The next morning I went for a run, Hubby decided to stay in the nice warm bed while I headed out. Previously I’d mentioned that climbing The Nut really took it out of me so I’ve vowed to TRY and run every morning if possible. The caravan park we stayed in overnight backed onto a semi circular beach with a boardwalk, I started a light jog one way, not much there so I jogged back and headed the other way. This took me to the old wharf at the base of The Nut and to some historic buildings we hadn’t visited yesterday so I stopped jogging and went for a look around.

It was really interesting, a few more historic buildings with information points, a strange random rock carving and of course the wharf. All up I took about an hour and really enjoyed my jog / sightseeing trip. If jogging is like this everyday I might actually start to enjoy it!

Come Holy Spirit Carving

I came back to the car, gathered hubby for breakfast, packed up the car, grrrrrr I really hate packing the car when we have so many plans for the day!!!! And we took off.

We drove through Smithton, really not much there, and headed west to another potential campground and according to the map the furthest northwestern campground there is before heading down west. When we arrived we were surprised, or shocked, whatever. People seemed to be living there, which really isn’t that odd usually; however, people had set up fences, boundaries, around huge patches of land with mesh and made semi permanent structures in these patches. It reminded me of trailer trash meets US cult camp crossed with boat people refugee camps. We politely advised the caretaker, who had come out to greet us, that we weren’t sure of what we were doing and would come back to him. We very quickly drove out.

The drive to the next campground was stunning with more rolling green hills spotted with cows and as we were coastal we kept getting quick peeks of stunning isolated and empty beaches. The free camp we were heading to was in Marrawah and was gorgeous, it was on the beach nice camp area, toilets (bonus!) and showers albeit cold ones. Hubby for some reason didn’t like it so we kept going until we reached Dismal Swamp.

View near Marrawah, stunning right?

I’m really not sure why its called Dismal Swamp, but basically it’s the only blackwood sinkhole in the world, quite a pretty sinkhole I might add, in the middle of a rainforest. All the land around the swamp has been cleared for farming but they managed to preserve this little area and they’ve built an information and education centre in it. $20 per person to get in, steep I know but I really wanted to check this out, and $2 each for a slide ride down into the sinkhole. We could have walked down for free, but $2 for a slide was ok.

Random Door

We slid to the bottom and had a look around. They have built raised platform paths, you are given a map, and along the path are information points and random items that have been placed in growth. For example, apparently there are crayfish in the swamp so they made giant crayfish mounds, complete with giant crayfish statues and stuck them into the growth. There was also a giant wooden door, a couple of random chairs; bones of an extinct creature and a fake cow just to name a few.

So we walked around, got lost a couple of times and headed back up to the information centre for a massive slice of chocolate cake.

Hopping back into the car we drove some more to Arthur River. This is the point leading into the Arthur Piemen Reserve where we plan on four-wheel driving. We purchased our 4wd pass  and picked a campground where we can set up for a couple of days.

On the way to the campground we had a quick stop at the Edge of The Work Lookout, the west coast of Tasmania is apparently the longest uninterrupted expanse of ocean on the globe. I tell ya what, it’s bloody scary! I would not be hopping into that surf anytime soon! Anyway after absorbing the beauty, taking some pics, we headed off to the campground for a couple of days of R&R

The Edge of The World Arthur River