Waking up at Bicheno we had a good hearty omelette before heading down to Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula to climb to the Wineglass Bay lookout. This is a fairly steep walk up the side of the mountain! It was reasonably easy as Parks and Wildlife have cut many steps into the path. We took it easy and got to the top in about 50 minutes. We both ended up taking our coats off because it got quite warm. The view over Wingless Bay was definitely worth the climb.
Trekking back down the mountain (easier than going up) we got back to the carpark and headed to the Visitor Information Centre at the entrance to the park. There was a lot of interesting local information about the Freycinet National Park and its surrounds. Just inside the park is a very nice camping ground that Parks and Wildlife run. The cost is $6.60 per person for a powered site.
Along the road to Coles Bay, we stopped at a marine farm that farms oysters, mussels and scallops. At the moment they only had oysters for sale. There was a sign on the unlocked shop door that said if the shop was unattended, help yourself to oysters and put your money in the honesty box!!
We went into Coles Bay town centre in the hope of finding a bakery for lunch. (We didn’t) Coles Bay came to fame a little while ago as the first town to ban plastic bags. Not a big deal as, apart from a café, there is only one shop in town that serves as a restaurant, newsagency, post office, general store and service station.
From Freycinet National Park we journeyed south along the coast and reached the historic town of Swansea. We stopped for lunch at a historic bakery and had another scallop pie! YAY! Swansea is a lovely town and we decided we could stay there for a while looking around. But, unfortunately not on this trip. 🙁
Past Swansea we kept going south with the intention of stopping for the night at Orford. The scenery between Swansea and Orford was predominately countryside with sheep…millions of sheep!! We had some good views over the ocean but a lot of it we could not photograph because there was nowhere to pull over and stop. We went through the town of Triabunna just before Orford. Although there was a caravan park there it looked pretty yucky so we kept going to Orford. We got to Orford at about 3:30pm and asked at the local service station where the caravan park was. Unfortunately, it had closed! We decided that we didn’t want to go back to Triabunna so we would push on to Sorell.
Sorell is a large town just northeast of Hobart. Again! No caravan park 🙁 we just wanted to stop now so we headed into Hobart looking for caravan park signs. Finally, we found one at Seven Mile Beach and booked in for the night. Had another early tea and tucked in for the night.
Temps: Bicheno 10ºc at 8:00am
Swansea 15ºc at 1:30pm
Weather: Warm and sunny most of the day.
Travel: Bicheno to Coles Bay – 38kms
Coles Bay to Freycinet Car Park – 4kms
Walk to Wineglass Bay lookout – 2.6kms round trip.
Coles Bay to Swansea – 71kms
Swansea to Orford – 59kms
Orford to Sorell – 54kms
Sorell to Seven Mile Beach – 20kms
