One of the main reasons for coming to Freycinet was to see the National Park and, with the park visitor information centre just a couple of miles down the road, it was easy to get there promptly. As ever, the staff were incredibly helpful and honest.
The Freycinet Peninsula is quite unusual in its naming as it is one of relatively few places named after a Frenchman – Louis de Freycinet. He was part of an expedition surveying the Australian coastline between 1802 and 1804 on the schooner Casuarina. Mathew Flinders was surveying the coast at a similar time and he is better known for his contribution to mapping Australia, but in fact, while he was being held captive by the French at Mauritius for six years, Freycinet beat him home and published his maps of Australia in 1811, three years before Flinders.
There are various paths. The path most travelled is the one up to the lookout over Wineglass Bay. The path slightly less travelled is the one which then goes down to the bay itself, while the path less travelled is the round trip on from Wineglass Beach across the isthmus to Hazards Beach and then back to the car park on the western side of the peninsula.
We decided (rashly) to take the path less travelled (with apologies to the American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) as the expression “to take the road less travelled,” comes from his poem “The Road Not Taken”). As expected the first leg to the lookout was busy, but nevertheless spectacular. The path takes you directly between two of the granite peaks which collectively are known as ‘The Hazards’.
Devonian granite is the main rock, but the area is given a pink tint by the presence of orthoclase – a pink feldspar. The pink symbolism ends there though as there feels nothing feminine about the harsh landscape. The path weaves through enormous blocks of gravel looking almost as if they have been casually piled there by a giant while he works out what to do with them.
From the lookout the path goes down again and it goes down in style – 1,000 steps down to the beach. I tried counting them to take my mind off my dodgy knees creaking down each step and by the bottom I got to 911, but I was not surprised I had mis-counted! The beach was beautiful and after that climb down we stopped for a while.
From there, across the isthmus of the peninsula to Hazards Beach – another amazing beach. Once again, we felt that a rest was justified!
The rest of the walk is best forgotten. It was lovely, but up and down areas of granite and sandy steps was not the best formulas for knees which were already struggling. Nevertheless, a lovely walk – 11km in total, but it felt a lot more!
A fish and chip supper at Coles Bay was a lovely way to round the day off ….