ARBOREAL ARTHUR RIVER

The Edge of the World

Where to start? Well, bad news first I suppose, yes, despite all my good intentions and precautions I managed to pick up a very good (or bad) dose of DD’s ‘bug’ – and it is a little ripper. I am hopefully thru’ the worst of it now and have just resorted to barking like the proverbial (don’t go there guys!). I have to say The Bloke was a true ‘champeen’ this time around and really did soldier on wonderfully well – not taking any days off nor even Complaining Loudly. I on the other hand seem to have done nothing but whine and whinge since the first sniff. Of course, my dose must have been worse than his, that’s the answer!! Hmmm.

Anyway, we have been staying in Sparkling Stanley (another blog to come) and whilst there took a trip down to Arthur River on the North West Coast. Once there we scratched one of our usual itches and took a river cruise and it was brilliant. We certainly recommend the cruise. One of our objectives is to take as many of these boat cruises as we can – we find that they are not only beautiful and enjoyable in their own right, but we tend to learn quite a bit from the tour operators, who in this case at least, were absolute characters.

The road from Stanley to Arthur River is OK, but we are quite pleased not to have taken the van down there – the CP looked pretty ordinary and realistically once there, there is not a great deal more to do than check out the local coastline (gravel roads) and take one of the cruises on offer. We did take a drive down along some of these coastal roads and checked out a couple of tiny fishing spots right off the beaten track. They call the coast along that way The Edge of The World and I have to say it is well named.

That remote part of the coast is battered by the wild Southern Ocean and next land-fall is some 15000 kilometres away in South America. During the winter months the Roaring 40s pelt the coast with huge swells sometimes up to 25 metres high. It seems that only a very few very hardy or foolish souls hang around there from July through to October.

The river-mouth is testament to both the ferocity of the winter river and the stormy sea – with hundreds of old trees and logs littering the shoreline like just so many giant toothpicks. My firewood hunting Bloke was salivating thinking of all that firewood. It seems tho’ that the sheer hardness of the local timbers leaves most chain saws spitting out teeth, so perhaps not so desirable after all.

Logs piled up like Matchsticks

Being cognisant of the variable weather in this part of the world, we chose our day carefully, taking into consideration all the weather forecasts, and blissfully we chose well and the day in question dawned clear and sunny. We had to depart from Stanley by 8am in order to board the boat at Arthur River by 9.45. The drive there was just delightful – we meandered through undulating golden fields dotted with myriad placid milking cows. Boy – cows!!!! I don’t think I have ever seen so many cows. All different breeds, but mostly big beautiful black and white beasts, calmly chewing their cud or lining up to go into the milking sheds. We saw capering calves, mooing mums and bawling bulls – Tassie so far seems pretty much like one big humungous farm. The early morning sun played across tree lined paddocks throwing black lace shadows on the golden fields.

Doting Mother

We passed a deer farm on the way, steep grassed paddocks dotted with pretty little deer – yes I do know what they are used for, but as I don’t personally eat Bambi I can live with it if I don’t think about it too much. I know that feral they are a pest too – but you can’t deny they are a pretty little beast.

Pretty Creatures Grazing in the Early Morning Light

On the way we also drove along some steep and winding roads that passed through part of the Tarkine – thickly wooded areas lush with tree ferns lapping the sides of the road. Sadly these roads were well decorated with the corpses of wallabies and their little cousins the pademelons. Certainly there must be an abundance of these little marsupials here as we must have by now seen at least 100 ‘sleeping’ by the roadsides.

We arrived at the boat early, only to find that others were even earlier and all the choice spots on the front of the boat had been taken. We opted to stand outdoors on the very small shelf running along the sides and the rear of the boat. I knew I would pay dearly later for standing bracing my knees all day and I am, but it was really worth the pain.

Wave Back to DD at the Rear of the Boat

The boat was ably manned/womaned by a crew of 4, all of whom seemed to have nick-names. The skipper, a fairly wily old hound was KG or Cagey depending I think on your outlook. His offsider and I think spouse, was Mouse and we also had Greg the professional talker and another lovely young lady whose name sadly has left the building. Sorry! When I say professional talker, I should probably elaborate a little, Greg had a couple of natural science degrees and was the bloke with the ‘book knowledge’ – he came originally from Sydney, but had pretty well morphed into a pony-tailed, ridgey-didge bushy. The skipper was dyed in the wool original to his back teeth Nor-west Taswegian.

Now you may be surprised to know that not all Taswegians are born equal. No indeed not! The folk in the north west corner deem themselves to be far superior to those down in lowly Hobart and the ones generally in the north are better than the ones in the south, the west better than the east and so it goes. Who would have thought that a state which could be fit easily inside our South West corner could be so, so, .....so well, internally parochial! You wouldn’t catch any self respecting Sandgroper behaving in this manner, not unless they come from South of the River of course.

Anyway, I digress – we took off at 10am sharp as promised and the George Robinson (the red boat) with Cagey at the helm and Greg at the mike proceeded to show us a ‘real good time’. We learnt many interesting things from Greg. The Arthur River is considered to be among the top rivers for reflections. This is due largely to the very high amount of tannin in the river water. Much of this tannin is caused by a small native grass called, I think, Button Grass. This grass, along with other plants stains the water a deep blackish brown. The dark colour complemented by the stillness of the morning did indeed live up to its image of magic.

