Detour #296: The Winding Road To Australia’s Best Beach
Photo Tourism Tasmania / Jason Charles Hill
MEl Nichols tackles Tasmania’s Weldborough Pass en route to the superb shores of the Bay of Fires.
We’re on the road to Australia’s best beach.
The Tasman Highway is twisting and turning, dodging this way and that, as it takes us there through the hilly forests of north-eastern Tasmania.
Our destination is the Bay of Fires, the stretch of breathtaking coast declared in 2025 by Tourism Australia to be the very best of this vast continent’s 11,761 officially recorded beaches. Many other authorities – including The New York Times and Condé Nast Traveller – rank these glistening sands among the finest in the world.
In fact, Bay of Fires is the collective name for a cluster of magnificent linked beaches. We’re targeting the main one, Binalong Bay, the mile-long southern-most strand. Walk, swim or stay there for a few days and you’ll immediately see that the acclaim isn’t hype.
Tasmania, Australia’s island state, is about the same size as the Republic of Ireland. Happily, all the roads to Binalong are interesting and enjoyable, whether you drive three-and-a-half hours north from the capital city Hobart’s airport, take the two-hour route east from second-city Launceston’s airport, or the alternative route we chose from there: the lovely B81/A3 Tasman Highway. It’s half an hour longer but leads you through the dramatic Weldborough Pass.
After 40 pleasant miles through farmland cleared 150-200 years ago for dairy, beef, sheep and lavender farms and, more recently, exceptional vineyards (according to Decanter magazine, the world’s best sparkling wine comes from here) you climb into hills and millennia-old forests.
In the little hill town of Derby, grab a coffee at smart new cafe The Hub. If you’re wondering why the main street is teeming with mountain bikes, it’s because they’re the reason this near-ghost town has been reborn over the past decade.
From the 1870s, for 80 years Derby thronged with miners lured by one of the world’s biggest tin deposits. After the last mine shut in 1948, just 173 residents remained until, in a brilliant piece of reinvention in 2015, Derby was transformed into an internationally acclaimed centre for mountain biking. Now it’s buzzing again as trail riders pour in to tackle the 80 miles of purpose built trails spearing out into the forests.
Not far on, the real driving begins as the Tasman Highway twists south into the packed hills of the Frome Forest Reserve. One bend after another keeps keen drivers busy while passengers enjoy myriad close-ups of the lovely native trees – towering stringy bark gums, blackwood, sassafras and myrtle – that crowd the roadside. Keep your car’s windows down to enjoy the intense bush scents, too.
At Weldborough, another once-booming tin mining settlement, stop for a cheery lunch at the rustic old Weldborough Hotel, which dates from 1886. Then you’ll be ready for the highlight of this drive: the winding Weldborough Pass where spectacular giant ferns elbow the trees aside to loom over the road and pack the gullies.
A reporter from the Launceston Examiner newspaper captured the Pass’s allure in 1928 by writing: ‘The car swings round the sharp corners and bends, passing through the lovely fern and myrtle bowers, as the motor ascends or descends one steep hill after another… the gentle breeze waves the majestic foliage and sighs sweetly among the [tree] tops.’
If you have time, pull into the Weldborough Pass Rainforest Walk car park and enjoy a 15-minute stroll on a loop through this exotic ancient forest.
Beyond the pass, the Tasman Highway swings east and winds for another satisfying 20 miles until it touches the coast at St Helens. Stock up at the East Coast Village Providore store before turning the corner onto Binalong Bay Road for the last seven miles to the beach.
A few miles out of town, after you pass the masses of black swans on Moulting Bay, keep an eye out on the right side for the Lease 65 oyster farm. They sell the freshest oysters you’re ever likely to find, straight from the water.
And so to Binalong. There’s no hotel or guest house; here you stay the way Tasmanians have done since shacks were built here generations ago – in one of the good range of attractive houses available for short or longer term rent through Bay of Fires Holiday Accommodation – talk to Jan.
Now you’re set to enjoy walking this magnificent beach, lounging on its pure white sand or swimming in its (usually) calm and crystal clear turquoise water. It’s a little colder than most mainland Australia beaches, but perfectly pleasant. If it does happen to be windy, pop a few hundred metres south over the rock outcrop near the whale-watching platform to the trio of large tidal pools. They’re sheltered by piles of the famous granite boulders smothered in orange lichen that further distinguish this coast and are so spectacular you may think you’re swimming in God’s own pool.
Some people think the orange rocks gave the Bay of Fires its name. No; it was named by explorer Captain Tobias Furneaux RN who saw several Aboriginal fires as he sailed past in HMS Adventure in March 1773 as part of Captain James Cook’s second voyage.
If you have more time to linger than Furneaux did, explore the beaches running north for six miles from Binalong: Jeanneret, Swimcart, Cosy Corner, Taylor’s and Honeymoon – all exceptional – until you reach The Gardens. There, park and walk down into the vast jumble of those orange-tinted boulders, find a shady spot for a picnic and relax amid one of the world’s greatest coastal vistas. I bet, like us, you’ll want to keep coming back.
Words Mel Nichols Twitter/X | Instagram
Photography Mel Nichols & Tourism Tasmania / Rob Burnett / Stu Gibson
ROADBOOK
CLASS: Ocean Drive
NAME: TASMAN HIGHWAY
ROUTE: Launceston to Binalong Bay
COUNTRY: AUSTRALIA
Distance: 111 Miles
Mel Nichols tackles Tasmania’s Weldborough Pass en route to the superb shores of the Bay of Fires.