Today we were visiting Freycinet National Park, one of the highlights of this trip. Funnily enough we were not here to actually visit Wineglass Bay beach, but just to get a view of it. It looks absolutely stunning from above and it wasn't the right season for beaching anyway.

Looking at Google maps, I did notice there were an abundance of beaches in Tassie that had that same concave shape. But I suppose Wineglass Bay was a little more secluded and pristine as it required a two hour hike to get to.

The plan was to get up as early as possible but due to the horrible sleep I had, we did not leave until 9:00 am. We hit the Blue Edge Bakery for some food - a lamington that we would have later, a steak, cheese and bacon pie and a sausage roll. The pie was quite good; it had nice chunky bits of beef but the sausage roll was oily but ultimately not too bad. We also got stung with a tomato sauce charge -_-

We hit the road and went straight to the Freycinet National Park Visitor Centre at Coles Bay. There were lots of signs saying there were mozzies that carried Ross River Virus so we went back into Coles Bay proper to get some insect repellant at the servo.

Mount Amos

The plan was to hike up Mount Amos for the lookout at the top. This was the more extreme way to get a glimpse of Wineglass Bay and its famous beach. The other way was to go up to the Wineglass Bay Lookout which was an easy 20 minute walk but the view, in my opinion did not look that great as it was not high enough.

Go hard or go home, as they say.

There was a lot of conflicting information as to how long it would actually take. Officially it would take 3 hours return but I had found lots of conflicting reports so we estimated 4 hours. And after that we had a bunch of things to do, like go to a patisserie to get some sweets and/or cake.

We started hiking at 10:45 am. It was tough motherfucker to put it lightly. Actually, it was rather dangeous as you had to climb up sheer vertical rock faces, with absolutely nothing to help you up. You had to just make do with whatever was there. No chain, no nothing. I wished I had gloves. I had good hiking shoes with proper grip but it was slippery in a lot of places. It was hard for me as I am short and “climbing” is a bit of an anxiety ridden endeavour for me, having to decide where to put my foot and not slip or slide. On the way up I had to use a lot of upper body strength to push myself up, and I have to admit my upper body strength was never great (even when I was training). There were lots of decisions you need to make. So for these reasons, I barely took any photos.

Somehow A was able to power through rather easily. But he is tall. The poor thing spent a lot of time waiting for me and telling me where to go.

There were lots of other people doing the same climb and a lot of them were quite friendly and encouraging. There was one woman doing it solo and refused any help, even when there was a section where if any of us simply reached out with our arm, she'd be able to do a runner and jump up but she refused.

The hike took forever. We finally got to the top at 1:15pm. The view was 10/10 amazing, so I suppose it was worth it. I only had to do it once, right?

How good is this photo:

(Best viewed on desktop and in full screen mode)

Lovely cloudless sky, very little post processing required.

We couldn't stay too long as we had taken far too long to get to the top. We had completely blown our schedule for the day. So we had a quick rest, had a chat with some fellow tourists, ate some snacks (ha, lunch? WHAT lunch? All we had was a lamington and some nut bars!), took some photos and down we went.

The way down was not as strenuous. I pretty much gave up and went down on my arse most of the way down, so think of it like doing a LOT of burpees. One time I DID actually slip and fell on my arse and on a wet puddle too! Just my luck. In the end I made a hole in the butt area of my leggings with the amount of times I went on my butt on rock faces.

This was a photo I took on the way down of the rock face situation:

On our way down we passed a dude carrying a freaking baby on his back. Like, we saw some little kids with their parents earlier doing the hike (and embarrassingly, they surpassed me), but I'm not sure I'd recommend taking a baby up the mountain. The baby on the guy's back is just irresponsibly introducing risk as there were many places where the baby could get hit in the face by a tree branch or injured by the father's potential misstep.

Overall the hike was difficult, and careful consideration and confidence was required, but it was not as tiring as Cape Raoul which was just literallly go go go cardio for almost 5hrs. If they had chains at Mount Amos a la Uluru then it would've been EASY, PISS EASY, 2 hours EASY. I get it would be unsightly and unnatural but well if you have people going up there anyway, what's the difference?

My tip is to wear proper hiking boots, gloves and butt pads if you can. Do NOT attempt if it had rained at ALL.

We got back down to the carpark at 3:45 pm, completely exceeding any estimates anyone ever mentioned online. Whoops. Then we quickly drove back to the visitor centre to get a postcard before they closed at 4:00 pm.

The Ice Creamery Coles Bay

To treat ourselves, we went to get some ice cream at Coles Bay. It looked like the entire tourist cohort had the same idea, as there was quite a queue. I said “hello” to a few ladies we encountered on the climb.

We got three scoops (AUD 9.90) which is something we never do. I was so tired and deserved it. A had been quite patient with me and deserved it. We had Stairway to Heaven (caramel suace, choc chip and vanilla), Boysenberry swirl and Honeycomb crisp. We took it outside and ate it whilst taking the view of the craggy mountains of Freycinet National Park. Our last view of it before leaving the area.

Back on the road we went, next stop, Launceston.

It took around 2.5 hours to get to our accommodation, where we immediately showered and then went to dinner in town.

Pachinko

We picked a fancier place for dinner to make up for yesterday (although this was planned in advance). There's not a whole lot of choice in Launceston but I thought this Japanese/Asian (you know how they are outside of cities lol) restaurant would be nice.

We had a range of things:

This was great and I enjoyed the ginger ponzu that it was drenched in.

Can never complain about Chicken Karaage. I love Karaage. The only complaint ever is that there are not enough pieces.

Berkishire Pork Belly with Apple kimchi and apple sauce. This was supposedly cooked on a hibachi but it did not taste very smokey. unfortunately. The pork was a bit too fatty for me. The apple kim chi was not spicy and did not taste like kim chi. I didn't think it was worth the $35.

Finally, some veg to make us feel better. Also cooked on the hibachi, supposedly but this one tasted better (smokey) and had a nice creamy sauce (whatever “Oyster cream” means).

I was not impressed with this one, this was fusion gone strange. It was carrots and watercress dressed in a smashed tofu and miso sesame dressing. Not sure what I was thinking, but A didn't like the other vegetable dishes on offer. The sauce was very tofu heavy. Please don't smash tofu… I enjoy tofu but it was strange as a “dressing”.

The menu employed a lot of Japanese words but smack bang in the middle of it was… “Sichuan spiced lamb dumplings”. It gave me pause but I know the usual clientele love dumplings, but then, couldn't they make some gyoza?

6/10 overall #ipinions

After dinner we walked around town. It was very quiet despite being a Saturday night. The Launceston post office had a nice clock tower and the Launceston Town Hall looked quite stately.

For dessert we had waffles (AUD 16) at Charlie's Dessert House. I think they were freshly made. It was ok.

It was a very tiring day and we were happy to go back to our hotel for some sleep. The hotel was quite decent, which I was very pleased with. They even gave us drink vouchers, which I didn't even use.

I will have to rework the things we had to ditch in our schedule.