​

Cockle Creek - a short week unplugged!

We were entertained by flocks of Green Rosellas who
perched in the tree above us morning and night 

We were aiming for a special spot, Bolton Green, at the end of the southern-most road in Australia, just south of Cockle Creek and inside the Southwest National Park where we had stayed in misty isolation 4 years ago. 'The End of the Road'. But it was not to be - 'our spot' was filled with campers. Dam! So we back-tracked a few 100 metres just across the creek and camped in a non NP area which meant we could have a fire - whoopee! And we did. A little beauty in a ring of rocks fueled by a little local scavenged wood and the stash of wood and cones that we had brought with us. The smell of the fire was intoxicating and reminiscent of romantic nights by other fires in 'the bush'.

Prawns this night but we enjoyed other delicious meals en plein air

This was Cockle Creek and there were cockles aplenty,
but there were also lots of mussels and oysters which were
 humongous and hard to open for amateurs
we now have an oyster shucking knife but .....

Recherché Bay was just through the tea trees and we could hear the water gently lapping on a narrow white beach. And on the other side of us Cockle creek. Absolutely beautiful, idyllic.
Cockle Creek is where the South Cape track to Melaleuca starts/ends and sits on the edge of the 600,000 hectares of the Southwest National Park. We walked the first bit of the track through to South Cape Bay 4 years ago - it was a bit challenging but the view out over the Southern ocean when we got to the bay was worth it. In spite of good intentions, we didn't do the walk this time - felt there were other things to explore (and we needed to conserve some energy!).

Simply gorgeous

First morning there we woke to silence except for the lazy droning of big woolly bumble bees and the sound of waves breaking on the shore 30 m away. Joy oh joy! (Let's forget the long drop for a moment and focus on the Natural beauty - ok!?)
It was a time of chilling out and taking each day as it came. We walked to Fisher Point, the southern tip of Recherché bay where a whaling station once stood. In fact there once were many whaling stations along this coast - a dark past indeed. We wandered along the beach, through tidal pools and over dolerite boulders smeared with yellow and white lichen, gathered Bay leaves from a tree which is the only remaining sign that once a 'homestead' stood there. We picked bunches of leaves and hung them around the van to dry; I also 'freeze dried' some in the freezer.

The cockles were many layers deep under our feet

 We took off our shoes and went wading in the creek feeling for cockles with our feet - we gathered over a kilo of shells! Took ages to clean them all but it was worth it. That night we gorged on cockles cooked with chilli, garlic and lemongrass (in wine of course) with pasta. Inspired by our hunter-gatherer success we went out for oysters and mussel the next morning. The oysters here are monstrous. They made a great meal simply baked on a hot plate nestled in the coals of our camp fire. Yummo!! Life doesn't get much better than this! All a bit of an experiment really.

It was a two phase process - I got to scrub each little beauty with
a rather too small brush - we have since bought a bigger one!

We lunched at Australia's southern most pub one day, visited bays and beaches and read the head stones on graves of pioneering families of the area. What privations they endured! One woman and her son went out to find some of their cattle and never returned. Tragic stories reached out to us from scant recordings on those head stones.

We spent part of a day in the Hartz mountains National park. Plans to walk to a glacial lake were dashed by a sudden torrential storm with slanting rain, sleet and gale force winds. But we managed to get a look out over old myrtle forests in the Huon valley and walk through snow gums and alpine herb fields to Arve falls where the river tumbles over the escarpment into the valley below. It was a hurried trip as the weather was closing in - the weather is unpredictable in these mountains. We ended up absolutely drenched to the skin but it was worth it for the awesome sight of the falls - a bit scary looking way down into the valley.
Something I learned about that cold place was that it is home to a small frog unique to Australia - recently discovered. Unlike any other frog it doesn't live in water for any part of its life cycle. It lays its eggs on damp moss and the froglets don't go through the tadpole stage. Cool eh!?