Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific - Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World - page 349

475 The bay of fires, TasMania

The Bay of Fires Walk is eco-hiking for softies.
Say goodbye to those trail boots and say hello
to your trainers: this is wilderness without
the wild. Sure, you'll still have to shoulder a
rucksack for two days. But that's a small price
to pay for an access-all-areas pass - only Bay of
Fires Walkers get to camp in these remote areas
- to the coastline of the Mount William National
Park on Tasmania's northeastern tip.
And what a coastline. The Bay of Fires has
wow factor even in a nation that knows a thing
or two about world-class beaches. Broken only
by sculptural headlands splashed by orange
lichen - evidence of the air's exceptional purity
- its quartzite sands are a dazzlingly white
silky powder. The sea is an implausibly tropical
turquoise. There's even something insouciant
about the way the surf crumps lazily onto the
shore.
Kilometre after kilometre of pristine sandy
nothingness stretches beyond the start at
Boulder Point, in the north of the national
park. Yet you are not alone; not quite. At dusk
marsupials graze behind Forester Beach Camp,
your timber-floored, canvas-roofed home for
night one, 9km from Boulder Point. And there
are ghosts if you know where to look - the shell
mounds of Aborigines who occupied the area for
thousands of years before British explorers saw
their cooking fires and coined the bay's name.
The goal of the 23km walk is the Bay of Fires
Lodge, a glass-lined solar-powered outpost of
eco-chic buried into a hilltop 20km from its
nearest neighbours. During nearly two days
here, your reward for a hard day of swimming
in private bays, dipping a paddle into the Anson
River or just gazing at an ocean which seems
to lap your window is a hot shower plus cuisine
that would not disgrace a top Sydney restaurant.
Wilderness has never been so aspirational.

Need to know The four-day Bay of Fires Walk
( W www.bayofireswalk.com.au) runs twice a month
from October to April. It costs A$2000 approx and

(From top) The stunning quartzite-sand beaches and pristine waters of the Bay of Fires; The most
contemporary of architectural styles are incorporated into the eco-chic lodges; The sculpted
coastline; Paddling along the Anson River in a kayak