Arthur River 22 - 23 February 2008

We awoke to a cloudy dull day and decided to move on west - not much further and the west was ours! Arthur River is a small settlement, hardly a town with only 30 permanent residents and is surrounded by the Arthur River NP. There was a warning for gale force winds; boy was that the truth! It shook the motorhome for two nights! It blew and rained upon us and confined us to the motorhome for a whole day. Eventually Heather became nauseous and seemed to suffer motion sickness! A drive in the car did not make it much better! But we did take the dirt road south for 30kms and saw some wonderful remote places. It was desolate in the wind and rain with lots of rocky outcrops and interesting tiny bays and shelters. Couta Rocks was particularly interesting with a strange array of fishing shacks and some very big boats. The coast is littered with kelp.
At the Arthur River estuary they have dedicated a poem to the lookout and called it The Edge of the World. It is an amazing view and worthy of our effort in getting here! The coast and shore is strewn with enormous piles of large tree size driftwood thrown up in each river flooding. The sea was huge and the wind wild. The Roaring Forties blow in here with all the force you can imagine. If you travelled west from that point your first land is South America! An interesting effect of the Roaring Forties is the predominance of a barometric tide and the elimination of lunar tides. The tide comes in at night and out during the day at the same time every day! It seems so strange to have high tide every day at 3am!
We put off the river cruise due to the weather but on the last day relented! After another night of 30 – 40 knot winds we thought – “What the hell! This must be normal West Coast weather!” It was great as the wind eased down the river valleys and the rain held back, although it was a very cool 12 deg day. Apparently it snowed in Hobart that night! We saw a pair of Sea Eagles and their huge nest, which was known to be 40 years old and the birds about 36 years old! We stopped for quite a long time to observe them. We had a lovely picnic lunch in a remote forest with a lovely log fire then walked through the forest along the creek bed amongst lush green ferns. We saw huge tree ferns including one lying on the ground, twisting and turning for 16 metres and we were told it was 1200 years old!