Temperate Tropics

I could have chosen a photo of Wineglass Bay, taken from the lookout. It is spectacular. But it would have been a photo you can see just by googling 'Wineglass Bay Tasmania'. Everyday dozens (hundreds?) of people traipse up a large hill, along a well-built path, to take a photo and then traipse back down again to their cars. Some, perhaps half, will brave the rocky steep track down to the actual bay, where they'll enjoy the water and the views. It is a spectacular beach. They'll then clamber back up again, to their cars, hotter, sweatier, dustier than they'd arrived at the beach. But just a few will continue on, over duckboarded tracks through swampy land, until they get to Hazards Beach. And here you'll find these waters. Clear, shallow, calm, empty.

When I was a child my family (and a couple of others) would go to Coles Bay every Easter for camping. In those days the area was far less developed, a little less known. Mum says they would always budget in a new muffler for the car after driving the old rickety road in. It would be autumn, sometimes the beginning, sometimes the middle, but we would always go swimming and bushwalking. Some of my strongest childhood memories come from these holidays. 

This was my first time back at Freycinet for a long time, and it's changed, but the mountains and waters cannot be overshadowed by developing shacks, shops and carparks. They will always prevail and anything man can make will be a mere speck of dust on the camera lens, easily ignored in the big picture.