St Helens/Wineglass Bay

We woke up to another fine sunny day, which was good as we had made plans to leave early and drive south to Freycinet National Park. We had been looking forward to seeing Wine Glass Bay and completing the circular walk via Mt Amos lookout, Wine Glass Beach and Hazard Bay which starts at the National Park car park near Coles Bay.
Today is the Tasmanian spring Bank Holiday, " Recreation Day" so we had anticipated that the roads would be busy. We hardly saw a soul on the roads and arrived at 10:15 ready for our breakfast before the walk.
The walk took us up the side of Mount Amos to a lookout over Wineglass Bay, named by a French sailor working for Napoleon B under orders to survey the coastline. There are many more French name references in the area, however MacLean Bay would not be one of them - this we passed just north of Bicheno.
The lookout is reached by a steady incline and many stairs - Alan counted over 450- and the views at the lookout were worth the effort. Walkers are then given the opportunity to return to the car park or take the 1000 steps down onto Wine Glass Beach. The 1000 steps were spread over a walk of about 2km so it did not seem too arduous. Karen could not resist having a paddle in the clear water on the beach. Moving on we passed over the ithsmus to the other side of the headland, passing an internal lagoon before dropping once again to a beach. On this stretch an echidna popped out of the undergrowth in front of us and had a little rummage on the pathway. We stopped for a snack at the end of the beach before taking the long walk back upon a very undulating landscape through the bush and woods. We did not count all the steps up and down taken over the 15km walk but it must have been about 3000. We arrived back at the car park quite weary and headed off to the Marine Fishery where fish based fare was on offer.
The food was tasty and plentiful - a bowlful of moules mariniere for Karen and fish and chips for Alan. Afterwards we drove back into Coles Bay to try the local Ice Cream. All in all a full and enjoyable dayRead more