We expected that getting to look down on Wineglass Bay would be up there as one of the foremost highlights of this trip. And we were not disappointed. It is truely an awesome experience – like at Cradle Mountain. To get to these majestic places and to sit and look and take it all in – wow! We have now seen these iconic sights in perfect weather. You can’t ask for better than that.

We visited Coles Bay & Freycinet on 14 &15 October 2019

Getting There

St Helens > Bicheno (76kms) > Coles Bay (38kms) ~ total of 114kms.

Kerry’s snippets in fuchsia

History

A short history of Tasmania, from pre-colonial times, to the arrival and growth of English colonial development, to the decimation of the First Nation Tasmanians, can be read here.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the area was occupied for at least 35,000 years by people from the Paredarerme First Nations language group. The number of shell middens in the area suggests that visitors from other areas may well have come to the shores where mussels and fish were in abundance.

In 1642 Abel Tasman sailed past the peninsula and named it Vanderlin’s Eylandt. The peninsula was renamed Freycinet after the brothers, Henri and Louis de Freycinet, who sailed along the coast with Nicolas Baudin in 1802.

By the early years of the nineteenth century sealers and whalers were operating on both Freycinet Peninsula and Schouten Island. English colonials slowly followed. Silas Cole, a lime burner who collected the shells from the middens od the First Nations people and burnt them for lime, gave his name to the town and the bay.

In 1916 Freycinet Peninsula became a National Park making it one of the oldest in Tassie. But no settlement developed in the area until the 1930s. It was only ever a few isolated fishermen and hermits. In 1934 a retired auctioneer, Harry Parsons, purchased 5 ha of land at Coles Bay and the land grew into a small town which became a popular haunt for fishermen and bushwalkers. That same year Ron Richardson leased land in the Freycinet Park and established The Chateau.

From the 1930s until the 1990s Coles Bay was a small community of shanties and huts on the edge of a beautiful bay. A track was cut around the coast to get to the Bay by land, but most of the building materials for the town arrived on the SS Koomeela which brought supplies across the bay.

In 1954 during the royal visit, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip had a picnic at Wineglass Bay. The construction of Freycinet Lodge in the 1990s opened the area up to significant tourism, particularly eco tourism.

Day 1 – Mon 14 October – To Freycinet

We woke to another clear but cold day. But before we left St Helens we stopped at the little bay at the end of our street. Georges Bay is at its best early in the morning when the water is truly calm. It is a very pretty place.

First stop that morning was at Beaumaris. This is a beautiful sandy beach with some dramatic mountains to the south.

The drive south is through a landscape that is clearly not as productive as the farmlands we have passed through further to the west. There is a lot of coastal scrub and lagoons, most of which were not open to the ocean. One such lagoon is at Scamander, and we stopped there to have a quick look.

The next stopping point was at Falmouth. But before we got to the road into the town, a go in and come out again road, we saw a lovely farm homestead and just had to get a photo.

Falmouth sits on the south of a large lagoon, but again this is not open to the sea. The quality of the water next to the beach does not look so good.The beach itself is another great example of this coast – but with a more yellow sand and a long curved beach to the north.

We drove through the town up to a headland on its south side. There we saw a lovely stone built house and gardens. There were also great views down the coast. There does not appear to be many beaches but there are many dramatic rock outcrops adding to the splendour.

As we were leaving Falmouth, we did a quick check of the weather forecast for the next few days. We were disappointed to find that the next day was predicted to be extremely wet and windy, as we had planned to go up to the Wineglass Lookout that day. Given that we were driving under crystal clear skies we decided to drive directly to Coles Bay and to walk up to the Lookout as quickly as possible before the weather turned. So we did not stop at many other points on the quick journey south. In hindsight we really only missed the chain of lagoons, whatever that might be, and the drive to St Mary‘s over the Elephant Pass. I actually think Chain of Lagoons may be the name of a town – not a “chain of lagoons” per se.

On the way to Bicheno, we pulled in at a sign-posted lookout. There were some very pretty beaches in the area and clearly they were noted as surfing beaches. We saw a lovely circle of stones around a fireplace where the surfers could sit and watch what was happening out on the break.

We then came upon a newly established vineyard and then another large lagoon.

Bicheno is quite a large town, but we did not stop to walk through it as we normally would.

Just to the south of Bicheno, we saw a couple of cars stopped ahead of us with the drivers out looking at half a dozen turkeys wandering along the road. Very funny. A few people have a nice Christmas Dinner coming up. Huge birds.

We really saw little else on the drive down to Coles Bay. But as we approached Coles Bay we began to see the mountains that make up Freycinet. They really do provide a dramatic backdrop as we drive towards the town.

The centre of Coles Bay sits at a really beautiful place. The waters of the bay, a cove off Great Oyster Bay, were a vibrant blue, and the views across to the mountains of Freycinet are stunning.

After taking a few photographs, we headed out to the Freycinet National Park. On the map we see how small our walk to the Lookout is in terms of the scale of the NP.

We then began our climb up to Wineglass Lookout. It is a steep climb and fortunately there were many places with great views back to the Bay where we could take a rest stop. There were also quite a few seats along the way. It is a long haul up the mountain…. I’ve never had to stop so much to look at the scenery…

There are quite a few people on the track with us and it was interesting to see at times we were ahead of the mob, but then they would go past us when we had our break. It was a really good atmosphere. Everyone was smiling and saying hello.