Stunning Tree Ferns Reflected in the Tannin Laden Waters

I cannot remember just how long the river is but I think he said something like 180 ks. What he did say is that the river can be legitimately considered ‘wild’ as it does not at any point adjoin any farm, cleared or tamed land; the banks of the river, throughout its entire length are uncultivated. Much of the river wanders through the area now known as The Tarkine. This is the largest tract of temperate rain forest in Australia. We learned that Tarkine is a relatively new term given to this vast area of rainforest. The concept is that people will come to recognise the term Tarkine in connection with the conservation push in this region.

I must say, we gained an interesting perspective with regards to the push to make this a conservation area. Currently the area is logging land and the logging we are told, is managed very carefully and in small segments. The area is also available for locals to fish and hunt within legal precepts. If it was to be made a conservation area this would all stop, thus bringing a much needed industry to its knees and ousting families whose ancestors came out with early convict ships. I have to admit to being one who had previously believed in the conservation push, but now can see that perhaps somewhere ‘in the middle’ would be good.

The Tarkine (whose boundaries have never been set) is absolutely amazing. The cruise allowed us to view that wilderness as you never could from a fast moving car. Tall stringy bark eucalypt reach for the sky while wattles, myrtles and leatherwood cluster around the tall thin trunks. Lush tree ferns brush the forest floor and fan the blue spaces between trees. Little Kangaroo ferns decorate any available trunk giving a green aspect to even the brown branches.

We learned that there are two types of tree-ferns in the forest. One which hangs on to its dead fronds, and keeps them in untidy bunches around its feet – the other is a tall beauty which has a slender and shapely trunk as it sheds all its dead fronds and keeps itself beautiful and neat. Unsurprisingly the first are called ‘man’-ferns’ and the latter ‘lady-ferns’. Just as we women were all smirking and congratulating ourselves, we were also told that the slender neat ones were often very prickly to the touch. Oh well!

We learned many interesting things that day – I suspect some, like the lady/man ferns may be more local lore than fact, but all were interesting and entertaining. Of course, for a great big trivia sponge like yours truly, little known facts like Bass Straight once being a swamp were eagerly swallowed. One of the truisms was that many of the plants in the forest are of absolutely ancient origin and predate most if not all of our native animals. We share some of this ancient fauna with other parts of Gondwanaland like South America. We also learnt that Tasmanian Oak is actually Stringy Bark gum.

Thickly Wooded Right Down to the Water's Edge

One last little bit of trivia for you – I mentioned the high levels of tannin in the river – it seems that in the heavy winter months when the Roaring 40s are hammering the coast there, the combination of high swells and a raging tannin laden river meeting creates enormous quantities of foam. They say that entire oxen teams were known to disappear and perish in this foam and that every year people lose their beloved four footed mates in this perilous stuff. We were also told that the gravitational pull of the moon there is very, very slight – now that give me pause to think!!

Anyway back to our cruise – our able bodied crew took us quite some distance upstream. On the way we fed a pair of sea-eagles and their off-spring – delightful to see them in the wild. Mind you, almost every similar cruise we have been on in other parts of the country, has fed the sea-eagles. These birds do alright!

The weather was perfect – in the morning we had practically no breeze and so were able to see the reflective river at its best. I almost wore out the camera snapping shots of tree ferns, and reflections. Some of the best shots we both took were of the contorted reflections from the back of the boat (sorry to be so non-nautical folks – but if I try to get all nautical I’m sure I’ll just end up stern over bow so to speak).

We stopped after a couple of hours and went ashore. Here we were handed a large plastic cup full of wine or cool drink and taken for a short walk into the forest. Peter, behave!! Greg gave us an informative talk throughout our brief saunter until we smelled the unmistakable aroma of barbequed snags wafting through the greenery. We duly meandered back to the clearing and were served a basic but more than ample BBQ lunch along with more vino if we chose. Oh, we were also given cuppas and home-made biscuits on the way there. So, another cuppa for those who needed one and back on board for the trip back.

Little Pademelon in for his Daily Salad Treat

Just before we all left the camp area, a little brown pademelon came hopping in looking for his hand out of salad, and not far behind him a stunning spotted quoll wandered in for his snagger. I missed the quoll but our intrepid photographer DD lingered long enough to get some really good shots of the beautiful creature.

A Stunningly Marked Quoll Looking for his Snagger

The trip back was a little cooler with a brisk breeze blowing and we were treated to a Didgeridoo lesson by Greg who proved to be somewhat of an expert with this iconic aboriginal instrument. We were kept entertained most of the time by Cagey who regaled us with tales, tall and true of the region and its colourful history. It was fantastic to have such a colourful character narrating with very little posturing given to any political correctness. How bloody refreshing. Isn’t it interesting, when people are not constrained by political correctness, we find that hey, we as free people, are free to agree or disagree with their perspectives. Well bugger me!!

Anyway, the only other thing I should tell you is that if you come to this amazing part of the world and are in a quandary as to which boat cruise to take (there are two), we took the old red boat in preference to the new white one and we are very glad we did.

Contorted Reflections in the Wake of the Boat

Until next time, keep an open mind –Steph