Day 5 – South Arthur Forrest loop    

Today we are out to complete what we were unable to finish yesterday and hopefully catch up on lost time.  We started with the forest loop, it wasn’t really that interesting but it did show the diversity of forests found in the area.  The first thing we looked at was Sumac Lookout, looking out over trees and Arthur River, a nice view.  Second we looked at Lack Chisholm, which used to be a sink hole (that’s a collapsed cave) the difference with this sink hole is that it has been blocked with all the Forrest debris and instead of the water running away it has formed a lake.  We didn’t get to see the whole lake or do the whole walk because I saw a snake crawling out of the bushes a metre in front of me (red belly black snake) and wasn’t really prepared to finish the walk wearing sandals.

 We had lunch at a place called the Milkshakes.  It was a bit like what Kinglake used to be with the old undercover eating areas with fire places with lots of ferns and moss with big trees all around, we even had a visit from a local Currawong who wanted us to share our lunch.  It was a great spot to stop and eat.

 After lunch we set of to see Trowutta arch, this place was really cool. It’s two collapsed sink holes with an arch in the middle separating them, one was filled with ferns and the other water.  You could get lost wandering around trying to get a better look at the sinkholes, the area was absolutely beautiful and the path in, felt like it was leading you to no where, it felt like you were on your own little adventure.

 Form here we left for Arthur River, which was a total change in scenery, heading down to the beach the forests turned to farm land and then scrub. There’s not much at Arthur River, a few small local corner stores, boat hire and the ranger station.  Most come for the river and the fishing in the area especially the Cray’s.

 We stopped at the Ranger station to get off road and camping passes along with information on the conditions on the Sandy Cape, which is a beach drive.  All they did was set out to scare you half to death, one Ranger basically said it was not a good idea to do the beach drive and it was too dangerous, she showed us photos of cars fully sunk into quicksand.  The other ranger was nice and gave us more realistic advice from her actual experience, so in the morning we would be off.

            We camped at an off road campsite for the night called Prickly Wattle it was a good spot and reasonably sheltered considering the wind was really strong.  In the evening we went for a drive down to the beach before calling it a night.  We found some teenage boys who got their car stuck in the soft sand, they only had a Ford Laser 2 door hatch and they had buried it up to the axle, they had tried to dig it out which did not work, I think they were happy to see John and his snatch strap.  Within a couple of seconds John had them out and they were able to go back to doing donuts on the beach.