Wineglass Bay
This part of Tasmania was first explored by the French seaman Nicolas Baudan and many of the names here are of French origin. Towns like Bicheno, parks like Freycinet, are just some of the sites we saw today. Bicheno is a very nice and pretty town. We didn’t stay there long, but we did get a refilled lpg tank there.
We got to Freycinet National Park before 10 am, and after making our lunch we hiked up to the viewpoint for Wineglass Bay. The trail was busy with many tourists on the hike and at the bay, the most we’ve seen anywhere in Tasmania. Wineglass Bay has been rated as one of the top 10 beaches in the world. However, I think that’s rather overrated as while it’s a very lovely beach, it’s really not any better (and not nearly as big) as many of the others we’ve seen. It does have very pretty coloured turquoise water that contrasts with the white sand, the darker blue water of the deep bay and the dark green of the surrounding hills. We swam in it before eating our lunch, and the water was pretty cool. This was especially true as there was a very strong on-shore wind driving quite large waves onto the beach. We floated in the waves for a while before eating our lunch where we sat low down behind some sheltering rocks. The wind is so strong that it drove stinging sand into our legs. I commented to Enid that it was a lot like walking in a snowstorm.
After lunch we walked across the isthmus trail to Hazards beach. This beach was much nicer since it was on the leeward side, so there was much less wind. We swam here too (as did a few other hardy souls who joined us after we went in). The water was very clear, so it was nice swimming, though still cool. After that we changed on the beach and hiked back to our motorhome. It was about another eight km, and one of the roughest hikes we’ve been on in Australia. The trail is in good condition with many excellent stone steps in places, but it does go up and down quite a lot and so we were tired by the time we’d completed a little over 12 km today, along with two ocean swims.