Ocean surf at Arthur River
It was for the most part another dull and cloudy day as we drove across the north west part of Tasmania to the very small resort town of Arthur River. Much of the road today was better than anything else we have driven on, though it got much poorer after we turned south west at Smithton and headed to the coast.
We had a brief stop to get groceries, fuel and eat lunch in Burnie. It was very hard to find parking to buy groceries. We first pulled in to a Woolworths, but there was no space in their lot so we continued on. The Coles is downtown, so although they had a car park, we are much too tall to access it. We drove to the visitor centre and they confirmed these were the two main stores, so we drove back to the central business district and parked on an out of the way street.
We stayed at the Mantuka campground in the Arthur-Pieman reserve. We can hear the ocean surf quite loudly here, but when we tried to walk to the ocean could not get through. However we did see an echidna, the first one we have been able to photograph in the wild. We wound around on some trails until we got out to the bridge over the river where one of the two cruise boats here was docking. One woman enthused about the trip so we may take it tomorrow if the weather is good enough.
We kept on walking down to the ocean. There is a rocky point and heavy surf here. If you look very hard you might be able to see Argentina about 10000 kilometers away! The wide open coast is subject to the winds of the roaring fourties, and the ocean is very rough along this coast.