Our final day on the Tasman Peninsula we set out for Cape Raoul. A dirt road looped up through farming and house country. We pulled over to let the occasional massive logging lorry to pass. We ascended to a point where a road man flagged us down. The road was temporarily blocked for logging operations. They were clearing a route under power lines. Massive diggers wrenched down the trees and loaded the trunks onto the trunks. No elephants here. We chatted to the man who told us three other cars had come through ahead of us that day. After about a 15 minute wait we inched past the logging lorry and headed up to a small pull in on the edge of the forest. From here we walked steadily uphill about a thousand feet to the Raoul lookout. The walk ascends through forest, sometimes quite dense brush. Suddenly after we had almost given up we heard voices and saw a small section of bare rock overhanging vertiginous cliffs.

After drawing our breath at the view we continued on. The path circles round the cliff edge giving glimpses of amazing gorges, pinnacles and bays. At times the path hugs the eroded cliff edge with very little protection as it passes through heathland flowers. Sadly the path drops , so you lose a lot of your altitude gain but this is made up for by the colourful fungi which line the root through the wooded sections. Eventually you get to the cape and pass through an almost dried up lake which affords views of fluted pillars on the South side.

As we approached the end of the cape we passed two small tents. We realised later they were probably bases for a group of climbers we spotted clinging vertiginously to vertical pillars. The cape ends with a line of fierce teeth stretching out to sea. On the top of them we could just make out the team of climbers, dwarfed by the size of the cliffs and the fierce seas below them. It was difficult to see how they could have got to the base of the pinnacle let alone to the top. Strange roaring sounds can be heard here. The sound of a large resident population of seals well settled in at the bottom of the pinnacles - totally unimpressed by the climbers. We returned the way we came, an exhausting 14km but well worth it.