The day after we walked the Fluted Cape, we were driving back from the lighthouse and decided to check out the Jetty Beach Campground. Accessed down a rather bumpy gravel road, this campground was next to the beach and divided up by shady trees that gave some protection from the west wind. The campground is also the start point for two circuit walks.
At 15 km, the longer of the two is the Labillardiere Peninsula circuit. Since it was now approaching lunchtime and the weather conditions being a bit changeable, we decided to tackle the shorter 4 km walk that covers the same start and end sections of the longer walk, but with a transverse section along the way. Setting off in a clockwise direction, we were faced with a gentle incline through low heathland and a light fall of rain. When we reached the transverse section, we were blasted by the strong westerly that we had been protected from by the higher terrain to our right. At this point the track opened up to very low scrub, with a variety of colourful wildflowers, including white ones that looked like a layer of snow.
At the end of this section, we walked through a low level eucalypt forest and, turning right, the track followed the coastline. By this time, it had started to rain, but we diverted onto a couple of the beaches. On one of these we ate our long overdue packed lunch.
On the way back from the last beach we came across an Echidna in the undergrowth next to the path, nose down and totally oblivious to our presence – we paused to watch for a few minutes and tried unsuccessfully to get a decent photograph of it.
Taking a leisurely two hours, this was one of the easiest walks that we completed, but it gave us some great views of the Tasman Peninsula to the east and the ‘mainland’ to the west.
