A week in the Bay of Fires
The move this week was an interesting one as it was the first time we were trying free camping, which is basically turning up somewhere, with no booking and crossing fingers and toes that all turns out ok. It is much easier in a caravan I’m sure, as you’re not taking so long to pack up and set up again, so can arrive at places earlier, or if you have to, later, and set up quickly.
Anyway, we want to do a fair bit of it on this trip so what better time to start than in one of the most popular holiday spots in Tasmania, during school holidays.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. We arrived at the start of the row of camping areas, which runs for about 7km from about 10km north of St Helens, along Binnalong Bay. So there are lots of different areas and you just drive in and out of them to have a look.
We drove into the first dog-friendly one (Swimcart Beach) and immediately could see that we’d have no issue. Hardly anyone around, and the ones that were wanted pole position on the beach front, which we, basically in a tent, did not want anyway. Knowing that we were going to be able to find a spot, we then drove down and looked at the other areas before going back to Swimcart Beach and basically choosing the spot we’d picked out initially, a couple of hundred metres back from the beach, nicely sheltered from the wind.
With a nice big spot, toilets and a beautiful beach we were pretty happy to have nailed free camping first go.
It really is a lovely area around the Bay of Fires. Nice beaches, little towns with expensive-looking houses, and plenty to look at. Unfortunately the weather turned pretty foul mid-week so we were trapped in the tent for a bit (about 80mm in 24 hours), but fortunately we were in that spot. Any further north and we may have been flooded out, or at the least much, much wetter, as there was flooding in the northern parts of Tasmania, and right through Victoria into NSW. Will the rain ever stop!
For us, after a couple of days, it all cleared up and we could dry everything out and move around again. The road to town was shut though due to flooding, which didn’t matter as there was a gravel alternative, except my new oyster supplier was on that shut road so I had to miss out on oysters until it reopened.
We tried to get to the Pyengana Cheese Factory to sample their wares, but with the flooding it was shut, so we went to nearby Halls Falls instead. Of course we were not dressed for bushwalking, and certainly not bushwalking in an area that had just received over 100mm of rain, but never ones to let that stop us, we gave it a go anyway. All was going well until 3/4’s of the way in I spotted a great big leech on me and made a bit of a song and dance about it. Of course that alerted the kids to the existence of leeches, and once they realised what they were, they weren’t happy about it either.
So we continued on, in the mud, picking leeches off each other. Perhaps if I’d calmly removed that first leech things may have gone more smoothly, but in my defense, that first sucker was about five times bigger than all the subsequent ones.
We did make it back to Pyengana and had some cheese, but even better, there was a pub! Just down the road is a place called Pub in the Paddock – a lovely old 1880’s building with a couple of resident pigs. We stopped for a drink, and while we were there, some much smarter people arrived by helicopter on a “pub crawl”, and while they were having their lunch, we made friends with the pilot, checking out the chopper and letting the kids sit in it.
By then it was lunchtime so we just had to sample the King Island beef pies which were pretty tasty.
On recommendation from the pilot, we then went to St Columbus Falls which were quite spectacular after all the rain and…leech free!
The rest of our time in the Bay of Fires was spent pottering around. We drove down to Bicheno one day – a very nice town with a pretty fun blow hole and good fish and chips.
We did our shopping for a week at the local IGA in St Helens – seriously how do people afford to live in these places? We’re Aldi shoppers usually so find Coles and Woolies expensive, but small-town IGAs are the next level up. Still, you’ve got to eat I suppose.
Anyway, after a week, we packed everything up (and I mean everything, we used almost all our stuff this time), and headed for the next stop – Mayfield Beach.
