The Granite Shore

While Tasmania may look tiny compared to the big island of Australia, be prepared to be surprised by its size and complexity. 

Just what length is the coastline of Tasmania? I set out to answer that question a few years ago by walking around the whole shoreline of the island. I planned to write a book about the adventure.

So far I have walked (and climbed) 1350 kilometres and I am not yet half way around the island. I realized very early on, while negotiating the rugged granite sea cliffs of the Freycinet Peninsula, where the great adventure began, just how inadequate one book would be to do justice to a subject that is, in the fractal sense, infinite.

So here are a few images from the projected first volume, the working title of which is The Granite Shore, encompassing the northern half of the east coast. 

That section of coast is composed largely of white and pink granites intruded during the Devonian. Stunning rocky headlands, interspersed with sweeping white sandy beeches, is the guise adopted by this earthly paradise.

The granite doesn't end with the main island of Tasmania. Great lumps of the rock are scattered across the 300 kilometres of sun-smashed, wind-tormented Bass Strait that separates Tasmania from the big island to the north. 

I will include some of those islands in this book as well.

  

Great Oyster Bay from Hazards Beach, Freycinet Peninsula

The Sea Level Traverse of The Hazards, a 6k long climb that begins at Wineglass Bay and finishes at Sleepy Bay

                

Sunset at Bryans Beach Freycinet Peninsula

Diana's Basin

Red Rock Point on the east coast of Flinders Island. Babel Island is in the distance.

Trousers Point, Flinders Island

Sunset at The Docks, Flinders Island