Close to the top, we could turn left and go up to the Lookout, or turn right and head down to Wineglass Beach. However, they were warning signs at the head of the track to the beach telling people that there are 1,000 steps to go down to the beach and the same thousand steps to walk back up again. We took the left-hand track.

It wasn’t long before we were approaching the Lookout – something we had been so looking forward to. We manage to find ourselves a spot at the rail and began to take photos of this iconic place. And it truly is beautiful.

Not only the bay itself but also the cliffs that guard the entrance to the bay, and the view across to the other side of the peninsula. This is truly an amazing place.

We sat for a while looking at the view and talking to some of the other people. Quite naturally everybody was on a bit of a high. We could hear people trying to work out why the Bay is called what it is. They were trying to fit a wineglass in the shape of the Bay. But sadly the name extends back to a dark past. Wineglass Bay owes its name to early whaling in the area. When the whaling stations operated here, the water in the bay would turn red with the slaughtered creatures’ blood. From the lookout points on the hills it looked like a glass being filled with red wine. How sadly disappointing. A very unromantic demise of a lovely name.

It was really pleasant walk down from the lookout. About halfway down, we took a different track to avoid all the people coming up.

As we headed back towards Coles Bay, we took the turn off to Cape Tourville, one of the most popular and accessible viewing points in the NP. There was a short drive to the car park and then we took a delightful walk around the Headland on which the Lighthouse sat. We walked around anticlockwise and the first place we came to provided fantastic views across the ocean to the entrance to Wineglass Bay. It really is a beautiful view.

We continued around on the constructed platform and trail and got to the point where we could walk up and see the Lighthouse, which we did. Not the prettiest lighthouse we have seen.

Just below us in the ocean were what are called “The Nuggets”. This is a cluster of granite islands which provides nesting for 1,000 pairs of birds each year. The popularity is due to the absence of any resident predators on the island. Of all of Tasmania’s offshore islands, and there are more than 300, The Nuggets have an unusually high diversity of nesting seabirds relative to the size of the island. At least 10 species of birds jostle for a nesting spot.

There is a display board there discussion the history of the exploration of Australia and the competition between the Dutch, the first to arrive in 1642, or the French when Nicolas Bauden was here in 1802, but ended being the English who pipped the enthusiastic French to the post so as to deny them possession.

We drove the short distance to Sleepy Bay. This provides a lookout to some dramatic cliffs on our left-hand side. The seas are also angry and we spent some time, as we often do, watching the waves crashing into the rocky shores.

At the Lookout there is a large panel setting out the impacts of the fact that the waters around this area are getting warmer. There has been a 2°C increase in water temperatures since the 1950s and this is having a major impact on ocean life in the area. New species are moving in, unwanted sea urchins are also moving in and new predators are arriving. Note the climate change nay-sayers.

I kept walking along the track past the Lookout for another 15 or so minutes to get to Gravelly Beach. It is a short but quite a steep walk to the beach. The first thing I noticed at the beach is a large rock with a square opening, inside of which is a cavity, but not a cave.

The beach itself is made up of small pebbles rather than sand – very unusual. The beach is surrounded by high rocky cliffs and was being constantly pounded by the high seas.

Leaving the National Park we came to Richardson‘s Beach. With crystal blue water and clear blue skies the beach look fabulous. To the left is the Freycinet Lodge.

From there we went to the Moulting Lagoon. This is another pretty beach but is very flat. There is what looks like an old jetty to one side of the bay.

We called in to Coles Bay to get a few supplies and something for lunch, and then we went to our B&B to put all of our cold foods into the fridge. The B&B is at Swanwick, which is about seven or so km from Coles Bay.

After a quick lunch, we drove back up to visit the Friendly Beaches. These were only added to Freycinet National Park in 1992 but their sweeping stretches of white sand are particularly beautiful. After a kilometre or so the bitumen turned to gravel, although it was a very good gravel track. It was only 5 or 6km to the Beaches where we parked the car and had a lovely walk to the Rocky outcrops to the north on the beach. Once again, the beaches are all quite beautiful.

As we left the Friendly Beaches, we turned left and took the gravel road heading to the south. On the drive we came to a couple of spots where we had some wonderful views down the coastline to the Freycinet mountains.

After about 10km, we came to a locked gate and a “private property keep out” sign. From there we walked down to the beach through some very large sand hills. The beach had some low level rocks at water level so was not such a good swimming proposition.

We then headed back to our B&B, unpacked everything and got the potbelly stove going – fortunately there was some good timber left beside the house.

The street the B&B is in overlooks Sandpiper Beach. That evening I went out to watch the sunset and was rewarded with some beautiful cloud formations.

Day 2 – Tue 15 October – Swanwick

The next morning was very cold but the predicted rain had not arrived. So we walked down to Sandpiper Beach past a garden which the owners had let go wild with African Daisies. This was amazing – l’ll never turn my nose up at African Daisies again.

We spent a good couple of hours walking the sand and looking at the amazing shells along the waters edge. By lunchtime heavy clouds came in and it rained consistently through the rest of the day. We went back to the potbelly stove.