Epic Hike

The biggest reason I wanted to go to Freycinet National Park was to see the beautiful beach at Wineglass Bay and we got to do that on Friday.  We arrived in Coles Bay around 1 pm and had lunch at a great little restaurant overlooking Coles Bay and the Hazards Mountains called The View.  We ended up having dinner there that night and breakfast the next morning too! 

Coles Bay is a very small town with only around 200 year-round residents, but 200,000 tourists each year.  We checked into our accommodation and headed over to the park.  We purchased a year long parks pass that we can use at all the national parks in Tasmania.  Our hike to the lookout climbed a mountain pass between two of the Hazards.  It was steep-including 300 steps-and warm.  We got to the top and here was the view:

Only 1% of visitors to the park make it down to the beach and we decided we wanted to join that group.  We hiked down to the beach and it was gorgeous:

Then the fun really began.  We decided we wanted to continue on with the hike instead of just going back the way we came so we took the path and walked through rainforest and saw all sorts of birds and wallabies.  It was so peaceful and we only saw one other couple out on the trail.  Crossing the isthmus of the peninsula, we came to Hazards Beach.  My favorite part of the hike was walking along the densely packed sand of this beach.

We also saw lots of skinks on this hike:

We continued through the forest over boulders and along the trail back to the car park.  We were so tired by the end and in total the hike was 7.5 miles and took us 4 hours to complete.  It was a very challenging but rewarding hike.  Here's the map with details from my Garmin watch.  The "Satellite" tab on the map below illustrates our hike around one of the Hazards, Mt. Mayson.