The Freycinet Peninsula is 38km long promontory of wild, pristine coastland on Tasmania’s East Coast. This is a land of sugar-white beaches and clear blue seas; shady forests and heathlands scattered with wildflowers. The entire peninsula, Friendly Beaches, Wineglass Bay and Schouten Island to its south are encompassed in Freycinet National Park. The Freycinet Peninsula and the waters surrounding it are abundant in wildlife, and the land has a fascinating human history to tell.

On the peninsula’s eastern side, facing out to sea, there are soaring sea cliffs, secluded coves, and dramatic ocean beaches like the one on which Friendly Beaches Lodge is set. All over the peninsula, sculpted boulders splashed with bright orange lichen add to nature’s colour palette. The peninsula has a backbone of craggy summits, the highest of which is Mount Graham (579m). The remarkable pink granite peaks known as The Hazards guard the peninsula at its northern end, and to the south is uninhabited Schouten Island, a domain of protected beaches, imposing sea cliffs and coastal forest.

Wineglass Bay been called one of the best beaches in the world. This perfect arc of blond sand and ice-blue water is the best-known jewel of the Freycinet Peninsula. Equally remarkable are the wide, deserted beaches and aquamarine shallows at Bryans and Cooks beaches on the western side of the peninsula, facing into protected Great Oyster Bay.

On the peninsula’s eastern side, facing out to sea, there are soaring sea cliffs, secluded coves, and dramatic ocean beaches like the one on which Friendly Beaches Lodge is set. All over the peninsula, sculpted boulders splashed with bright orange lichen add to nature’s colour palette. The peninsula has a backbone of craggy summits, the highest of which is Mount Graham (579m). The remarkable pink granite peaks known as The Hazards guard the peninsula at its northern end, and to the south is uninhabited Schouten Island, a domain of protected beaches, imposing sea cliffs and coastal forest.

Numerous shell middens, remnants of seafood meals, are found on the peninsula and some of the tracks that The Freycinet Experience Walk follows are paths walked by the peninsula’s original inhabitants. First contact with Europeans was in 1802 with the visit of French explorer Nicolas Baudin who named it after the expedition’s navigator Louis de Freycinet. Conflict between Europeans and Aborigines culminated in The Freycinet Line in 1831: an English attempt to completely rid the peninsula of its original inhabitants. The peninsula and Schouten Island had farming leases and were also the site of sealing and whaling industries before the peninsula was protected in a national park in 1916.

Fauna: Possums, wallabies and wombats are frequent visitors around Friendly Beaches Lodge. At night, visitors may be lucky enough to spot eastern quolls, long nosed potoroos, the diminutive New Holland mouse and even the endangered Tasmanian devil. On our walks we frequently see shy echidnas. Marine life in the waters off the peninsula includes visiting seals from colonies on offshore islands and bottlenose dolphins. Southern right whales spend time around the peninsula on their winter migration.

Flora: Friendly Beaches Lodge is surrounded by a pristine coastal forest of fragrant banksias, wattle, eucalypts and Oyster Bay pine. When the kunzia is flowering, the lodge is suffused by its warm, honey smell, and casuarinas whisper gently in the wind. Our guides are knowledgeable naturalists and on the walks they point out bush orchids, coastal and sunshine wattle, spinifex, casurina, heaths, honeysuckle, mauve melaleuca and a variety of eucalypts.

Birds: Sit quietly on the verandas at Friendly Beaches Lodge, and some of the peninsula’s remarkable birdlife will come right to you. Watch blue wrens and beautiful firetails flitting through the low coastal vegetation, or take a walk on out on the beach to watch white bellied sea eagles soar. Some 130 bird species have been recorded on the peninsula including the chatty yellow tailed black cockatoo, elegant bronzewing pigeons, green rosella, Tasmanian native hens, hooded dotterels, black swans and peregrine falcons. During the summer months, little penguins visit the peninsula and can sometimes be spotted returning to their burrows at dusk.