Fire and ice
It’s a joy to explore the highs and lows of Tasmania’s naturally beautiful northeast
It’s like bonsai land up here atop Ben Lomond in Tasmania’s northeast. We are walking through a thick carpet of compact, multi-coloured bushes cunningly crouching low to the ground to shelter from the winds and, later, survive under winter’s thick snowpack.
Patches of bell-like white blooms, hardy red floral clusters and yellow groundcovers also huddle prettily amid the glacial, treeless terrain peppered with streams and puddles as we walk away from the Alpine Village carpark at the top of Tasmania’s second highest mountain.
We see two other walkers at one point and a couple of grazing wallabies but beyond that we’re alone up here in this botanic wonderland on an invigorating, cool March day, the sky flecked with scudding cloud.
We’re following a spread-out line of tall poles that marks a 5.5km cross-country trail in winter, now a largely unformed track through boulders and the tough alpine plants.
At the craggy high point of Little Hell, panoramic views unfold across the northeastern plains before we make our way back to the village across boulder fields and scree that morph into ski slopes in winter.
Ben Lomond, about an hour’s drive from Launceston, seems to be off the main tourist track, perhaps helped by the hairraising road to the summit.
The last few kilometres of the drive up to the 1500m alpine plateau are via a sharply winding switchback road known as Jacobs Ladder, which climbs up a dramatic escarpment forged from spectacular dolerite columns.
We’re on a last-minute, five-day trip joining friends who are on a longer driving holiday, planning to make the most of the fine autumn weather and hike where we can.
We’re on our way to our base for the next four days, Binalong Bay, on the section of the east coast known as the Bay of Fires. We’re booked into an Airbnb in the spectacularly situated small holiday village, in a house that proves to have wide views over the stunning clear aqua water and sugar white sand.
We shop for supplies in the larger centre of St Helen’s 11km away as Binalong has no shop although there’s a cafe cum restaurant.
The next day we’re keen to explore and head north up the beach, clambering over rocky headlands of granite boulders covered in the burnt orange lichen that you might think gives the area its name, however that is apparently down to Captain Tobias Furneaux, who sailed past in 1773 spotting multiple Aborigine-lit fires on the shore.
Hikers can walk for kilometres up the scalloped coastline, stopping to picnic or swim at Jeanneret Beach, Cosy Corner or one of the many other secluded beaches.
On another occasion we walk south from Binalong Bay on a 10km loop around the spectacular coves and pathways of the Humbug Point Nature Reserve.
When cloud lowers itself over the bay and the wind rises we drive to Eddystone Point Lighthouse at the northern point of the Bay of Fires Conservation Area, which offers walks and vantage points, before continuing into the relatively isolated Mt William National Park.
Mt William itself rises out of coastal heathland and it’s an easy walk to the 216m summit.
On the way back to Binalong Bay we divert to the Pyengana Dairy where they make artisan farmhouse cheese, and stock up on some excellent cheddar.
Nearby is the Pub in the Paddock, one of Tasmania’s oldest hotels that has been licensed since 1880.
A few locals fill us in on what it’s like living in a lush, green region filled with dairy cattle and we meet Priscilla the pig, who resides in paddock out the front and apparently enjoys a watered-down Boags.
Homeward bound, the find of the day though are the oysters at Lease 65, halfway between St Helens and Binalong Bay.
The plump Pacifics, which can be bought onsite for $20 a dozen, are sublime, the final proof that the world really is your oyster in this quiet, outstandingly attractive corner of the world.