Coles Bay

Bands of the Oyster Bay people gathered along this coast for thousands of years, harvesting shellfish and marine plants between the bay and the peninsula and leaving large shell middens that are still visible above the sand at Hazards Beach and elsewhere in what is now the national park. Disease and the violence of the colonial frontier in the early 19th century destroyed that way of life across eastern Tasmania, and Aboriginal Tasmanian communities today trace descent largely through the Bass Strait islands.

Europeans came for what could be taken from the bay. George Meredith set up a shore-based whaling station in 1824, which worked only through the winter months and had been abandoned by the 1850s; the Hazards are said to be named after a whaling captain, Richard Hazard. Tin and coal miners and pastoralists followed, leaving mine shafts and abandoned huts that walkers still pass, and fishing for crayfish and scallops supported a handful of families. The peninsula and its islands carry the name of Louis de Freycinet, a member of the French scientific expedition that charted parts of the Tasmanian coast in the early 1800s.

Protection changed the village's fortunes. Freycinet was declared a national park in 1916, Tasmania's first along with Mount Field, and after the Second World War a sealed road, electricity and holiday shacks turned Coles Bay into a summer settlement for Tasmanian families. Photographs of Wineglass Bay from the saddle above it became one of the state's defining images in recent decades, and the village rebuilt itself around walkers and cruise boats rather than whaling and fish.

Coles Bay's culture is the culture of the Tasmanian shack: a low-key holiday settlement where families have returned to the same cabins for generations, where boats sit on trailers in front gardens, and where the summer day is measured by the tide and the wind rather than by opening hours. In January the population multiplies and the beach at Richardsons and the jetty fill with children, fishing lines and kayaks; by May the streets are almost empty again.

Outdoor life is the shared language. Almost every conversation in the village touches on the walks — who made it up Mount Amos, whether the saddle track was crowded, how the weather looks for the circuit — and on fishing and diving for crayfish and abalone, a serious pastime on this coast with strict seasons and limits. Local businesses are small, family-run and often seasonal, and staff in summer include many young travellers on working holidays.

Conservation is part of local identity, and also a source of argument. Residents live inside or beside a national park that draws large numbers of visitors, and debates run over walking-track upgrades, private developments on the peninsula, parking at the Wineglass Bay car park and how many people the place can take. The Aboriginal history of the peninsula is increasingly acknowledged in park interpretation, including the shell middens above the beaches. The village banned plastic shopping bags in 2003, one of the first places in the world to do so.

About 500 people live in Coles Bay and the surrounding area all year, yet Freycinet National Park draws visitors in numbers that dominate the economy of this part of the east coast. The difference shapes everything: a village of holiday houses that stand dark for much of the year, a primary-aged population small enough that older children travel to school at Bicheno or Swansea, and a workforce that swells and shrinks with the seasons.

Tourism provides nearly all the work — cabins, lodges, cafés, boat cruises, kayak and walking guides, park management — alongside marine farming of oysters and mussels in the bay, commercial fishing and building trades serving holiday-house owners. Shopping, banking and medical appointments generally mean a drive to Swansea, Bicheno or further to Launceston or Hobart.

The day runs early: boats out at first light, walkers on the tracks before the heat, and quiet streets after dark. Housing is the main local issue, as holiday letting has absorbed much of the modest housing stock and seasonal staff struggle to find anywhere to live. Water supply in dry summers, bushfire preparedness and the pressure of visitor numbers on a single access road are the other recurring concerns.

Seafood from the water in front of the village defines eating here. Pacific oysters, native oysters and mussels are grown in the bay and sold beside the road into town, usually eaten shucked and raw or grilled with little more than lemon; southern rock lobster, known throughout Tasmania as crayfish, is the local luxury, and scallops, flathead and squid come off the boats. The scallop pie — scallops in a mild curried sauce inside shortcrust pastry — is a Tasmanian bakery speciality found in the village as it is across the state.

Beyond seafood, the food is straightforward holiday cooking: bakery pies and sausage rolls, fish and chips eaten on the jetty, barbecues at the campgrounds, and a few small restaurants working with Tasmanian produce — beef and lamb, berries, cheeses and leatherwood honey from the western rainforests. Self-catering is the norm, and many visitors arrive with a boot full of food bought in Hobart or Launceston.

The surrounding east coast is one of Tasmania's wine districts, its cool nights and long ripening season suited to pinot noir, chardonnay, riesling and sparkling wine; cellar doors line the Tasman Highway within a short drive of the Coles Bay turn-off. Tasmanian single malt whisky, craft beer and cider round out the local drinks list, and cold-climate fruit — cherries, raspberries and blackcurrants — appears in the farm stalls and bakeries in summer.