Bay of Fires

We left the hustle and bustle of A Festival Called Panama. I had a go at describing our escapades there in the last blog. You can read about it here. Our plan was to go somewhere quiet after the noise of Panama. Somewhere beautiful to relax and work for a few days after the Festival. Our work is all online so all we need is an internet connection and we’re able to work. We chose a lovely Airbnb cottage in a cul-de-sac in the Bay of Fires region on the North East coast of Tasmania, Binnalong Bay specifically. We had planned to stay 2 nights there but almost immediately upon arrival contacted our Airbnb host and extended another day.

Why did we do that? Because we went for a short stroll the first day and immediately realised that 2 nights here wasn’t enough. The coastline here is stunningly beautiful. It’s hard to take a bad picture. Therefore this is a picture heavy, word light blog. Let’s let the pictures tell most of the story.

Day 2

The shoreline is already quite beautiful with inlets and bays, pure white sandy beaches and azure crystal clear waters. However, someone in Slartibartfast’s team decided that wasn’t enough. They sprinkled orange lichen on the upbiquitous granite rocks injecting splashes of colour all along the coast. They added tall spindly trees reaching precariously and up and out of the rock, they also snuck in an abundance of wonderful wildlife.

On our very short walk on the first few minutes here we were awestruck by the views. As we clambered over the massive, orange flecked boulders small crabs scuttled away, startled by the movement. We sat still for a while, sitting on the smooth granite taking in the views and waiting for them to come back.

Slowly they crept out of the crevasses in the rocks and resumed their, their… well whatever crabs do on rocks they did more of it again. I know other places have crabs but do they look like this handsome fella?

I used to think the Bay of Fires was called that because of the red rocks, it isn’t. In 1773, English explorer Captain Tobias Furneaux saw lots of campfires burning on the coast as he sailed by and named it the Bay of Fires. He also and assumed Tasmania was heavily populated from this observation.

This is as far as we got on this walk, work was calling. Binnalong Bay is a very small place, this was about 15 minutes walk from our Airbnb place. The sky managed to create a double rainbow for us on our first day. I think Tassie shows off sometimes, actually quite often.

We had work to get back to so turned around, walked back to the cottage we’d booked and extended our trip for another day.

Day 3

We’re fortunate we can take some time out to explore our surroundings most days. We start work early, take a short exploration break then work late. On the first day we saw a long arc of a pure white sand beach with some dense trees and shrubs on the coastal side and a bunch of large granite rock at the other end. We decided we were going to walk the length of the beach this day and climb those rocks.

Almost immediately we encountered some wonderful Tasmanian bird life up close. They seemed less afraid of humans round these parts. We’ve seen these birds a lot but I’m not sure what they are called. I’ve been trying to get a good picture for ever. They rarely stop still long enough and never let you get close. This day I was very lucky. I’m very happy I was able to get this picture.

A little farther along, a Kookaburra swooped across the beach in front of us and perched in a branch. It was sitting perfectly for a lovely picture but as I clicked, it saw a snack below and dived. This is it diving. I’d have needed a much faster shutter speed to catch this properly.

It scrambled about in the scrub for a while then popped back up into the branch to eat its snack. Judging by the spindly legs poking out of its beak it caught a big juicy bug or spider of some sort.

Cooperatively he turned his head to let me see more of what he had caught.

A little farther on a beautiful coloured Parakeet snacked on some wild blackberries.

At this stage we’d gone about 200 metres along the beach. Our short walk was going to be a little longer than anticipated. We encountered gulls and terns and plovers and other wildlife on the rest of the walk but I didn’t get a decent picture of any of them, I was to busy soaking up the beauty of the scene. This is a view of the pristine beach looking back from the other end of the bay towards Binnalong Bay village.

At the other end of the bay are these rocks. It was those rock we set as our destination.

Of course I had to climb them.

Then it was Jenni’s turn. So that’s how you pose on top of some amazing boulders.

The sky, the trees, the rock, everything is so dramatic here. It’s beautiful. Even the flora have a lot going on. These Wild Passion Flowers adorned the scrub at the back of the beach. They are really magnificent looking.

Our hope for staying in Bay of Fires was to recharge in quiet, beautiful surroundings. It ticked all those boxes. We left Binnalong Bay the next day happy we had a chance to explore a bit of this delightful part of Tasmania.