Matt Down Under

I’m late again with my travel report, but for this trip I decided to shoot photos in RAW format which turned out to be annoying, since in the end it took me ages to develop and edit all the photos. Quality-wise I don’t see much advantage, I actually think some photos got worse than they could be, so next time I will shoot in Fine JPEG again for simplicity sake. On the Overland Track it worked well enough. And having 4GB of photos after only a weekend trip is just plain nonsense for me.

So yeah two weeks ago I left Hobart to spend the weekend in beautiful Freycinet National Park on Tasmania’s east coast. You may remember that three weeks ago I somehow managed to lose my (admittedly horrible) job, only to find a new (way better) job 3 days later. So when I got the offer to start work the following week I quickly decided to take the chance and spend the weekend - including Friday - on a short hike along the pristine beaches of Freycinet.

On Friday morning I went to the Tassielink office to take the bus to Coles Bay. Even though my hike was only three days, my backpack felt terribly heavy. Water supplies in Freycinet are always a bit unreliable in summer, therefore I decided to bring my own water. I planned with 2-3 litre per day. The bus doesn’t actually drive to Coles Bay, it only stops at the turn off to Coles Bay, from there you need to take a transfer bus from Bicheno Coach Services, but it worked perfectly well. Just give them a call the days before and they will pick you up.

It is so fascinating to drive along Tasmania’s east coast. Much of the route was exactly the same route I had taken on my bicycle one year ago, a lot of wonderful memories. What is great too is the difference in temperature. It’s only 2 hours from Hobart, but the bus driver told me they had had 40 degrees in Coles Bay only a few days before I arrived. In Hobart it felt like 20 degrees. Tasmania’s east coast is my favourite place here, it’s just beautiful there, lots of beautiful beaches, sandy bushland, dry climate. Having a house in Coles Bay and a nice little boat must be fantastic! I’m currently thinking about getting information about boat licenses and the legal things, if I stayed in Australia then having a boat would be almost mandatory ;-). I’d rather have a boat than a car, that’s for sure.

Anyway, around midday the bus dropped me off at the start of the walking tracks a few kilometres after Coles Bay. My plan for the day was only to walk down to Wineglass Bay, pitch my tent and then work on my tan for the rest of the day, so I had plenty of time and decided to have lunch first. While I sat there watching the heaps of tourists I understood why the bus driver asked me if I brought mosquito repellent. They are just everywhere and after the three days my legs looked terrible. I don’t know why I always forget to buy it.

After a short but tiring walk up to the saddle between Mt Amos and Mt Mayson I reached the lookout point to Wineglass Bay. I noticed that there had been plenty of track rework around the start of the tracks, they put a lot of work into it and the tracks now are more comfortable to walk. After one hour I reached the beach at Wineglass Bay, just beautiful. The first thing I did was taking my shoes off. Then I walked to the other end of the beach, where the camp site is located.

After I pitched my tent in record time I spent the rest of the day at the beach sunbathing and swimming. What most people don’t know is that the far end of Wineglass beach is actually the best part for swimming, since the bay makes a slight bend so there are almost no waves and the water is shallow.

What I learned quickly on the first day, is, that it’s impossible to keep sand off your stuff and off yourself. Everywhere you go there’s sand, and when it’s windy, the wind brings even more sand. It took only half a day and all my gear, my clothes, my tent and my hair was full of sand. I simply decided not to care for it and clean everything back in Hobart ;). Fortunately my camera survived the sand.

The next morning the weather looked quite disappointing, there were rain showers every now and then. I stayed in my tent and waited for the perfect moment to get up and pack my tent, I simply hate packing a wet tent. In the end it was around 10am when I was ready to leave the camp site. I would have loved to spend another couple of days at Wineglass Bay, but my plan was to do the Peninsula Walk. So I went on to walk the six hour track to Cooks Beach.

The first two hours were pretty frustrating for me, my pack was still heavy and the track steep, and then it rained more and more. At some point it rained so much that I stopped walking, looked for shelter and thought about returning. But hiking in Tasmania is actually a good way to learn to be patient, because only half an hour later it stopped raining and from there it became a very nice day.

