Cockle Creek is famously the end of the road, the furthest south you can drive in any Australian state. The road from Hobart is sealed as far as Ida Bay just south of Lune River. From there it is gravel, in good condition at first but dwindling as you pass through smaller and smaller places. Moss Glen may count as a village but most of them are just cleared camping spots with a composting dunny but no other facilities. And finally there’s Cockle Creek. Why would anyone go there?
Now that I’ve answered that question…
Camping at Cockle Creek
Years ago, up to WW2 and a bit later, Cockle Creek was a sawmilling centre, a period memorialised with signage and some rusting machinery. In the late nineteenth century it was a whaling base, remembered now by a fine bronze sculpture of a whale calf on a headland at the very end of the road.
Now, it’s just a National Parks camping ground across the road from the beach, with a ranger station, public toilets and water tanks. (You’re told to boil the water before drinking it.) Other than a couple of beach shacks which look as though they’ve been there for a very long time, it reminds me strongly of Lime Bay.
The South Coast Track begins (or ends) here, and the Cockle Creek to South Cape Bay section of it is one of the 60 Great Short Walks in its own right.
The camping ground is a great place for doing very little. Stroll on the beach and up into the estuary, watch the pademelons (resisting the temptation to feed them), spot the green rosellas near one of the beach shacks and the gulls on the beach, and walk down to the point to see the whale sculpture.
Not-entirely-native wildlife
One highlight of the longer walk was seeing a lyrebird crossing the track in front of me. They are not native to Tasmania but were introduced from Victoria when the species seemed vulnerable there. They are doing well, as are the Kookaburras, also introduced deliberately.
European wasps are even more abundant. I saw them on the beach, at my camp site, on banksia flowers beside the track and emerging from a nest on the track itself. They are opportunistic predators and scavengers and their success comes at the expense of native insects so we would be better off without them.
Cockle Creek to South Cape Bay
The walk is very straightforward and not strenuous, just long – 7 km each way. The track is narrow and often rough but always clear and with no big hills. It begins in mixed woodlands dominated by teatree, banksia and eucalypts, then alternates between swampy reedy open spaces and more woodland, according to elevation.
The forecast on my only full day in Cockle Creek was for showers, ‘clearing early afternoon’. I set off at 9am with light mist which became drizzle and fairly heavy rain as I went, giving me an inadvertent but useful insight into how well my gear would have served on a wet Three Capes walk. My raincoat was great but trekking pants got wet very quickly. (I rainproofed the other pair, didn’t I? These things happen.) My joggers were squelching before I got to the beach, too. On the other end, my broad-brim hat worked perfectly: it got wet, but I didn’t.
The beach, exposed to the Southern Ocean, was a dramatic contrast to Cockle Creek. I didn’t stay long, though: five minutes for photos, ten for a snack, ten more to see if the rain was clearing. It wasn’t, so I headed back to camp. The weather cleared as I went, and it was a nice day by the time I got back at about 2pm. Sigh. But it was a good walk in spite of the rain.
