my attention at Smithton itself. We loved using Tall Timbers as our base and we were very comfortable about leaving the motor home there whilst we did some sightseeing around the area.