South Cape Bay walk, TAS

Day Trip From: Cygnet
December 2022

The South Cape Bay walk is in Southwest National Park and is part of either the first or last day of the famous South Coast Track – a multi day track across the whole National Park. Because of this we decided that it was worth the effort to make the two hour drive (including 40 minutes on a rutted gravel road…) to the start of the trail.

As we approached the National Park we passed through a series of ‘recreational’ areas, which were jam-packed with caravans and tents taking up every spare bit of space by the side of the road. It was a 30 degree day as well, and the whole area was rammed with day-trippers fishing and swimming. The crowds of people were a bit off-putting, and although it was a bit quieter once we reached the National Park area, it was still pretty crowded. Yes, we can complain about crowds even when we are travelling during Xmas holidays… 🙂

The walk itself was around 16km return and it went across the headland to come out at South Cape Bay. Unfortunately this meant that the whole walk except for the very last bit was not on the coast (we knew this before we went though), and even more unfortunately it went mostly through fields and not nice woodland (we didn’t know this though..)

So, although South Cape Bay itself was pretty nice when we got there, we didn’t think it was worth the ‘return on investment’ of a two hour drive and 8km each way across not very interesting terrain.