Bushwalking to Wineglass Bay

 

12/27/07

 

Wineglass Bay!! The photos I had seen (in EVERY travel book about Australia and on EVERY website) were gorgeous! A perfect arc of white sand holding water of the bluest blue, surrounded by mountains and bush, without a person in sight. I knew I had to go! And time was running out. Here we were, only 2 weeks and 1 day before catching our plane back home. This was pretty much our last chance!

 

And the only way into the park was on foot or on a boat…

 

So, we split up! Mom, Dad and Rama took a boat trip around the Freycinet peninsula (for more on that, see Rama’s blog posting!), while Eileen, Annapurna and I bushwalked (Aussie for “hiked”) over the ridge to those white sands.

 

The day started a little rough. Not only were all 4 of us sharing one very small motel room, there wasn’t a lot of hot water. Oh yes, and some of us had to get up early for the cruise. Oh yes, and I was having to make lunches for the day without using the running water (handy for wiping peanut butter off things) that might make us sick. Oh yes, and Anna, who is a couple of weeks shy of 14, considers it a personal affront to have to wake up before 8 am on her vacation, and was pretty sure it was all her sister’s fault. And yes, worst of all, Rama had forgotten to check off “coffee” on the breakfast order that went out last night, so I was without…

 

A light drizzle was falling when the girls and I finally left. After a brief stop to get gas (we had gotten QUITE low – there weren’t a lot of petrol stations around) I drove slowly through town, scanning the drizzle for signs that said COFFEE. I saw a bakery (which in Australia ALWAYS means cappuccino!) and made a sharp turn into the lot. One cappuccino and a couple of muffins later (muffins hidden in a backpack for a surprise tea on the hike) we were on our way. It was an hour drive, but Eileen kept us occupied by reading aloud to us from Harry Potter 1, starting at the beginning. This drive was in daylight, so we didn’t see any of the wildlife that had kept me driving carefully last night. We did see an awful lot of roadkill (it’s really sad to see a wallaby – a small kangaroo – dead at the side of the road).  I was glad I hadn’t added to it driving home.

 

We entered the park (the park pass from the dinner at the Lodge was good for 24 hours, so we didn’t have to buy another), drove past the Lodge about 15 minutes, and found the carpark, the farthest place that cars could go on the peninsula. And the carpark was pretty crowded! One of the first things we saw as we got out of the car was a wallaby in the parking lot! Apparently people feed them, making them semi-tame (NOT a good idea) and they hang around the carpark. But it was a cool beginning to our hike.

 

The hike to Wineglass Bay is listed as 3 hours return, meaning “ 3 hours for a journey there and back”. Basically, the first half is a hike up to a saddle between Mount Amos and Mount Mayson, and the second half is a hike down from the saddle to the beach. At the top of the saddle, there is a little turnoff to a lookout platform, where you see the famous view of Wineglass Bay from above that is immortalized in so many postcards and guidebooks.

 

We had gotten used to pretty much having the path to ourselves on Tasmanian hikes, so we were surprised to see so many people! And to hear so many different languages! We counted at least 10 that we could distinguish – there could have been more. Generally, Tasmania is very, well, insular, and there just isn’t much you hear that isn’t English. But most people were clearly not prepared for a real hike and were only going to the viewing platform (although I wasn’t sure they would make it even there!).

 

One of the first things we saw on our hike was a wallaby on the stone stairs ahead of us, just around a corner.

 

It let us get even closer.

 

Bennet’s Wallabies are smaller than a kangaroo. Tasmania also has kangaroos, but the wallabies are more common.

 

The mountains we were crossing are called the Hazzards, named after an American sea captain (it was his last name – perhaps not the most auspicious name for a sea captain??), and are made from pink granite, shot through with grey. They broke up into the most amazing, enormous boulders. I just couldn’t stop trying to photograph them, although it was hard to show just how BIG they were.

 

A big pink granite boulder (with Annapurna in the background).

 

Pink granite breaking away…

 

I just hoped those boulders were really balanced well…

 

Then suddenly – there we were at the top!

 

And WOW! Wineglass Bay was really as we had expected it to be!

 

There wasn’t a road in sight to mar the view. Freycinet Peninsula was one of the first National Parks in Tasmania, founded really before the car was a means of transportation, in 1916. That’s probably what saved this area. Wineglass Bay is one of Tasmania’s most famous natural sites, but is NOT the most photographed. That honor goes to Russell Falls, in Mount Field National Park, the second national park founded in 1916. The reason Russell Falls is more photographed is that it can be reached in a 10 minute walk from a carpark on a flat paved walk. It’s also stunningly beautiful, but is more accessible. We visited Russell Falls twice, but it hasn’t made it onto the blog yet – but I promise it will eventually!

 

It had stopped raining before we started the bushwalk, but the grey sky only seemed to add to the beauty of the view.

 

Now, all we had to do was hike down from the saddle to the beach. The walk down seemed to take less time, although it turned out to be almost exactly the same.

