Our night at the golf club was a freezing one - it got down to 1.6 deg outside. At 3.2 deg inside, not much better…

We picked the right day and the sky was blue with hardly any wind. Macquarie Harbour was calm and still - not often the case here. Because the seas were so benign, the skipper took the boat not just to Hell's Gate, but through it out to open ocean and around the point to Sorell Lighthouse. A bonus!

We had booked expensive seats inside with an expansive view - on most days this would have been essential with only an occasional foray outside for a photo. But today with the calm water, we could wander all over the boat and only retreat to the seat for morning tea and the buffet lunch. The cruise included a close-up look at some of the myriad number of floating pens for fish farming and a stop at Sarah Island. This was a small penal colony before Port Arthur was foundered, and what a desperate place it must have been. The passengers were herded around the island in two groups, each with a guide. The guides were actors in a historical play back at Strahan and in fact were very entertaining guides, livening up the grim history of the place enormously.

On entering the Gordon River, the boat slowed down to a crawl and meandered up the river silently. Here is the original native wilderness with enormous trees clothing the mountainsides, among them the Huon Pine. A final stop at a boardwalk through the marshy riverfront was OK but no a patch on the walks we have done through other forests.

Before leaving the west coast we wanted to see one of the fabled West Coast Sunsets. We took another dirt track to a little settlement called Trail Harbour. This, like so many places, was once a thriving town with wharves and pubs and all kinds of activity. Now it's a sleepy little place of a few dozen fishing shacks that don't pay much attention to planning laws - or even the Land Title Act!

At Zeehan, we stopped for a few hours at the West Coast Heritage Museum housed in the old School of Mines building. Here is a wealth of history exceptionally well set out with photos and documents relating to each of the local regions. There is a marvellous mineral collection with some wonderful crystalline specimens, and outside, sheds full of old machinery, cars and an old Huon Pine boat. The adjoining buildings are the old police station and courthouse, the masonic lodge and the wonderful restoration-in-progress theatre.

There are two ways to get the Montezuma Falls: drive to the carpark and walk 8km in or a 14km 4WD track right to the Falls. We found the entrance to the 4WD track and headed in. The track quickly deteriorated. The shallow holes filled with slippery clayey water soon became quite deep holes with slippery clayey water… Trouble was, we couldn't turn around with the almost impenetrable bush hemming us in on the road. We reached a spot with deep tyre ruts and a bit of a clearing on the side. Obviously other people thought it a good idea to turn here too…

We drove to the carpark.

Montezuma Falls, near Rosebery, is one of the highest in Tasmania and the walking track there also follows an old railway line, like the Bird River Track, with deep cuttings into the hills. This track however was less well maintained and was frequently blocked by downed trees which had to be crawled over, under and around. The track was far more slippery with numerous springs, streams and rivulets cutting across the way and sometimes the mud was a challenge to get through. Still, the waterfall at the end was a stunner and well worth the trouble. A suspension bridge over the river was very springy and only about 20 cm wide at the bottom - hard to walk over and not too easy to look down through the mesh either!

When we arrived back at the truck, we were the only ones around. A quick look ascertained there were no No Camping signs, so we went no further for the night.