Freycinet

Jenni and I organised a 2 night camping break in Freycinet. We haven’t camped in months and after some research Freycinet came out top of the list of amazing camp sites within 2 hours drive from us. Our research was spot on, the site was the best we have stayed in.

The campsite is on the Freycinet Peninsula on Richardson’s Beach and is very beautiful, but then being Tasmania it would be. The specific site we booked, number 25, costs $12 per night and is about 5 paces from a most delightful beach.

Day One

We arrived and set up the tent quickly and then headed out to explore the area. First stop, Mount Amos. This is our Proof of life picture before we started the climb

Mount Amos is 445 metres high, the walk is supposed to take between 3 and 5 hours. It is communicated a million signs on the way from the car park to the start of the walk as being steep, clambering over rocks and only for the very fit.

We left it quite late to start the climb and had dinner plans later so intended to go up for one hour and turn around. The climb was a lot harder on me than I anticipated and although Jenni was happily gamboling up the steep slope like a very elegant and super fit mountain goat I was puffing like a steam train. I guess working for 4 hours renovating the beach shack this morning before this was a mistake. I stopped halfway up and decided to go no further today. We’ll have to leave the rest of the climb to another day.

This peninsula has an abundance of animals as we discovered. At the car parks at the base of the mountain and saw this cute Echidna.

Then at the car this mumma roo was waiting at our car. She had a little Joey in the pouch but it went for a sleep before I could get a picture.

Before we drove back to the tent we decided to go visit Cape Tourville lighthouse.

The walk around the lighthouse is short but rewarded by multiple views like this. After the walk around the lighthouse we went back to the canvas hotel and prepared for dinner in the Freycinet Lodge. The Freycinet Lodge was a beautiful 10 minute walk along the beach, we ordered several share plates. I even got dressed up. The sun was setting on the walk home and I tested the water for swimming temps.

That night, after the sun went down, the sky was clear and the half moon was high, too much moon for a quality sky pic. About 5 paces from the camp site was the beach. As a lazy photographer I took those 5 paces and snapped a couple of pictures to try and capture the beauty of the scene.

Day Two

We woke early and took the camp chairs down to the beach to have our coffee and first breakfast. We got a visit from a family of very bold Oyster Catchers.

We’d booked a boat trip on Pennicott Tours that would take us around Freycinet Peninsula to have lunch in Wineglass Bay. I was very excited.

Jenni and I have been on two Pennicott Eco Tours and both times the experience was worth more than the fee. If you ever get a chance don’t dither and go on one of these tours.

The captain told us that this was the last few days of whale season but that they hadn’t seen any whales all week. He said he was going to take the boat out farther from shore to see if we could catch some sightings. We struck lucky.

We stayed for ages watching the whales and then set off for Wineglass bay stopping at “The Nuggets” to view the seals and the birds.

Wineglass Bay

Lunch was served and it was delicious and plentiful. We couldn’t finish ours and took some back to the tent for evening or breakfast treats. Just before we left the iconic Wineglass Bay Captain Pennicott of Pennicott Tours (for it was he driving the boat) informed us that it was NOT named that because it was shaped like a wine glass but because the water in it was turned red with blood when they slaughtered whales there.

Shortly after leaving Whale Slaughter Bay, ironically, we happened across another pod of whales who put on a show for us.

We got off the boat happy and elated, it was early afternoon and a tad early to go to the bar so Jenni and I fired up the laptops and caught up on some work. We used our new solar panel, bike battery, McGuyver 1000w 220 vac pure sine wave inverter concoction I built to test on this trip. It worked a treat.

The afternoon meandered on, we worked a bit more and then Jenni heated up the leftovers from the first nights meal in the restaurant we brought home and set it out with the leftovers from the boat trip and we had a sumptuous meal in the tent. As a result we didn’t go to the pub for dinner like we had planned and were so very happy for it. Did I mention we had stopped at a bottle shop on the way here so I had access to some excellent craft beer as well. In the words of  Darryl Kerrigan in that most quotable Australian movie The Castle, “Why would you go out?”. What? You’ve not seen The Castle. Well correct that immediately.

We were leaving the next day so retired early.

Day 3

The weather on leaving day was ok in the early morning but was due to start raining about 10am. We were up early to get packed up before the worst of the weather hit. We were hit with a couple of showers during pack up but nothing serious.

The Freycinet Peninsula is a treasure. This camp site’s location was incredible. We will return for sure, and next time I will climb Mount Amos.

Till next time.