From Coningham Beach 2015

Today we're parking at Coningham Beach before walking up the beach led by Bob.

Before I get too far, I should tell you that my GPS tracker decided to go completely crazy and loaded hundreds of waypoints into its memory before shutting down with an attack of the vapors.

I showed the offending technology a very large hammer that I will use if it doesn't start working correctly. This seemed to do the trick as it worked fine while walking the dogs the next morning. I'll keep checking it and on our next walk, I'll go back to boots and braces and run a tracking app on my phone as well.

Since I couldn't download any track information, I've cobbled together a map and a Google Earth display that is about right. I know there's a gap in the track, but it's a little one and I couldn't be bothered fixing it. So sue me.

Anyway, the weather was cloudy and it was supposed to rain about lunchtime. That didn't happen and it was good weather for walking.

It's a very pleasant walk along the beach before turning off near the end onto the cliff top path. There are some steps and a gully to navigate, but these are all quite civilized.

Coningham Beach

Looking back. Mt.Wellington in the distance

Off the beach and up to the track. If you like signs, you'll like it here.

Not the last one you'll see

A pleasant track beside the cliff face to your left

Down, across and up

We walk along a nearly level path, getting closer to the cliff in some places, where we can see some of the fallen boulders.

Water feature to our right

Fallen boulder just before Legacy Beach

She-oaks or Casuarina littoralis or
Allocasuarina littoralis

The last sign you have to read

We turned off the track onto one heading toward the shore, I wasn't sure why as I was behind as usual.

Seems there is a cave down on the shore, I remember now seeing it marked on a map I looked at some time ago.

I stopped to strip off as it was quite warm walking, and put my pack back on. I could see a hole in the roof of the cave and decided I couldn't be bothered to climb down and have a look. Big mistake. It does leave me something to look forward to the next time.

Ron told me the cave actually goes along parallel to the shore and there is another opening a little farther along. You can see some of it and the hardy souls that climbed down to explore in the next set of photos.

Skylight over main cave entrance below. Do not be tempted to walk on it!

A steep scramble down between rocks. Someone in the past has put a section of log into the gap that helps.

Main entrance. You can see the bottom half of Bob leaning in the other opening.

You can see clearly the opening of the roof over the main part.

Looking down

Everyone back together, we walk back up to the main track and continue on. Soon, we come to Coningham Road, a dirt road which we follow up towards Morning Tea.

But before we do that, I notice some parked cars in the distance. I briefly consider that Bob has kindly arranged for caterers for our break, but then realize the bush just off the road has a number of people head down and bum up.

These were people caring for the bush by removing introduced species. Now Sue, knowing one of our frequent walkers was involved in this began to call out "Sally!, Sally!" in a loud voice. Sure enough, a head popped up and there Sally was.

After a bit of banter, we left them to their work and continued on to a dead end turnoff which is supplied with a number of large rocks for comfortable seating.

This is Morning Tea.

Coningham Road after we harassed Sally

Dead end turnoff

Morning Tea

The weather was quite overcast and a front appeared to be moving over, but still no rain. As we sat a couple of us noticed some distant specks flying against the cloud. We could see they were large birds and counted about four spread out over some distance.

One came closer over us and I took a photo. My little camera slips nicely into a shirt pocket, but this means it has a lack of zoom. 4X optical and 8X digital for the technically minded. So you may have to use some imagination to recoginize this as a White-bellied Sea-eagle or Haliaeetus leucogaster.

Sea-eagle in flight

Enlarged from above. You can see it has white underparts

Always a thrill to see some of these large birds. Here's a short description taken from Wikipedia:  "Like many raptors, the female is slightly larger than the male, and can measure up to 90 cm (35 in) long with a wingspan of up to 2.2 m (7 ft), and weigh 4.5 k."

Tea finished and birds moved on, we start climbing up Sheppards Hill which will be our only hill of note on this walk.

A steep but satisfying climb - I never thought I'd say that about a hill, Bob has a lot to answer for.

On the way up we reach a short level area and frighten up some Brown Quail or Coturnix ypsilophora. They also did a good job of putting the wind up us.

We also saw a pair of Sea-eagles take off from nearby trees, too fast to get a photo.

Another short climb and we reach the top where, after a short walk, we turn right and start down.

Looking back as we climb Sheppards Hill

The top's in sight

Looking at the hills running away behind Mt. Wellington

Walking along the top

Starting down

It's an easy walk

Several people pointed out various fungi along the track, but I told them I had become discerning about what I wasted a photo on. They took that on board and promptly missed the little beauties below!

I think these are Lichenomphalia chromacea, but am happy to be corrected.

We eventually come to another road and walk on.

I digress. When we were having our morning break, Bob warned us of a choice we'd have to make later on. That is to continue on the longer path or take a shortcut back to the paved road and following that back to the cars. As he gave this information Bob said if we chose the shortcut, we'd better not eat too much now as it involved climbing through a small gap in a fence.

Now, we're faced with that choice. In the end it wasn't really a problem and we all were very happy to continue on. For the record though, the location of the shortcut is below.

This is the track from the top of Sheppards Hill, leading to the road below

Shortcut location. The fence is in the scrub to the right, perhaps where that short track is

Coningham Road isn't far away

We walk on past the back of some houses before coming to Old Station Road where we turn right and walk down to pick up Coningham Road.

We walk on until we turn off towards the water, looking for a place for lunch.

Coningham Road

As I said, we turnoff onto a little track that leads down to a very small beach where we go right and pick up the coast track leading towards Little Coningham Beach. On the way the fungus below was pointed out to me, and I can't identify it.

Sally's going to be upset with those little Blackberries next to the fungus

Climbing from the little nameless bay to the main track

Little Coningham Beach where we'll have lunch

Lunch at the western end of the beach

The cliff face is crumbly mud stone

A number of fallen large rocks provide interest and somewhere to sit

Mt. Wellington again

A number of the rocks had this red colouring on them

On top of the crumbly mud stone was sandstone. I put a camera on my selfie stick to get these photos of a couple of interesting small chambers in the sandstone, but it wasn't quite long enough

After lunch, we walked to the other end of the beach and returned to the coastal track which took us back to the car park.

Coastal track

When we reach the car park, there was Sally and her workmates waiting for a photographer from the Hobart Mercury newspaper. Seems Sally and some of the others belong to Friends of Freycinet, and, I think I heard this right, there is going to be an award for the cleanliness of the beach there.

The photographer just needed a photo of them on a beach for an article. That's any beach, anywhere. 

Isn't Photoshop wonderful? Keep that thought in mind if you read the article when it comes out.

If you're interested, here's the website of the Friends of Freycinet. It's worth a look, it's part of Landcare Tasmania.

Click here for Friends of Freycinet/Landcare Tasmania website.

 We had 9 walkers and covered 9.98km (my odometer app on my phone was working) in around 3-3.5hrs. It was an enjoyable walk with no rain until I was on my way home.

sheoaks