More gravel

Blimey, it was dry today! All day. So we rode and rode, and had a great time.

Having spent most of yesterday chatting to locals and hearing stories of Woolnorth, we decided to go and have a look for ourselves. It lies in the extreme north west corner of Tasmania and is the last holding of the Van Dieman’s Land Company, founded in London in 1824, and we had been warned about the security. 

There are gates though which you can drive unimpeded, but after that, there is nowhere to go, even for locals. 

Yet why? Woolnorth is very remote, and home to nothing except dairy cows, a windfarm, and a weather station. So why the very clear “NO ENTRY” signs on rural roads, the cameras and the electric fences?  Surely a few cows can’t wander that far, windfarms are hardly new technology, and the weather is going to happen no matter what the experts predict. Nope, there is something more out there, definitely, something that somebody doesn’t want ordinary people to know about. There would have been a time ( and not very long ago) I would have considered it a matter of pride to have found out more, but not now; I’m no longer interested in the games people play, so I just turned around and rode back down the gravel track,content to know that my rego had been recorded and somebody would have to do some enquiries on it. Still, keeps them occupied I suppose, and we conspiracy theorists amused.

Having turned around, we eventually got back to the track to Murrawah where we stopped as Gordon needed to adjust his clutch. Five minutes later and we were on way again, tripping along the gravel and sand through low woodland and pastureland, en route to this town and Arthur River, a few kilometers further on.

We actually rode through Murawah to Arthur River, before coming back to the former. Arthur River is a tiny little place, with half a shop and a few houses, but they did have an ice cream shop, where Nadine fund a worrying nuclear looking offering. 

There's a great lookout place called ‘ The Edge of the World’  down another gravel track, at Arthur River, and which we had to ride down it. Its like a compulsion for all of us; gravel track, remote, difficult to ride, we have to turn down it.

Well, this one turned out not to be so long or so difficult, but was still unsealed and rough but we did it anyway. A troopie followed us in, and that turned out to be a family on a long term wander, Mum, Dad and six kids. Five boys and a girl, all very close in age. They were a nice family too. Mum told us that they had started late on kids and once they’d accumulated a few, they decided to bin the rat race and take to the road, educating them as they went with stuff that they saw and people that they met. She was from Sydney, he was from Perth and they were heading back west towards Perth where he would eventually have to find a job. Nice people, nice kids and good on them; I reckon thy had made the right decision and that those kids will get a great deal from their life on the road.

Mum also told us that yesterday had been a difficult day ( it rained all day where they were too) because on rainy days the kids do school work. Six kids aged from about 13 down to two, all confined in a caravan, in the rain, doing sums. You can just imagine it.

The beach at Arthur River was pretty cool. A small beach, just the sort of place you’d expect wrecked ships to turn up on. 

The waves were rolling in and breaking onto the reef several hundred metres out, crashing down and rocking the rural peace as they did so. And dotted over the rocks were piles of wood, not bits of wood but whole tree trunks, rounded up by the sea and deposited on edges, tantalisingly just out of reach of sane people.

These were big trees, not just little chunks of broken off bits of driftwood, an indication of the power of the sea and what it can do when it feels like it.

We backtracked to the pub at Murrawah for lunch. A tiny settlement with nobody about, and when we opened the door we realised why; they were all in there. Well, quite a few of them anyway, and the barman was super friendly, wanting to know all the usual stuff.

After lunch, we nipped down to Western Point, the most westerly point of Tasmania. A wild remote beach at the end of a rough gravel track, but well worth the effort.

By now, the weather was threatening us once again, and time was rocking on, so the Bass Highway called. That wiggled through the Tarkine Rainforest, the largest temperate rainforest in Australia, and of course the rain dumped on us. Then more pastureland, until we eventually arrived in Smithton, 50 kms later.

Then incredibly, the sun then came out and stayed out so we were able to do a few jobs outside, mundane things like dry our boots and dry the maps. However, as it was Friday and we were at the opposite end to the town bottleo, we became a bit of a tourist attraction, with people slowing down and tooting to us as they drove out.

But then a car came right up to where we were parked, and it was Wayne, the mechanic from yesterday, checking up to see how the bikes had gone today. I had a good chat with him and he seemed pleased that such a simple fix was working so well.

After he had gone, another vehicle went by, honking and the people waving wildly. That was the woman who’d cut Gordon’s hair yesterday. Funny. We’ve only been here a few days but already we are familiar to people, a bit of a novelty and something different to look at for a few hours.