<< On to Freycinet

10/06/14 - Exploring the Freycinet Peninsula

The Freycinet Peninsula is famous for its relatively isolated Wineglass Bay sand beach. It's only accessible by foot and requires a 150 meter climb over a ridge. The trail is steep enough, but well built and well maintained. There's a beautiful overlook where countless pictures of the bay have been taken. An awful lot of people turn around here. We continued down to WIneglass Bay, but we didn't stop to explore. Instead we cut inland and headed towards the more isolated Hazard Beach. We crossed wetlands on a boardwalk and passed marshy sink holes.

Hazard Beach was wild and lovely. We trudged across the sand and continued our hike. We were working our way around Mount Mayson, taking the long route back to the parking lot. Even as we climbed, the ground stayed sandy, but we had better views of the blue water and eroded stone formations above and below us. We passed through forests full of soil forming trees that reminded us of Hawaii's pioneer kiawe. The trail turned and turned again, slowly rising. We were sure the parking lot was not far for quite some time, but then, we heard the first SUV gunning its engine. We emerged from the wilderness part way up the extremely civilized trail to the lookout. We were on our way home.


The start of the trail

Wineglass Bay as photographed by thousands of others

WIneglass Bay as photographed by those intrepid enough to climb down to it

Grass trees with a seed spike

The boardwalks across the marshland

Hazard Beach

One of the marshy ponds

The local version of a kiawe forest

A view down from the trail

Rock formations above

Rocks below

Keywords: australia