July 2020 - Crescent Bay and Mount Brown

On another beautiful winter's day, Sunday 26 July 2020, we headed down the Peninsular to do one of our favourite walks to the spectacular Crescent Bay beach and continuing up to Mt Brown for some panoramic views of the peninsula’s rugged coastline . Wayne organised this one and was joined by Gerwyn, Kat, Philip, James, Bob, Lyn and Angie.

We met at 10am at Sorell to organise cars and coffee and continued on to the Remarkable Caves carpark where the walk begins. There is now lots of parking here and new public toilets.

We started walking about 11:30 am. The track has been upgraded and is now much easier walking with boardwalks to cross those undulating sandy sections on the first part of the track.

The track heads east firstly towards Mount Brown.  This section offers westerly views back towards the Peninsula cliff line and Cape Raoul.

About 20 minutes into the walk we reach Maingon Blowhole which is now isolated by a viewing platform on the boardwalk. This provides some additional safety precautions for what used to be an open rocky gulch. It wasn't blowing particularly high today.

The track then skirts the coastline for another kilometre before heading inland onto the lower knolls of Mount Brown. The track to the summit of Mount Brown is now signposted but we were not sure if times shown for this sidetrack were one way or return.

From here, the southern end of Crescent Beach is quickly reached.  Crescent Bay beach has amazing sand dunes and there were plenty of surfers out today enjoying the sun shine and the slide down.  

There were also quite a few visitors on the beach  enjoying the beautiful crystal waters of Crescent Bay and like us,  stopping for a picnic lunch on the beach .

                                             

                                              

After a walk along the beach to the end, Kat and Lyn decided to climb Mount Brown on the way back.  The Track up to Brown Mountain isn’t quite as clear but a series of cairns directs the ascent to the mountain. The walk is moderately steep and many sections consist of small loose shards of rock so care needs to be taken but it took less time than we remembered from previous visits.

                          

From the summit trig point there is a spectacular 360 degree view of Cape Pillar and Tasman Island, Arthurs Peak and Port Arthur’s Carnavon Bay,  as well as views further south to Cape Raoul and Bruny Island. A further track to Mount Brown’s edge can be found to the west taking in views of Dauntless Point and Black Rock. 

                                            

We easily found our way back down to return to the main track and retraced our steps to return to the car park as quickly as possible to meet up with the others.

The walk was about 8km including Mount Brown and roughly took 4 hours including breaks

The track to Remarkable Cave was closed for upgrading so we did not get to revisit that this time. This could have been a blessing for the knees with all those steps!

Another great day, enjoying a lovely walk and the fabulous Tasmanian coastline with friends.