We drove the last part of the South Arthur Forest Loop and doubled back the 30 or so kilometres to the start of the Western Explorer route. This is not a commonly used road to the south with most preferring the blacktop highway a bit further inland. The road is long and winding, made of crushed white silica and so a startling contrast to the dark vegetation of the surrounding countryside. This is desolate country too, with no towns or even settlements to break up the journey. We didn't pass a single other vehicle the whole trip. The hills are covered with button grass and other low scrubby vegetation, all in bronzed-green or deep reddish tones, looking dark and mysterious and uninviting. While the road heads south it actually travels a bit inland. Any tracks to the western shore pass through the Arthur-Pieman Conservation Area and need a permit to enter. The tracks all looked very rough and rarely used- not the kind to tackle on one's own with no-one else to pull you out of trouble.

The road is cut by the Pieman River at Corinna and a barge transports cars across. However we had heard that it had been out of action for the past six or eight weeks with no indication of when it would be back in operation. We arrived at the landing area. No barge evident on water. We found it a short distance away all high and dry. A man was walking towards it and we inquired about time frames. He held aloft a piece of paper, telling us the authorisation to re-launch had just arrived. So four hours…maybe. We decided that 4 hours was a bit long to hang around in a 'town' of about 6 houses plus a general store, all that is left of a once thriving mining town. So we did what people hereabouts have been doing for the last eight weeks - we took the long way around, a huge loop encompassing the main highway south. We needed fuel anyway and Waratah to the east was our best bet since Corinna had a distinct lack of service stations. It didn't even have mobile reception, something we are becoming increasingly used to on the west coast.

This loop was much busier (not that hard to be busier than the road we had just travelled…) with mining trucks. Savage River marked on the map as a town was in reality a huge miners' dormitory with row after row of pre-fab barracks to house the workers. The huge tailings dam, its water copper green, and the slag mountains didn't improve the look of the place any.

Waratah was once the biggest tin mine in the world apparently but is now a quite pretty little 'proper' town enhanced by its very own decent-sized waterfall right in the middle of town. Opposite the lookout was the Bischoff Hotel, an old pub boasting the biggest and best steak burgers. One step into the pub was a trip back to the 50s. Not much had changed since then, including the busy rose-patterned carpet of the era. The publican and his wife were extra friendly and they were indeed excellent steak burgers! To our surprise though, no fuel here either. Where do the locals fill up??

We turned south again this time on the main highway, sharing it with forestry trucks, mining trucks, small trucks, big trucks… and caravans. Into Rosebery, still no fuel…into Zeehan, fuel available only if you have a fuel card! We don't.

So we kept on to Strahan, the southernmost town on the west coast, where hooray, there was fuel. While there we booked our boat trip up the Gordon River (which we had actually bought on the ferry over to Tasmania), picking the day we figured would be the best from the forecast.

Strahan is on Macquarie Harbour, a huge mass of water, twice the size of Sydney Harbour but with a narrow entrance called Hell's Gate. The name says it all. Out of town and down on the harbour we pulled in for the night at a council campsite where we camped all by ourselves yet again.