Road Trip: Wynyard to West Point

Tasmania’s north-west is a richly varied region; even if sometimes forbidding, its rugged, isolated landscapes have their own special beauty.

Wynyard

Lush pastures surround busy Wynyard, supporting dairy and beef cattle as well as a number of mixed farms. The town is set on the Inglis River next to Bass Strait, and a small fishing fleet shelters in the estuary. The cliff of Fossil Bluff, a short walk or drive from the centre of town, contains layers of sedimentary rock which are exposed at low tide. The fossils that give the bluff its name consist mostly of sea shells, although a famous find here was part of the fossilised skeleton of an ancient, possum-sized marsupial.

The bluff overlooks a small rock-strewn beach, from where there is a good view of the 170-metre-high ramparts of Table Cape, up the coast. Tollymore Road leads to the cape, with verdant farmland on one side and, more often than not, cliffs plunging to the sea on the other. A turn-off to the right travels past a tulip farm – a mass of colour in September–October – and leads to a lookout by a lighthouse. This lighthouse stands on the remains of an old volcano, active during Tasmania’s last volcanic period, between ten and twenty million years ago.

Boat Harbour Beach

There are excellent views of the coast as the drive follows Tollymore Road north-west. Soon after rejoining the Bass Highway, a right turn leads to Port Road which descends to the white sands of crescent-shaped Boat Harbour Beach. The clarity of the water here is exceptional, attracting swimmers, snorkellers and scuba divers; good fishing is to be had from the rocky points. Neighbouring Sisters Beach also offers safe swimming and more crystal-clear waters.

Rocky Cape National Park

It is possible to walk into this national park from Sisters Beach; alternatively, drive along the Bass Highway and take the Rocky Cape Road to the Rocky Cape entrance. With a 12-kilometre coastline of rocky bays and small beaches backed by craggy bluffs, the national park stretches from near Boat Harbour in the east to Rocky Cape in the west. Strong, salt-laden onshore winds ensure that tough, low-growing coastal heathland dominate, but there are patches of eucalypts, banksias, paperbark and wattles in sheltered gullies.

In spring and summer the heathland comes alive with wildflowers, including Christmas bells, purple iris, yellow guinea-flower, white-flowering tea-tree and two rare ground orchids. About 90 bird species inhabit the park, ranging from dainty honey-eaters to white-bellied sea eagles, which roost on some of the promontories and in tall trees. Wallabies and echidnas may be seen at dusk. The clear, azure waters are rich in marine life, and the area is popular with snorkellers and divers.

A range of walking tracks caters to bushwalkers and beachcombers. Many of the park’s caves were used by Aboriginal people until the coming of Europeans in the early nineteenth century. These shelters contain large middens, bones and stone tools dating back as far as 8000 years. The great size of the middens – rubbish mounds where shells were tossed after their contents had been eaten – shows that this was a place of plenty. Caves here also provided archaeologists with evidence that Tasmanian Aborigines seem to have stopped eating fish about 3000 years ago, a curious circumstance that is yet to be fully explained. One of the sites, North Cave, is a few minutes’ walk from the lighthouse carpark at Rocky Cape.

Stanley

From Rocky Cape, the Bass Highway follows the narrow coastal plain, compressed between the sea and the hilly hinterland. After crossing the Detention River, a view of the long jetty at Port Latta and flat-topped Circular Head, also called The Nut, comes into view. About 22 kilometres west of Rocky Cape, a right turn onto the Stanley Highway leads to the pretty village of Stanley, sited spectacularly under The Nut. Like Table Cape, The Nut is an exposed lava plug, another reminder of the region’s violent geological past. To reach the summit, 152 metres above the sea, take the steep track or, for a less energetic ascent, ride the chairlift to enjoy wide views along the coast.

Stanley was the first settlement in north-western Tasmania and the headquarters of the Van Diemen’s Land Company from 1826. The VDL, as it was known, was a private company formed in London in 1825 to develop and settle the north-west. The town preserves a number of reminders of those times, including two old bond stores – one a bluestone building constructed in 1835 from ship’s ballast – and the gracious homestead and surrounding farm buildings of the Highfield Historic Site, built in the 1830s for a company official.

Other significant colonial buildings include the weatherboard Joseph Lyons Cottage (birthplace of Joseph Lyons, Prime Minister from 1932 to 1939), which is open to the public and houses a collection of photgraphs of the life and times of Lyons and his wife, Enid, who became Australia’s first female federal cabinet minister; the Old School House in Pearse Street (1866) and the former Plough Inn, which dates from the 1840s and is now privately owned. Many of the district’s pioneers are buried in the historic cemetery.