Cockle Beach and South Bay
Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 10:01 am
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The sound was deafening as we came to the end of the trail. As the woods faded and the view opened up to an immense seascape,16 ft rollers slammed against the rocky and sandy shore with a give no-quarter attitude. We had our first glimpse of the Southern Ocean and Australia’s southern most point was only a mile or two away.
This was the end of the trail that began 7.7 km earlier at our Cockle Creek campground at Southwest National Park in the most southerly point of Tasmania. We’ve been to many “ends of the roads”: Homer Alaska, Key West, Fl., Provincetown, Ma., Wenona, Md. but this is the real thing! Next stop Antarctica. After breakfast, pademelons and wallabies greeted us upon opening the camper and stepping outside. The critters are totally fearless of humans. In fact, they probably feel safer because Tasmanian Devils are very shy of people and are their only predators.
We came here after spending a few days with Ann and Stan becoming familiar with the camper that will be home for the next two months. Their place is on a magnificent piece of land with views reminiscent of Fairbanks. Wallabies, pademelons, possums and parrots abound on their land. The place is a little piece of paradise.
Yesterday evening, after arriving at the campsite, we took a long walk down a beautiful beach that is broken up by rocky areas. We watched a bunch of oyster catcher like birds that we later identified as the sooty, sticking their extraordinarily long bill into the sand in search of food. Took the rods along and decided to cast occasionally after turning around and heading back. Found one area where the fish were hitting and after a few swipes a 35 cm flathead took the jig. This was our first of this species and it made an excellent dinner of fried fish.
We’re now recovering from our 10 mile hike. Made us really feel our age. But we did make it. We noticed as opposed to the US, there were many older folks on the trail. Perhaps not as old as us but in their 50s and 60s. This doesn’t seem to be the case just about anywhere in the US except occasionally in the SW. The other interesting aspect of the hike was running into young men carrying surfboards. The surf on the Southern Ocean is almost always big. In fact, some of these guys said that today it was too big to surf.
On the trail we took numerous shots of the ocean, flowers and even some mushrooms. Some of these are included in this writeup.