28/6/2008 - Tarkine Falls (again)

A mate was keen to go to Tarkine Falls so, despite being there only two weeks earlier, I was off again!

On the way to Hilder bridge, we took a fork in the road that led to a picturesque bend in the Arthur below Phantom Peak.  The peak was living up to its name with its head well in the clouds.

 After wading the Arthur and Lyons Rivers, we exployed a short distance beyond Where the overgrown section of Folly Hill Road turns off.  Just over the ridge, a helipad had been bulldozed into the tea tree scrub.  We could see along the ridge a short distance but cloud was still preventing us from seeing Phantom Peak and the Wynsmith Hills.

Once back on the track, we made reasonable time and just had time to setup camp at the Falls before dusk.

The following day, we decided to spend a bit of time following the taped 'Day Walk' route that heads away from the Tarkine Falls campsite.  Walking as quickly as we could, we climbed gradually for approx 2km to a point where the track was about to commence a sudden descent into the valley of Eastons Creek.  While we were very keen to make it out of the forest into clear terrain, our time was limited by deadlines back home so we headed back to our packs and toddled home.  Further exploration will have to wait for another day.

On a future trip, I am hoping to take my mountain bike in to Folley Road which can be accessed from the 'South Arthur Forest Drive.'  It should be possible to take the road to the edge of the button grass plains only a short distance from the Falls.

Very soon after returning from this trip, the State Budget was announced.  Lo and behold, there is money in it for the new Tarkine tourist road.  My prediction is that the road will be similar to the Abt Railway.  It will run way over the budget.  I'm guessing that the people who have estimated its cost are not familiar with the terrain to be traversed.  As I mentioned in my last post, the Folly Hill Road has literally fallen into the Lyons River due to a large landslide.  In several spots in that area, the road is cut into a very steep hillside and would only be a single lane wide.

I'm also curious about the approach that will be taken with construction.  The cheap way to build it will be to clear a massive wide swathe through the forest.  In the case of the Gordon River Road, it took the best part of 3 decades for the roadside vegetation to recover.  The new sealed road in to Dove Lake and Waldheim has been sensitively built into the surrounding terrain but I expect the construction techniques there are expensive.  I would be very surprised if that approach could be afforded with the money that has been allocated.

The tragic case of the Western Explorer shows that the government is not willing to spend the money on maintenance to keep the road open.  It has now been closed for 6 months following a bushfire and there's still no sign of when it may reopen.  Will this new Tarkine Road be similar?