Day 415 Arthur River Saturday 17th March 2012

Our camp. The shadow on the solar panelis from the car!

"What's this thing called?"

Balfour Track

Yes it does look a bit deep

"Or use an amphibious vehicle"

Charcoal cooking, except the charcoal was inside the pot

Nelson Bay (click for the big picture)

Evening folks,
A relatively calm evening for this neck of the woods. We have a fire going in the elevated metal fire place cut from an old pressure vessel, not that we are sitting around it but it does add to the ambiance.
Today started with a fairly heavy prolonged shower of rain when we were asleep. However it passed and we were soon into the familiar broken sky of cloud and sun. Just out of interest I checked the rainfall figure for Marrawah just up the road for Thursday/Friday, which was 46mm so the canvas didn't do too badly. We decided to drive down the coast today and have a look at a few of the shack settlements and the general scenery.

Of the places we visited i though Nelson Bay was probably the prettiest. There was a wedge tailed eagle cruising up and down but it easily eluded my camera. Most of the houses have wind generators as well as solar which is indicative of the prolonged westerly breezes that blow here. There is a wind farm at Woolnorth in the NW corner just up the road. Funnily enough South Australia has 50% of Australia's installed wind power capacity whereas i would think Tasmania has the most wind. After visiting Temma the last of the shack/shanty towns we decided to go to Balfour an old mining town. Unfortunately the pools of water on the road were too deep for the "road angel" who started tweeting "turn back, turn back"  The pictures on the blog are from the track heading in the other direction not the track to Balfour.

On our return to camp i fired up the fireplace to cook our pork shoulder in the camp oven. Tonight's meal was not one of our finer efforts gaining a bare pass since it was edible. The problem was the fire was far too hot. It seems we need to relearn our skills in this area and make sure that the coals have died down before  we cook. I detest carbon on my food. Just as well we had claret to cleanse the palette!

Night folks

cheers Simon