Day six in Tasmania is upon us. We spent the last four days exploring some parts of remote west Tasmania on a hiking safari, now it’s time to head to the east coast for a change of pace and to take it a bit easier for a while.
Guy headed back to Melbourne yesterday: let the relaxing begin!
We came back to Launceston yesterday, not only because Guy was flying out of the airport here, but to have a rest and spend some more time at the Launceston Gorge that Guy mentioned in his blog post.
Day Six: Revisiting Launceston
Launceston was surprisingly good for shopping. We already visited each hiking and camping store when we here last. So, changing our interests this week, we went to Design Tasmania to see some beautiful timber furniture designs in a very cool building.
After our window shopping spree we were excited to head back to the the Cataract Gorge for a swim – a nice rest after our hiking tour while giving us some time to recharge and prepare for our trip to the east coast.
Day Seven: Getting the campervan and heading east
Time to get our campervan at the airport!
Since I’ve got the most experience driving on the wrong left side of the road before, it was up to captain the campervan for the entire trip ahead of us.
We rented our campervan from Hertz at the Launceston aiport. This makes it easy for us on the last day seeing as we’re flying back to Melbourne from here.
We didn’t make it far before needing a wine, actually we drove for less than ten minutes before making our first stop at a winery.
Although my family and I are all Dutch born, we moved to France over twenty years ago, so naturally our first our first stop for the day was at Josef Chromy for a wine tasting.
This was a beautiful environment and a great tasting experience. Tastings are just $5, refunded on the purchase of a bottle of wine.
After the winery, we drove straight to Lagoon Beach Campground.
We chose to stay here because the campground is in between the Freycinat National Park and Bay of Fires – the two main places we wanted to visit.
Other than the location, Ruben (my brother) was sleeping in a tent so we wanted to base ourselves where we didn’t have to move camp for the next three nights. Also, it’s peak season so we wanted to secure a location, although we quickly realised that “peak season” in Tassie is nothing compared to Victoria where it’s hard to find a spare campsite anywhere unless you’ve booked well in advance.
Lagoon Beach Campground is big with large individual campsites but it’s pretty quiet. It’s an ideal place if you want to camp with a big group of friends.
The campground was right next to the beach, which made it a great place to retreat to each night.
In Tasmania, you can stay up to four weeks at free campsites and there were definitely more people staying long term than short-term visitors like us.
Day Eight: Bay of Fires
Up to Bay of Fires! This was one of my favourite places!
The Bay of Fires is about a 40km stretch of coast on the north-east part of Tasmania.
Each beach that we visited was stunning, showcasing powdery, white sand, light blue and turquoise water with red and orange stones in the background.
The reason this area is called “Bay of Fires” is not because of the orange stones but because of the fires aboriginals were making on the beaches, right along the coast when it was first discovered by the Europeans.
We started exploring the area with a walk along the beach and swim at Binalong Bay.
After spending quite a while in the water then watching the world pass us by from the beach, we headed to the gardens – aka: Bay of Fires Conservation Area.
The Bay of Fires was mindblowing!
We went for another swim before heading back to the campground.
Day Nine: Freycinet National park
We started the day with a coffee in the little town of Coles Bay, just outside of the entry to the Freycinet National Park.
The weather wasn’t great – we were used to mild summer conditions but it turned very hot and humid.
Just like Cradle Mountain, stopping at the visitor center to purchase park entry tickets is required, although at Freycinet, you can take you’re car in the park rather than catching a shuttle bus.
Wineglass Bay Lookout Walk
Our first stop inside was the car park for the Wineglass Bay lookout. From here, there’s a 45 minute, 1.5 kms hike to get to the lookout and although it wasn’t super tough, it was still a bit challenging especially due to the hot weather. Sunscreen and plenty of water is mandatory!
There are some beautiful native trees and interesting rocks to admire for the entire walk up to the lookout.
Cape Tourville Lighthouse Walk
Finishing up the day, we took a short and easy, yet incredibly peaceful trek along a boardwalk to look at the Cape Trouville Lighthouse.
This was a great way to end the day in the national park before going back to the campsite for dinner, wine and an early night before somewhat starting our journey back to Launceston.
Day Ten: Slowly making our way back to Launceston
The nostalgic mood started to show itself as it became time to pack up and shift camp to spend our last night at Myrtle Park Campground, which was close to Launceston.
At this stage, we had already consumed enough Tasmanian wine to do France proud, so on the way to the campground we stopped at Pyengana Cheese Factory.
We highly recommend this stop for a cheese tasting and my family runs an organic goat cheese farm and factory in France, so that’s saying something!
We finally arrived at Myrtle Park and got an awesome surprise: we saw a Platypus!!!
Myrtle Park Campground is $7.50/person and is very family friendly.
Day Eleven: Back to the mainland
Unfortunately our time in Tamania was coming to an end and it was time to pack up our gear one last time and head to the airport, which was only a thirty minute drive from the campground (hence why we chose to stay there).
We took the van back to Hertz and conveniently they dropped us off at the airport.
What an amazing holiday. It was great to see the wild west Tasmania and the pretty more touristic east-coast. We loved every bit of it and although eleven days allowed us to have a great holiday and explore plenty of diverse sites, we’ll need to revisit in the future as there’s so much more to see!
If you missed Guy’s blog post on the first part of the trip where explored part of west Tasmania, take a look here. We’ll also keep/start working on this guide to traveling Tasmania so that you can find more information on each place that we visited.