 

If you look closely, you can see some boats in the far part of the bay. We wondered if one was the one Mom, Dad and Rama were on. We figured they wouldn’t be there long, so we had to hurry down.

 

The trees on the way down were all eucalyptus. I’m not sure which they were, but several of the eucalypt species in Freycinet are found only in Tasmania. The trees had such an interesting architecture and made such a regular, repeating pattern.

 

Then suddenly, there we were – on the beach!

 

The strange thing was – all the hordes of people who had been hiking with us on the trail (or “path” as they call it in Australia) just stopped as soon as they got to the end of the trail, at the very edge of the beach, and sat there on the rocks WITH THEIR HIKING BOOTS ON, eating lunch. We were ready for the beach, and instantly pulled out our flip flops. But the water was so inviting, that we took those off too in just a couple of minutes.

 

Ours were the only footprints on this part of the beach…

 

I had not really enjoyed sharing the trail with so many people, and was delighted to leave them behind. In fact, we had planned to get as far out onto the beach as we could. We were also hoping to get closer to those boats and perhaps see the other half of our group.

 

We walked down to the middle of Wineglass Bay, and had about a kilometer of gorgeous beach to ourselves.

 

Looking back at the saddle we crossed to get to Wineglass Bay.

 

Then the sun came out and the water was an impossible azure blue. It was also clear all the way to the bottom.

 

We really couldn’t keep out of the water (even though it was quite chilly).

 

On the beach for our picnic at last! Here’s Anna.

 

And Eileen!

 

and me!

 

We watched a pair of welcome swallows dart and dive at an astonishing speed in front of us while we ate our tea (muffins and water). Welcome swallows have a bright red neck, white breast and dark back and wings (http://tassiebirds.blogspot.com/2006/11/welcome-swallows-in-tasmania.html). No way I could get a photo of them! They moved too fast.

 

We peered at the boats to see if we could see Rama and my parents, but no luck. I figured they had probably moved on by now.

 

Then we got into our bathers (swimming suits!) and into the water! Surprisingly, we were the only people swimming as far as we could see.  Don’t let this photo of the girls fool you – that water was COLD! As Rama pointed out – nothing south of here except Antarctica!

 

 

 

They stayed in the water for a surprisingly long time, but then Eileen had to get out to warm up.

 

Anna just couldn’t get out of that lovely water! She has an amazing tolerance for cold water…

 

The entire time we swam, it was quite chilly, and of course, the water was freezing. So we got out and ate our lunch. Nothing too exciting, but naturally we had a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate!

 

It was still pretty cold, so we decided to get dry and dressed. As soon as we did, the sun came out, warming the place by about 10 degrees! Ah well, we didn’t go swimming again, but we certainly thought about it! The water now turned an amazing color of blue-green. I kept taking pictures – we just couldn’t get enough of it!

 

It was so clear that we could almost see into the waves.

 

We couldn’t keep our feet out of it…

 

Then finally, we headed back down the beach.

 

The rocks at the end of the beach, where all the other hikers had their lunch, were lovely in their own right. The reddish-orange lichen that grows on the rocks makes a beautiful contrast to the brilliant blue of the water.

 

Just as we started to put on our hiking boots for the walk back, we noticed a wallaby on the rocks nearby. (photo courtesy of Anna)

 

It was licking something between the rocks for a long time, then it licked its paws – perhaps salt or seaweed? (photo courtesy of Anna)

 

I had always thought of kangaroos and wallabies as living in a deserty, outback sort of place – I never thought of them as beach animals!

 

The wallaby was easy to spot on the light-colored sand. (photo courtesy of Eileen)

 

But it blended in almost completely on the dusty brown grass. (photo courtesy of Eileen)

 

Finally we turned away from the beach, and back to the trail.

 

In all the talk of wildlife, pink granite boulders and beautiful beaches, I want to mention the amazing trees. Mostly eucalypts, the trees on the hillside had an unusual and lovely architecture of their branches - so different from that of the trees that grow in the US northeast.

 

Then back up, over the mountain of boulders.

 

up to the saddle

 

The hike back up, after a lovely day on the beach was a little harder than it had been coming over. But we were rewarded at the top with a lovely view – the sun was out and you could see the color of the water even from up on the viewing platform. It was as lovely up here as it had been down on the sand!

 

Coming back down the other side, on the way to the car park we passed lots of people heading up to the lookout. At 3:30pm, it was a little late to be thinking of the full hike, but some were. It was funny to pass people only 5 minutes from the carpark saying “I think we must be almost there!”

 

Towards the end, we had views out over Coles Bay, where the Lodge was, and then beyond, over Oyster Bay. Swansea was presumably on the other shore, but it was a little hard to tell from here.

 

Finally we got back to the carpark at 4pm, only 5 ½ hours after we had arrived there. We tried not to notice the wallabies people were feeding in the parking lot (couldn’t they TELL what a bad idea it was?!?), and I tried desperately not to add to the roadkill. Then we were off on our hour drive back to Swansea, listening to Eileen read out loud the next chapter of Harry Potter.

 

What a glorious day it had been!