Where time stands still
Pamela Wade finds it’s forever Tuesday among the rocky outcrops, tumbleweed and marsupials of the Bay of Fires.
It should tell you all you need to know about the Bay of Fires walk in Tasmania, that there are three Tuesdays in the diary I kept over those four days. What can I say? I lost track. There was too much physical stuff going on for fiddly details like what day of the week it was.
Please note that by ‘‘physical stuff’’, I don’t mean exertion. This is basically a walk along a beach. There are headlands to scramble over at regular intervals, but Australia is an ancient land, most of its rock is well worn down and certainly there was no puffing involved on this trail.
There was gasping, yes. Those headland rocks, for example: looking at the 400-million-year-old, heaped granite boulders that are are weathered to a rounded smoothness, set off by a coating of bright orange lichen that grows only in the purest air.
It makes for a glorious sight, especially when contrasted with a clear sea of tropical turquoise.
Yes, it’s the same Tasman Sea that, grey and fierce, can make life on our West Coast such a challenge. But in Tasmania, it preens and poses, lapping daintily on to white silica sand beaches that are as beautiful as they are empty.
Well, almost empty. We met no other people on our 25-kilometre ramble but, as we set off, there was a wombat nibbling the spinifex grass and later wallabies hopping boldly past. With a little more luck, we might even have seen the endemic Forester kangaroo that this reserve was established to protect.
The Mt William National Park is in the northeast corner of Tasmania, a three-hour drive from historic Quamby Homestead near Launceston, where I stayed beforehand.
Surrounded now by opium poppy fields, it was built in the 1830s and is full of carefully-preserved character. It’s elegant, quaint and, until the kookaburras wake at dawn, quiet.
Thinking (spoiler alert) it would be my last taste of luxury before the walk, I made the most of the soft bed, antique furniture and bathtub.
Next morning, we met the three other walkers (the maximum is 10) and our two guides, Kate and Matt, who were young, enthusiastic and full of information. Their most important fact was that this first day comprised just four hours’ walking.
We set off along the pristine beach of Stumpys Bay, hearing about and skirting one of the many Aboriginal middens along this coast. Intriguingly, core samples of these ancient rubbish heaps showed the Aboriginal people, who lived here for 40,000 years, gave up eating fish 5000 years ago.
We made up for that at Beach Camp that evening, relishing the salmon that Matt had carried in, along with (astoundingly) an ice bucket to chill our wine. This seasonal camp had been dropped in from the air: roomy tents on wooden bases hidden in the dunes, complete with a kitchen and composting toilet.
Congratulating ourselves on our minimal environmental footprint, we tucked into our brie, olives, salmon, and summer berries with whipped cream, then admired the starlit sky before retiring to our comfy beds.
The morning brought swarms of wallabies and pademelons, masses of shorebirds, and pancakes to fuel us up for the walk’s longest day: seven hours.
Besides low-tide hard sand, we clambered over boulder headlands and trailed through bush, emerging on to close-nibbled marsupial lawns decorated with distinctive cubes of wombat poo (‘‘Bushmen’s dice,’’ Matt claimed). There was also the carved granite Eddystone Lighthouse, blinking out across the sea since 1889.
It was picturesque, but no match for what nature had done to the rocks: irresistibly photogenic, they bookended beautiful bays of white sand where we walked barefoot, tempted by the fabulous blue sea to paddle, but were soon reminded this was, actually, still the Tasman.
Birds sang, tiny spinifex tumbleweeds bounced along, waves broke on the orange rocks and lapped the sand. It was perfect.
Then we reached Bay of Fires Lodge, and it got even better. Air-lifted on to its hill, this is a proper lodge full of off-grid, sustainably-produced comforts. Expanses of glass make the most of the long views over sea and bush to distant ranges and the deck is perfectly aligned for sunrise-watching.
Best of all, and never mind that a scant day’s worth of mainly flat walking didn’t earn it, the lodge has a spa that offers a full range of massages and treatments. The pepper berry pedi-mask and massage is the least walkers can do to thank their feet.
Tasmania does wine and food to perfection, and a long dinner at the long table made the most of it that night – from the beetroot and feta salad to the final vanilla panna cotta.
Afterwards, we sat by a crackling fire and learnt that the Bay of Fires was named by Tobias Furneaux, who spotted the the Aboriginals’
campfires along this coast way back in 1773.
The next day, we could have fished or snorkelled, explored the spa, or the surrounding bush, but we chose kayaking along the tanninstained Ansons River to its mouth, crossing the bay spotting pelicans and other seabirds.
We left the boats and walked back along Abbotsbury Peninsula to the lodge, through the dunes and over rippled sand where the wind had sorted the shells into neat sweeps, and long turquoise rollers swept in.
A bracing swim, rewarded with a slice of rhubarb and cinnamon cake, ahead of another lovely dinner, finished that day, and we drifted off to bed under a brilliant night sky undimmed by light pollution.
No-one was in a rush to leave next morning, but we finally said goodbye, strolling through casuarina and eucalyptus woods where rosella parrots squawked above our heads.
Just an hour later, we reluctantly emerged on to the road for our ride back to civilisation where, apparently, it was Thursday.
The writer was hosted on this walk.