Cooks Beach Hike

We have a number of older Scouts in our Troop who are keen to earn the highest award for their age group, and that means that they need to organise a two-night hike … but since only at most two of them can be the organisers for any given hike, this means that we need to have a few hikes to accommodate them all. This explains the need for the Cape Pillar hike back in February and why, once I felt I had enough strength to manage it, we had another hike in April.

This time the hike was organised by two of our older girls and they decided to go to Freycinet Peninsula, and head down to Cook’s Beach. We had 10 kids in attendance: five in the group led to by the two older girls, and another five with enough experience to be reasonably independent but who hadn’t actually been involved in organising. On day 1 our first order of business was to climb up over the saddle and admire the view of Wineglass Bay. It is rather admirable.

It’s also quite pretty in close up. Unlike a similar trip last year, we didn’t have time to stop here for a swim, but continued across the isthmus and southwards along Hazards Beach, with the kids making reasonable time (and me reasonably pleased that I was managing quite well only six weeks after surgery).

At the end of Hazards Beach the track heads off into the bush, though it still follows the coastline, until, in the late afternoon, you drop down onto Cooks Beach.

It was too nice a day — even for April — to deny the kids a chance for a swim … and then I convinced them to do a few jumps for some action sunset shots.

The evening involved cheesecake (decorated with Smarties scavenged from my scroggin), and then, since my phone had an internet connection and the aurora alerts page on Facebook was going nuts, we went down to the beach and we all had the chance to see an amazing aurora (we don’t often get to see them with the naked eye as we are not far enough south). The kids were suitably awestruck; my photographic evidence of the phenomenon is far less impressive.

The next day there was a bit of a smoke haze around, but that made for some interesting light effects in the early morning.

The Scouts then managed to get themselves organised ready for a day hike up to Mt Freycinet.

The trouble with a feature named Mt Freycinet is that it involves a change in altitude; however, despite the smoke haze, the views were worth it.

The terrain around the summit is quite rugged and disconcertingly like Picnic at Hanging Rock and it was quite easy to lose track of the track and each other. We had a couple of “interesting” moments, but they were resolved without too much drama, and there were still 10 Scouts and 2 adults when we got back down to our campsite again.

It was quite late (well, not too late, because it’s dusk in April by 6:00) when we got back … but some of the kids still wanted a swim, so they had one in the fading light. It was only a brief swim, because it was getting dark and the water was, I think, cooler than they expected.

The good thing about April is that you don’t have to get up too early for sunrises.

However, it was after 9am in Day 3 — and so not as early as I had hoped — by the time the Scouts headed off for the return trip back to Coles Bay.

They actually made quite reasonable time. The parent (the other adult on the hike) and I gave them a head start, but we didn’t ever catch up with them except at the pre-arranged locations. I have to confess I was very aware that I’ve lost some fitness in the last couple of months; it probably didn’t help that I stopped to photograph things as well.

And because the weather was still so remarkably glorious (three consecutive warm days in April is an unusual event), we were not surprised that the kids wanted another swim, making three days in a row for some of them … and possibly not helping our plans to get back to the car park by a certain time.

But we got there eventually, and I have to say that the kids weren’t the only ones feeling a sense of achievement. I was very tired, but bushwalks are definitely good for the soul.