Maria Island and Freycinet Nati

Mariah Island is about an hour east of Hobart on the southeast coast of Tasmania. It is accessible by ferry from nearby Triabunna. It is a former penal colony and many of the buildings there were built by convict labor. The island has three major geological formations all of which are significant. Perhaps the most famous is the painted cliffs on the island's western shore.
The sandstone outcroppings there have been sculpted by wind and water and are stained by iron rich water that once filtered through the rock, leaving behind an insoluble iron oxide residue. On the eastern shore there are high cliffs of columnar dolerite
and fossil rich limestone. The limestone deposits contain the fossilized shells of a seabed from 250 million years ago. Mariah Island is the home to a variety of wildlife much of it protected by the isolation of an island environment. some of Australia's endangered or threatened species such as the forty-spotted pardalote are found here in reasonable numbers. The island, a
national park since 1972, also has a rich heritage of aboriginal culture. Maria is pronounced mer-eye-uh, by the way!

Freycinet (fray-sin-a) Peninsula is a stunningly beautiful national park along the eastern shore about two and a half hours northeast of Hobart. Most of the park is only reachable on foot. From the car park, there are a number of tracks and several overnight campgrounds. We hiked to one of the two southernmost campsites, Cooks Corner, where we spent Saturday night. We hiked back on Sunday over Mt. Graham and across Wineglass Bay beach, the park's most famous landmark and an absolutely picture perfect bay. Most of the peninsula is red granite composed of a feldspar orthoclase, giving the rock formations a beautiful, pink cast. There are many types of orchids found on the peninsula, some of which are blooming at any time of the year. We saw four different types of in bloom on our hike over Mt. Graham within the first half hour of leaving Cooks Corner.


Painted Cliffs, perhaps the rock formations most associated with Mariah Island were laid down 220 million years ago and were painted about 15 million years ago by iron rich water that percolated through the rock, leaving behind the patterns you see here.	I thought these sculpted rocks and the stains in them were very reminiscent of the cliff faces at Possum Trot, our family retreat in Southern Illinois.

Fossil Cliffs are limestone formations from shellfish that lived about 270 million years ago. This is the site of a limestone mining operation from early in the 20th century. The materials were used in a cement factory. The pictures below are from Freycinet National Park	Much of the rock at Fossil Cliffs is almost solid fossils. The lane on the way to the cliffs is paved with these 270 million year old shells.

The first part of the trail leads across Hazards Beach toward the south end of Freycinet. The beach is broken by these outcrops of pink granite. We stopped here and ate oysters that had washed ashore with the seaweed.	The track along the west coast of Freycinet is below the pink granite rocks of Mount Mayson.

We camped at Cooks Corner about 14 km from the car park. Our campsite was only a couple of meters from the ledge leading down to the water which was only about twenty meters away. We let the surf lull us to sleep that night after we chased the ring tailed possums away!	A wallaby brought her joey to see us as we were packing up on Sunday morning. The camp seemed to have a resident population that had become accustomed to people. There were about eight of them.

Mary and I enjoyed a well earned rest after climbing almost straight up to the top of Mt. Graham 579 meters. Most of the elevation is gained in the last couple of kilometers - brutal with a backpack! We thought it was a good climb for a couple of old fogies, though.	A view of the opening to Wineglass Bay from Mt. Graham. It seemed so close at this point, but the trek down to the beach took over four hours of knee pounding descent. We were running on reserve by the time we stopped at Wineglass Bay campsite for lunch at 2 PM.

We were rewarded along our trek down with fleeting glimpses of the arc of sand that makes Wineglass Bay.	When we finally lost all our altitude, we arrived at Wineglass Bay. Can you imagine a more beautiful (and deserted) beach?

The hike along Wineglass bay beach takes an hour. The beach was almost completely void of debris washed ashore giving its white sand an even more pristine appearance.	After hiking almost seven hours and reaching Wineglass Bay, we still had to cross the 264 meter saddle between Mt. Amos and Mt. Mayson. Our poor bodies were complaining loudly at this point, but we completed our day's 22 km hike and were quite proud of ourselves.

03/27/08