Arthur River Beach House

Arthur River is like a gateway to the wilderness. It is in western part of Tasmania on the coast. Our family spent 12 relaxing days there after leaving Launceston. From our beach house I could see lots of snapped trees piled on either side of the twinkling river. The water way led into the vast open sea which was pounded by killer waves. The wind, the ‘Roaring 40’s’, picked up the sand and threw it in our eyes. You could never predict the weather accurately- sometimes it was as still as a pond and sometimes it was as windy as a hurricane. I felt like I could fly!

On the still days we explored the beaches, climbed over driftwood and looked for shell fossils! We tried to fish for Australian (Cockey) Salmon but the rain has put too much fresh water in the river so they hung around the rocks near the sea. This made it difficult to cast and we lost lots of lures. But mum caught a ripper and dad caught a few also. Ruby learnt the hard way where fish come from and where they end up. There were some tears. The wilder days were spent inside our beach house where we watched our favourite Foxtel shows, read books on the Kindle and ate lots of toasted sandwiches and snacks. We would have liked to have eaten more fish but at least we got one good feed.

From our house we saw a red tugboat. One day dad walked to the deli and bought the tickets for the boat ride. The boat took us up the river and I saw a very rare bird! It was orange on one side and blue on the other and came from the Kingfisher family. After two hours of interesting cruising we finally reached the little docking harbour. The boat driver gave us a tour of the forest. He also found some regurgitated Tasmanian devil stuff. In the puke were echidna spikes. It sounded like the devil ate an echidna but the man told us that the devils eat anything on the floor including echidna spikes and metal! When we finally reached the hut they owned, we had a nice BBQ which included sausages and hamburgers. On the way back we were lucky enough to see a lady feed the Sea Eagles. I was just sitting down when the boat driver called me up to the cabin to drive the boat. It was really fun and freaky steering it. Some people looked nervous and they should have been! He gave me a report card at the end and I got ten out of ten!

One day we set out in the car and dad said we were going to be driving over some rough
roads. He was right, but it was beautiful. We drove through the Western Wilderness to a place called Corrina. On the way we visited the Donaldson and Savage River. Thankyou to Aunty Nat for the sick bags because otherwise a certain family member would have totally ‘sicked out’ the car. Part of the adventure was to catch a barge over the river.

The highlights of Arthur River were the T.V. at the beach house, the local deli which sold $2 chocolate bars, observing our Tassie Devil food trap (our food was taken by a quoll and small wallabies instead) and the cruise along the river.