TripRoundUnder

What’s going on, two posts in such quick succession, must be needing to pay the bills!

After our time around the blue beaches of the Mid East coast of Tassie, we made our way down to one of Steve’s favourite areas, the Freycinet National Park which included the much photographed Wineglass Bay.

In classic Steve and Lauren fashion, we immediately decided to do a 15km walk which went through Wineglass Bay and around to Hazards Beach on the other side of the peninsula. The Wineglass Bay lookout, although requiring a few steep steps, was actually quite early in the walk and the views really showed what we had ahead of us!

Although we had an initial disagreement over the direction of the walk, we pushed on and Steve knew he could have handled it a little better. However, things started to brighten up as we got to the bottom of the hill and the sandy beach of Wineglass Bay! Although the big swell theme of the previous week stayed true in the bay, the beach was still beautiful!

With the wind coming from the East, we hoped that the other side of the peninsula was going to be slightly more calm, as we were hot and in need of a swim! After trudging through the undergrowth we eventually made it to sand dunes and some bloody biting flies which we continue to despise to this day. In a positive note, this meant that we were close to the beach and boy was it a good one! Look at this next photo and you tell me if its Hazards Beach Tasmania or the Maldives!

After immediately calling our families to make them jealous, we went in for a dip and had a lovely swim in the crystal clear water. It was a little chilly, but not unbearable and we were over the moon to find a beach that didn’t have 2m breaking waves!

The rest of the walk did have some small amounts of chafing from the swim, but we were over the moon with the day!

Although there were no campsites available in the National Park, we found a nice little free camp called River and Rocks just outside of the town. It was here we bumped into our friend Aaron again and we decided that the next day we were going to climb the imposing Mt Amos together.

Now, this was a challenging hike! We knew that it was going to be a serious walk when there was a sign saying that you may need to use your hands to get up some parts of the walk! They weren’t joking, the steepness of some sections combined with some very smooth slippery rocks made for probably our hardest hike yet.

Not to be discouraged though, we made it all the way to the peak and again, the view was worth it! I think I have come to the conclusion that when camping and hiking, the harder or more challenging it is to get somewhere, the reward such as the view or the spot is often more than worth it.

After this, we left Freycinet for the time being in order to meet Laurens dad up in Launceston as he had just finished a golf trip. Although it was a long drive back up to where we had just come from, the sunset we were given that night was absolutely stunning and a sign we were doing the right thing.

We had a lovely time exploring a few wineries in the Tamar Valley and catching up with him and it was nice to settle down in an Airbnb for a few days. I also forgot to mention in a previous blog that we had already sampled a few vinos in the valley and I think we learned that we’re more red wine drinkers than the classic Tassie whites, although we had developed a taste for Tasmanian Pinot Noir.

After saying our goodbyes to Paul, we made our way back down to Freycinet and the hotel, cruise and dinner combo that was organised to treat ourselves. We were again testing Lauren’s stomach with an adventure cruise, with some overcast skies and potential wind putting a little bit of stress into the proceedings. However, even though there were a few big waves in the Tasman Sea, she handled it like a champ and we are thinking that she may have turned a corner in terms of seasickness! More boats to come! Or not…

The cruise itself showed a different side to the Freycinet national park and we were able to see how nature had formed out the huge cliffs and caves. It was really cool to see waterfalls coming straight off the cliffs and into the water, even in the middle of summer! We also saw some of the animals that called the area home including dolphins and eagles.

More to come!