Arthur River

The drive to Arthur River uses a dirt road that travels along the hill and ridge tops giving you some great views. Unfortunately, as it was raining, most of those views had a grey curtain of rain across them. The road also gave Karen a few moments of concern as we often seemed to be almost dropping off the (unfenced) side of a hill or hitting some near vertical incline or descent. At one point I thought I might have to put the mighty Troll into low range in order to get up one particular slope – yes, it was that steep.

We planned on taking the Balfour track across from the “Western Explorer” to the coast and crawling along a lesser track up towards Arthur River. We reached the Balfour Track turnoff (and it was still raining) and stopped to assess the track and see if it would be safe to drag the van along it. The first thing we noticed was a long and deep flooded section with no way around it. Then we noticed a warning sign sticking up out of the flooded section that said that a snorkel and a winch were required to attempt the track and that differential locks and travelling in convoy was highly recommended.

I chickened out and stuck to the main dirt road.

We had hoped that Arthur River was going to be a warmer and drier place and we were partly right – the rain eased off to nothing, but the forecast was for gale force winds of between 30 to 50 knots and it remained cold.

However, we remained undaunted in our quest to walk the soles off our boots and we drove out to a short coastal walk and a lookout known as “The Edge of the World”.

The lookout shows nothing but the ocean and as you can see from the last pic, it can have a fair amount of force behind it. Those trees are (were?) pretty big and they have been piled up by the waves like matches.

Of course, we couldn’t pass the opportunity by to have a photo of the local lighthouse. J

What to do then? Well, our early training came to the fore and we drove over to Marrawah where we first bought some fresh Tasmanian produce (love those fresh veggies) and then we repaired to the pub before we went back for an early evening.

The next day we had heard of a walk that went between Couta Rocks and Sarah Jane Rocks. Imagine my joy to find that it was a medium difficult 4WD track. Check out the track below.