Wineglass Bay
Interesting facts
- The Hazards are said to be named after Richard Hazard, an African-American whaling captain of the ship Thalia recorded off this coast in 1824.
- The Hazards range is made up of five granite peaks, the highest being Mount Dove at 485 metres, followed by Mount Amos at 454 metres.
- Abel Tasman's last sighting of Australia in 1642, before he sailed on to New Zealand, was this coast, which he recorded as Vanderlyn Island.
- The first recorded European landing on the peninsula was made on 27 July 1791 by Captain Weatherhead of the ship Matilda.
- A shore-based whaling station once stood at the southern end of Wineglass Bay; whale oil went to Britain for lamps and baleen into corsets.
- The peninsula was home to the toorernomairremener clan of the Oyster Bay nation, whose shell middens and stone quarries survive along the coast.
- More than 80 species of orchid grow in the park, and the endangered Freycinet waxflower is found nowhere else but on this peninsula.
Why it is worth it
On Tasmania's east coast, the Freycinet Peninsula runs south into the Tasman Sea behind a line of jagged granite peaks called the Hazards. On the far side of them lies Wineglass Bay — a perfect, symmetrical crescent of white sand closing a bowl of clear, deep-blue water, with forested granite slopes rising on both sides. From above, the bay looks as if it had been drawn with a compass, and the shape is the source of its name, along with a darker story.
The colours are what make Freycinet exceptional. The granite here is Devonian, and a pink feldspar, orthoclase, gives the mountains and the rocks at the water's edge a warm pinkish tint. Against that the sand is almost white and the sea runs from turquoise to ink blue. The best-known view is from the saddle between the Hazards, reached by a steep walk of about 1.3 km each way from the car park near Coles Bay; from there the path drops down to the beach itself, and a longer circuit of four to five hours returns via Hazards Beach.
The name is usually explained by the early nineteenth century, when whalers and sealers worked this coast, chasing whales in open boats and towing them ashore to be butchered; the story goes that the bay's water ran red like wine. Shore whaling on the peninsula lasted about twenty years. Today the bay lies within Freycinet National Park, established in 1916 and, together with Mount Field, the oldest national park in Tasmania; the peninsula itself is named after the French navigator Louis de Freycinet. Bennett's wallabies, echidnas and wombats live in the park, and dolphins and whales pass offshore.
Getting there
Freycinet National Park lies about 125 km north-east of Hobart, with the small settlement of Coles Bay as its gateway and Swansea as the nearest town. Hobart International Airport (HBA) is about 100 km away in a straight line; the park is usually reached by road from Hobart. The walks to the lookout and to the beach start from the Coles Bay car park.
On these lists
-42.15560, 148.33200per Wikidata