NSW – Tasmania trip 2021: 1 – 3 March

Monday/Tuesday – St Helens/The Gardens/Swimcart Beach
Well, if you saw the pictures of where landed on Sunday in our previous post, you’ll understand why we spent the last few days just chilling at this magnificent Bay of Fires.

Swimcart Beach campsite is quite the most fantastic (free) beach campsite we’ve seen.

Bay of Fires is around 40km long just north of St Helens, and famous for its white beaches, alternated by stretches of light coloured boulders and rocks with orange/rust coloured patches and island rocks in very clear blue water. The Bay gets its name from the time that Aborigines lit fires all along, as a guide back to shore.

Many of the campsites are spaced along the beach, so one wakes up to the view of the sun rising above the sea… and in the evening the sun setting over the hills and its light still on the sea – until the moonlights that… Absolutely spectacular. We shared our piece of heaven with Lisa, a Dutch/Francaise from Cairns who is travelling around Tassie for a few weeks.  

We drove up to The Gardens, halfway up the Bay, but the northernmost point of sealed road, with views all the way back to St Helens.  We did come here also on our last trip in September 2019 but it’s still a spectacular spot. The sun was only appearing every 10 minutes or so for a few seconds, but Arno managed to get a few new shots to add to the collection.

We caught up on a few chores as St Helens offers great campers facilities and good shops too.  We did a few loads of laundry; Jen had her nails done and Arno his hair (cut that is)… We also had dinner on the water at the ‘Wharf’, which was really nice, though a bit pricey.

Wednesday 3 March – Pyangana/Legerwood/Low Head

Today we said goodbye to our neighbour Lisa, and friendly, fabulously blue Swimcart Beach.  Heading north-east inland toward our next destination – Low Head via a few attractions.

A pretty drive with more and more green hilly pastures, we stopped at Pyangana (which we also did on our previous trip in 2019), and got a bit of exercise as we hiked to the St Columba waterfall hike (only half-hour return). The weather was good with plenty of blue sky and the falls looked as good this last time around.  This time we stopped for lunch at the Pub in the Paddock, which also has a beer-drinking pig (named Priscilla)!

We continued on and made another little detour to Legerwood, a little town with a row of old trees that have been sculptured into replicas of fallen WWI soldiers by chainsaw carver Eddie Freeman (in 2005).  The trees had been planted in 1918 for each fallen man, but as they needed to be removed for safety reasons early this century, the community stepped up and this was the result.  Quite a moving story, and impressive art.

We arrived at Low Head caravan park basing ourselves for a few nights to have nice long showers and explore the area.  We are camped across the road from the water, and it’s not for nothing that it is also known by locals as the ‘Blow head’! It was blowing a gale and we had to admit defeat setting up awning and annex… Maybe tomorrow, but for now, we sat behind the van out of the wind for our first beer, and then moved inside to be nice and cozy warm, tuned the TV and watched the news followed by Billy Connelly and just laughed and laughed…..

Enjoyed a gorgeous pink sunset (from inside our van) and only Jen ventured out to take a (phone) picture which of course doesn’t do it justice but Arno wasn’t going outside with Billy on TV!

This post’s trip