Bay of Fires
Interesting facts
- The fiery orange on the boulders comes mainly from firedot lichens of the genus Caloplaca, which thrive on the coastal granite.
- Tobias Furneaux was commanding HMS Adventure on James Cook's second Pacific voyage when he named the bay in March 1773.
- Furneaux named the northern headland Eddystone Point after the notorious Eddystone Rocks in the English Channel, after a gale drove his ship far out to sea.
- Abel Tasman sighted Eddystone Point in December 1642 but was beaten back by westerly gales when he tried to round it.
- The Eddystone Point lighthouse and its keepers' cottages were built from granite quarried on the spot, under a head mason brought out from Glasgow.
- In 1960 the lighthouse received a large Chance Brothers lens that had earlier served at Cape du Couedic on Kangaroo Island, in South Australia.
- Seal hunters were working this coast by at least 1827, more than a decade before the shore whaling stations of the 1840s.
- Binalong Bay, the village at the southern end, was known as Boat Harbour until 1944, when it took a name believed to be Aboriginal.
- In 2005 Condé Nast Traveller ranked the Bay of Fires as the world's second-best beach, and in 2008 Lonely Planet named it the hottest destination for 2009.
- The national park in the north of the bay shelters wombats, echidnas, eastern grey kangaroos and Tasmanian devils.
Why it is worth it
The Bay of Fires runs for about 50 kilometres along the north-east coast of Tasmania, from Binalong Bay in the south to Eddystone Point in the north. It is a coast of three colours. The sand is white and fine, the water a clear, cold turquoise, and between the beaches lie piles of rounded granite boulders splashed with bright orange. The orange is not the rock itself but a lichen that grows over the granite, and in the low light of morning or evening it glows almost like flame against the blue.
The name has nothing to do with the lichen. In 1773 the English navigator Tobias Furneaux, sailing along this coast, saw the fires of Aboriginal people burning on the beaches and named the bay after them. The coast was a meeting place for Aboriginal family groups long before that, and in the palawa kani language the northern headland is larapuna. Dozens of shell middens around Eddystone Point record those gatherings. In the 1840s the bay saw a brief period of shore-based whaling.
There is no single viewpoint here; the pleasure lies in moving along the shore. In the south, around Binalong Bay, a string of coves and beaches, among them The Gardens, Jeanneret, Swimcart and Cosy Corner, each has its own arrangement of boulders, sand and lagoon. Further north the coast becomes wilder: the northern part of the bay lies in Mount William National Park, the southern part in a conservation area, and at larapuna / Eddystone Point a lighthouse built of local granite in 1889 marks the end of the bay.
The bay has received its share of international praise over the years, but the reason to come is simpler than any ranking: rocks you can climb in bare feet, sand that squeaks underfoot, and almost no one else on the beach.
Getting there
The usual gateway is St Helens, about 11 km south of Binalong Bay, which marks the southern end of the bay. Launceston, the nearest city, is about 165 km from St Helens by road; Launceston Airport (LST) is roughly 100 km from the bay as the crow flies. From St Helens, Binalong Bay Road leads to Binalong Bay, and a side road continues north to the beaches around The Gardens.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Bay of Fires is a bay on the northeastern coast of Tasmania in Australia, extending from Binalong Bay to Eddystone Point. The bay was given its name in 1773 by Captain Tobias Furneaux in Adventure, who saw the fires of Aboriginal people on the beaches.
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