In contrast to yesterday, today was very chilled. Having woken up around 7, due to the sun trying to roast me alive in my tent I felt no obligation to do anything in a rush. I had two Muffins for brekkie, one with Vegemite, the other with raw local manuka honey and washed them down with a cup of tea.

I walked along the coast towards Binalong Bay. Beautiful white beaches with clear Bombay Sapphire seas. Sunny but not too hot and with a perfect breeze. The rocks here have an orange algae on them which everyone gets quite excited about. It's the same as we saw on the Remarkable Rocks on Kangaroo Island.

The sand on the first few beaches was super grainy and my feet were well exfoliated. Separated by piles of huge rocks I had to negotiate, I eventually came across a sheltered beach with sand as soft as talcum powder. I decided to head back to the tent and stopped to look at a tannin infused dark watered lagoon on the way back.

Having discovered the perfect spot to relax on the rocks at the bottom of my bay I coated myself in factor 30, packed a small bag and headed off to be hypnotised by the sea. I kept seeing the dark shadows swimming up and down the bay, which I'd thought were rays. Having spoken to a couple of fishermen and a chap called Heath ( complete with missing front tooth and a very poor relationship with his tooth brush!) I discovered that the dark shadows, which appeared in groups of up to 4 were actually sharks! They were big and no one knew what type but most people guessed they were Bull sharks and no one ruled out the possibility of them being Great Whites. Everyone advised me not to get in the water! No worries there then, the beaches are steep and there are some good rips, not my idea of fun even if you take the sharks out of the equation! Apparently the bay is full of bait fish at the moment, which may also explain the huge numbers of feeding birds, including gulls, shags and pelicans.

Later in the afternoon I drove to Binalong Bay, a growing collection of overly fancy houses, mainly retirement homes. The beach was a beach but the rocks were quite pretty here, with some calm inlets. I discovered that my soft sand bay was called Jeanneat Bay and I saw two super cute Fairy Tern Chicks and Mum. Heading north to The Gardens I walked to see the northern coast of the bay of fires stretch out all the way to the Eddystone lighthouse. I had planned to drive there tomorrow but as every beach looked virtually the same as the ones I've been on today I changed my mind!

Whilst eating supper out of the pan resting on one of the fence posts a retired chap walked up and said, 'nice piece of real estate you've got here!' to which I replied, 'It's not too shabby and what's even better is that it doesn't even cost me a cent!'. His dog got bored whilst we chatted and he shared his 40 years of local knowledge about free camping on the east coast of Tassie. The locals here really are lovely and so helpful.

No stars tonight, just clouds, let's hope they've gone by the time I get up!