The Bay of Fires is on the north east coast of Tassie and has post card written all over it. Legend has it that it was named when a French sea captain with a French name was sailing down that way and he was unhappy with some of his sailors so he turned to each of them and said “You’re fired sacre bleu! You’re fired mon cherry.” Maybe I’m getting it mixed up with Donald Trump? I don’t know. But one thing is for sure and that is that is a spectacular spot with bright orange rocks.

We camped in one of the numerous free campsites in the national park that the Tasmanian government provide, which meant no power and we had to use water from our tanks.  Our site was nice and large and surrounded by casuarina trees and had a resident wallaby we named Lester.

We found a spot at the first area we stopped at which was called Swimcart Beach (don’t ask me why, maybe it was another French fellow on a naming spree). The sand is pure white and very course and the beach was very steep which made for tricky swimming conditions. Not that anyone was keen on swimming, although the water temperature was not too bad and there were lots of other people going for a dip.

The weather was a bit patchy so we spent some of our full day there taking a short tour of the area and dropping in to Binalong Bay and then looking around St Helens, which was a nice little port that was full of tourists.

I got some fishing in and managed to catch a couple of Australian salmon which cooked up very nicely. There are many spots along this part of the coast within the national park that are just idyllic. Although, ironically, there was a total fire ban, so one of the aspects to camping that Tim and I really enjoy was not open to us.