FALMOUTH
The seaside town that time forgot. Smaller than a village, set by a vast ocean beneath brooding hills, and a great big sky of changing moods.
Falmouth
Picture a small seaside village, planned with neatly laid-out streets only half of which are sealed, accessed by a slip road off the Tasman Highway. The village is roughly halfway between Bicheno and St Helens and sits on a knoll above the flood plain where several creeks descending from the hills of the German Town Forest Reserve meander to a silted delta.
The seaward side of Falmouth falls abruptly to the rocky waterline, over ancient lava flows pounded by aeons of Southern Ocean waves; while the northern end of town yields a more gently sloping descent to a crescent of beach stretching away northwards to Steels Beach and beyond to the Scamander Conservation Area.
The sand is dazzlingly white, the sea liquid sapphire, the air pure and fresh, laced with briny iodine. The hills to westward are deeply forested, above which clouds just seem to grow and settle, only grudgingly coming down to the coast to rain.
2 hour drive east from Launceston or 3 hour drive north-east from Hobart