43:22.5s 146:07.9e

Day started with a repair of the tinnie, managed to get a fairly big leak in the bottom bung.

We then headed off towards Bathurst Harbour. The day was sunny with not much wind so we came down the Bathurst narrows looking at all the anchorages and future walks. We decided to come down to Claytons Corner so we can go and look at Deny King’s home in Melaleuca Inlet. For those of you who have read his book, it’s fantastic to see the places he talks about. The hills and mountains, trees etc all look so old, we went ashore and climbed a nearby hill and its all spongy underfoot with peat. Having Cathy’s botany knowledge was great. It was 31c here today so I guess it does get hot in Tassie sometimes. We are waiting for a front tonight, then it will fine up again.

Yesterday when we were on the Davey River we came across what looked like a rock in mid river, with shags perched on top. As we came up to it we saw it was a tree root. Cathy jumped on it and cut a small sliver off and it was Huon Pine. Using our imaginations this tree could have been logged around 1880 as they had depleted the stocks of Huon by 1890, a flood has uprooted the tree base and its floated down river till it ran aground. Now 2013 a stump that could be thousands of years old is still as hard as nails.

This afternoon we went and looked at the Claytons hut. Winsome Clayton was Deny’s sister and she married a cray fisherman and lived here from 1960-70. It has been well looked after with some really good artifacts and history of the couple and their life. Just about to go ashore and look for wombats on dusk as our scatological experts saw lots of evidence. Louie grumpy she’s not getting ashore as it’s all National Park. But we took her stitches out today from the paw operation and all is well.