It’s a really great but very tiring walk to the top of Mt Graham. In the end the view makes it all worth, you can see from Maria Island to almost the northern end of the east coast. A funny thing happend when I prepared for climbing down. When I grabbed my backpack, suddenly something bit my finger, it hurt terribly! First I thought I accidentally touched a bee or wasp, but there were no bees. Then I thought about scorpions, I had seen a few in Tasmania before, but I didn’t see any scorpions around. The pain was horrific and my finger started to swell. Then I noticed some of those giant Tasmanian ants on the ground, I guess probably one of them was climbing the shoulder strap of my backpack when I grabbed it. Unbelievable how much pain a single ant can cause (if it actually was one of them) in Tasmania… Fortunately half an hour later the pain was almost gone.

The climb down from Mt Graham is quite steep and slippery but I made it without any major mistakes. On some old maps there is a track that leads to the top of Mt Freycinet, but I couldn’t find it. Newer maps don’t include that track anymore, looks like it is simply overgrown now.

From the saddle between both mountains down to Cooks Beach it was a very nice and easy walk. In the bush you can see yellow-tailed black cockatoos, some of my favourite birds in Australia. I love them because they always seem to fly in slow-motion, it looks beautiful. They’re especially cool when they fly in groups.

With several breaks I arrived at Cooks Beach seven hours after I started in the morning. It’s very nice to camp there since you can basically camp directly at the beach and the area’s big enough so you’ll find a place only for yourself, where you can listen to the wind and the sea, instead of your neighbours talk.

I had been thinking about walking the two hours return track to Bryans Beach after arriving at Cooks Beach, but I was pretty tired and it took me a while before I discovered the track anyway, so I rather enjoyed the last bits of sunshine at Cooks Beach. Before I went to sleep I prepared all the remaining food I had as lunch for the next day. My bus would pick me up at 2.30pm at the start of the walking tracks, and I expected to walk at least 5-6 hours, so I decided to get up very early, quickly pack all my gear, skip breakfast and have some lunch while walking.

The next day I got up around 6am. Normally I would have trouble getting up this early, but when camping I wake up with the sun and enjoy getting up early. And my sleep generally is pretty bad on my sleeping matress anyway. At 7am I left, while everyone else still seemed to be asleep in their tents. It’s really beautiful to get up early on a summer day at the beach. Watching the sun rise and feeling the cool morning wind is a great outdoor experience. And it’s easier to walk in the morning.

I walked from Cooks Beach to Hazards Beach. There I had breakfast before I walked on. On the beach I found three dead sharks, only small ones, but still interesting. Maybe a fishing boat accidentally caught them and threw them back in the water since they are a protected species as far as I know. Anyway, it’s interesting what you can find on the beach early in the morning.

When I arrived at the short Isthmus Track to Wineglass Bay, it was still very early, so I decided to walk there and spend half an hour or so at Wineglass Beach, there was enough time left. Always interesting to watch asian tourists walk the one hour walk down to Wineglass Bay, then they spend like 10 minutes at the beach, taking a photo of each other with the bay in the background, then they leave again. Hard to understand this strange sort of appreciation, but I’ve seen it countless times in Tasmania. In the end you can say you’ve been there, but you didn’t really experience the place.

Later I walked the Isthmus track back to Hazards Beach. In the meantime the sun was shining hot. The water looked so quiet and crystal clear at Hazards Beach that I decided to make another stop and go swimming. I wish I could do this every day, it was fantastic.

The walk from Hazards Beach to the start of the tracks took me about 2 hours. It was good to walk, but on the track it was so hot that I needed to save water and had to do a lot of breaks. Still I arrived there one hour early and then sat down at the parking spots to wait for my bus.

The transfer bus brought me back to Coles Bay turnoff. I was glad we stopped at the Coles Bay bakery to pick up another passenger since I was really really hungry. I should have taken more snacks on this trip. At the turnoff, the friendly Tassielink bus picked me up and 2 hours later I was back in Hobart. Another great adventure, a perfect weekend trip. Of course I was looking forward to have a shower, I was still full of sand…

I uploaded another photo album on Picasa.