Wineglass Bay

Wineglass Bay is on the eastern side of the Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania, inside Freycinet National Park. It is reached over a saddle between two of the pink granite peaks called the Hazards, a walk of around an hour and a half return to the lookout and considerably more to the sand.

The name is not about the shape. Wineglass Bay was a whaling station in the nineteenth century, and the accepted origin is that the bay ran red with blood during processing, which made the water the colour of red wine in a glass. The bay is now inside a national park and the whales pass through unharmed, which is a reversal worth stating.

The beach is fine white quartz sand in a near-perfect crescent, framed by granite headlands with the Hazards behind. The water is cold — Tasmania is at forty-two degrees south — and clear, and the swimming is brief for most people. The walk down from the lookout is steep, and continuing across the isthmus to Hazards Beach makes a loop of about four hours. The pink of the Hazards behind the bay is feldspar in the granite, which is why the peaks change colour through the day and why the sand is as pale as it is.

Nothing is built. There is a car park, toilets and a park pass requirement at the trailhead, and nothing at the beach itself. Camping is permitted at designated sites with a booking. Honeymoon Bay and Sleepy Bay near the park entrance need no walk at all, and Friendly Beaches to the north is eight kilometres of sand with almost nobody on it.

The photograph is from the lookout and the beach is a steep descent beyond it, which catches out a surprising number of people who stop at the top. Sixteen degrees in February. The name comes from whaling — the bay ran red during processing — and the whales that pass now do so unharmed, which is the rare kind of reversal worth noticing on the way down.