2004/03 Tasmania loop - Black River |
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Monday March 8th
Monday was Labour Day, an Australian bank holiday, and began with a damp, foggy morning. We headed along the coast to the town of Burnie and found Tree Fern Park, a neat little park in a ravine. Tree ferns are just that, a tree-sized trunk topped by fern foliage. They are very common in Tasmania and South Eastern Australia, and often form a low level forest below the massive gum trees. 
The park also had Tasmanian native hens, chicken-like birds that are unique to Tasmania. They are lucky that Colonel Sanders didn’t grow up in Tasmania instead of Kentucky.
Now that we’d got through customs we could stock up on local veggies and fruit, so we did some shopping and then headed further west along the coast, mainly through farming country. The coast here is quite scenic with large, rocky capes separated by long sweeping beaches. The southern horizon is a mass of mountains, mostly 
obscured this day by cloud and rain. We’d be up in those mountains in a few days.
We skirted Table Cape, and drove into Rocky Cape national park for a picnic. The cliffs and colours here were spectacular, and we would have stayed longer but there was no campground, or even anywhere to hide the camper for the night, so we moved further along the coast looking for an advertised campground along the Black River.
We missed the track the first time and ended up in Stanley. Stanley is famous for its “Nut”, a large circular cape that dominates the town and the surrounding countryside. On our second try we found the track and bounced down it to the beach, looking for a site with a view. This wasn’t too hard as most people had gone home at the end of the holiday weekend, and we found a good site at the mouth of the river, looking down towards the sea and Stanley’s Nut.
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Black River (5.50) |
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Tuesday March 9th
The tide was out and the river was shallow, so I was able to take an early 
morning walk down the river to the sea. I was setting up for a photo of the Nut, when I heard this skittering noise. I was the only person in sight, and the seagulls were far away, and then I looked down to see that the sand bank had come alive. There were thousands of tiny crabs crawling out of the sand and making their way to the water’s edge. I thought there’d be a massacre when the seagulls saw them, but they took no notice. I guess the crabs must either taste bad without ketchup, or be too crunchy for the gulls.