Freycinet is one of the most beautiful corners of Australia and, for many, the jewel of Tasmania's east coast. A peninsula of pink granite reaching out into the sea, crowned by the jagged peaks of the Hazards, with turquoise bays, beaches of dazzling white sand and wild nature that is almost untouched. Its emblem is Wineglass Bay, a beach shaped like a wine glass (hence the name) whose perfect curve, tucked between mountains and sea, is one of the country's most famous postcard views and always appears among the best beaches in the world.
All of this is protected within Freycinet National Park, one of the oldest in Tasmania (created in 1916), a nature sanctuary that is home to wallabies, echidnas, dolphins, seals, seabirds and, in season, whales off the coast. The base for exploring it is the small, quiet town of Coles Bay, at the park entrance, with its accommodation, the jetty the cruises leave from and its own dreamy beaches such as Honeymoon Bay.
This guide covers Freycinet from a practical angle: how to get there (a car is best), how the park and its parks pass work, which walk to choose depending on your time and energy (from the half-hour panoramic lookout to the full circuit with the beach), how to do the peninsula cruise to see Wineglass Bay from the sea, and which other bays and experiences not to miss. It's a place for walking, swimming in icy, crystal-clear water, sailing past granite cliffs and standing open-mouthed before one of the most perfect bays on the planet.
The Freycinet Peninsula is the traditional Country of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people (palawa), in particular the Oyster Bay nation (paredarerme), who frequented this coast (probably as a warm refuge in the colder months) and left numerous middens (shell mounds) that bear witness to thousands of years of occupation. The European name comes from the French explorer who charted the coast in the early 19th century. Whalers and sealers arrived from the 1820s; Coles Bay is named after Silas Cole, a settler who burned shells from the ancient Aboriginal middens to make lime. Tin mining began in 1870 and, in 1916, the peninsula was declared a national park, one of the first in Tasmania. Colonisation struck the Tasmanian Aboriginal people tragically, and their descendants keep their culture alive today. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The island south of the mainland, once Van Diemen's Land: home to one of the most feared penal colonies of the empire and the scene of the tragic Black War against the Palawa people. Today it is a haven of wild nature, with more than a third of its area protected as a World Heritage Site.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Wineglass Bay started appearing on lists of the world's best beaches, the Freycinet Peninsula was the Country of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people (palawa), in particular the Oyster Bay nation (paredarerme), one of the largest groups on the island, whose territory covered much of Tasmania's east coast. These peoples visited the peninsula for thousands of years and left many middens across the area: mounds of shells, bones and the remains of cooking fires that mark their life by the sea.
The sheer number of these middens shows that the peninsula was visited regularly, perhaps as a relatively warm, resource-rich refuge during the cold months of the Tasmanian winter. The coast offered shellfish, fish, seabirds and their eggs, seals and other resources, while the peninsula's interior and lagoons provided plants, animals and fresh water. As everywhere in Tasmania, life followed the seasons and the resources, guided by a deep knowledge of the land passed down through generations.
For the paredarerme, this coast of pink granite, turquoise bays and mountains was not a 'landscape' in the tourist sense, but a lived-in, meaningful country, woven through with stories, names and responsibilities. Recognising that Freycinet is, at its root, the land of the Oyster Bay people, and that the descendants of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people are still here and claim their heritage, is the starting point for telling the story of this much-celebrated place honestly.
The peninsula's European name came from the sea, and from an unexpected power: France. In the early 19th century, in the middle of the Napoleonic era, several European expeditions were exploring and charting the coasts of what was then called Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). Among them was the French expedition led by Nicolas Baudin (1800-1804), which sailed along and named much of the east coast. The peninsula was named Freycinet after Louis de Freycinet, one of the officer brothers and cartographers on that expedition, who helped chart these shores.
As a result, many features in the area still carry French names from that period, a reminder of the brief but intense rivalry between the French and the British to explore (and potentially claim) Tasmania. In the end it was the British who colonised the island, setting up their first settlements from 1803-1804 and turning it into a penal and pastoral colony.
The pink granite peaks that dominate the peninsula, the Hazards, owe their name, according to the most widely told version, to an African American whaling captain called Richard 'Black' Hazard, who worked these waters in the early decades of the 19th century. That detail leads us to the next chapter in Freycinet's history: whalers, sealers and the exploitation of its resources.
From the 1820s, Europeans and Americans hunting whales and seals began operating around the Freycinet Peninsula and nearby Schouten Island. The American captain Richard Hazard, of the ship Thalia, was reported whaling in the area around 1824. The sheltered bays served as bases for butchering and processing the catch, in a hard and bloody industry that shaped the first European contact with this coast. (A curious story, and probably partly myth, has it that the deep red colour of the water in the 'glass' of Wineglass Bay during the whaling era came from the blood of the butchered whales, although the name seems simply to come from the beach's wine-glass shape.)
The base town itself, Coles Bay, takes its name from this era: Silas Cole, an early settler, made his home there and burned the shells piled up in the large Aboriginal middens on beaches such as Richardsons Beach to produce lime (an essential building material). It is a telling and somewhat uncomfortable detail of colonial history: the ancient traces of Aboriginal culture were literally turned into building material.
From the 1870s another rush arrived: tin. Tin deposits were found on the peninsula, and during the late 19th and early 20th centuries various groups worked the alluvial (surface) deposits, mainly around Saltwater Creek, north of Coles Bay, and Middleton Creek. It was modest, short-lived mining, but it left its mark. Little by little, however, a different view of this coast would take hold: its value as a landscape worth protecting.
The decisive turning point in Freycinet's history came in 1916, when the peninsula was declared a national park, one of Tasmania's first (along with Mount Field, in the same year). It was an early recognition that this exceptional landscape of pink granite, turquoise bays and wild nature deserved to be preserved forever, ahead of the exploitation of its resources. The park grew over time, taking in more of the peninsula and protecting its wildlife and plants.
The town of Coles Bay, at the park entrance, took shape from the early decades of the 20th century. According to the records, in 1934 a retired auctioneer, Harry Parsons, bought around five hectares of land at Coles Bay, the seed of the small tourist town that would grow later. Over the 20th century, Freycinet went from a remote corner to one of Australia's best-known natural destinations, with Wineglass Bay as its undisputed star, hailed again and again as one of the best beaches in the world.
Today, Freycinet National Park welcomes crowds of visitors who climb to the Wineglass Bay lookout, walk down to its white sand, cruise around the peninsula or enjoy the beaches of Coles Bay, staying anywhere from the park campground to the exclusive luxury lodge Saffire. Park management aims to balance this huge tourist appeal with the conservation of a fragile environment, through passes, well-kept trails and, in peak season, measures to limit the number of cars and visitors.
At the same time, as across Tasmania, the Aboriginal history of the place is gaining recognition: the memory of the Oyster Bay people, the protection of middens and cultural sites, and the voice of the palawa community are all part of a fuller, more honest view of this coast. For travellers, knowing that beneath Australia's most photographed beach lie thousands of years of Aboriginal life, whalers, shell lime and tin turns the climb to the Wineglass Bay lookout into more than a perfect photo: it is a glimpse into the many layers of history of a truly extraordinary place.
