Forget the wineglass, Tasmania has other stunning beaches worth a visit

While Tasmania isn't always known for its sunny beach weather, it has an abundance of natural beauty and rugged coastline. Adventurer - and Tassie local - Andrew Bain - explains the lesser known beaches that tourists should take in when they visit the Apple Isle.

By Andrew Bain

In Tasmania, it can sometimes be hard to see the beaches for the Wineglass. With its perfect curve, Wineglass Bay overshadows all other strands around the island state, but in reality Tasmania is a natural artwork framed by a multitude of beautiful beaches.

There are white-sand wonders along the east coast, sandy shows of power in the west, and even beaches set into mountains. Put your Wineglass down next visit and discover some new beaches.

Boat Harbour Beach

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Black and white has never looked so good. Set at the foot of Table Cape on the Bass Strait coast, this local favourite is a gleaming white strip of sand split by tongues of black volcanic rock. When the sun shines, so do the shallows, creating a dazzling palette of colours, and the beachside Seekers Bar and Cafe, inside the surf club, is just the spot in which to absorb it all.

More info: Discover Tasmania

Trousers Point

Imagine kunanyi/Mt Wellington rising from the shores of the Bay of Fires and you pretty much have the picture of this stunner along the southern edge of Flinders Island.

There's a long, soft beach arcing out from the point, but its greatest beauty is packed into a tiny corner, illuminated with orange lichen, lined with knuckles of rock and with the 782-metre-high Strzelecki Peaks – the highest mountain on the island – rising almost directly off the beach.

Coningham Beach

How does a beach this fine, this close to a capital city, remain so unremarked? Just a half-hour drive from Hobart, Coningham is bookended by colourful boat sheds and sandstone cliffs vaguely reminiscent of Maria Island's Painted Cliffs. The north-facing beach is protected from most weather, creating calm swimming conditions in full view of kunanyi/Mt Wellington.

More info: Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service

Crescent Bay

It takes work to enjoy Crescent Bay – it's about a 90-minute walk in from Remarkable Cave, near Port Arthur – but the rewards are manifold.

The perfectly curved beach, where Dick Smith once proposed building a resort, peers across the water to Tasman Island and Australia’s tallest sea cliffs wrapped around Cape Pillar, but the best of the beach is its back wall – the spectacular dunes that tower up from the sands. Generations of Tasmanian kids have used these dunes for sand-boarding thrills.

More info: Tasman Peninsula

Bay of Fires

Look at the trademark orange lichen smothering the granite headlands of the Bay of Fires and it’s tempting to believe that Tasmania’s most striking section of coast takes its name for its blazing colour. Named instead for the palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) fires that explorer Tobias Furneaux saw burning along the beaches in 1773, there’s no more colourful or beautiful coastline in Australia, with the lichen outshone only by the white sand and azure seas. Pick a beach, any beach on the short drive from Binalong Bay to The Gardnes.

More info: Tasmanian Travel and Information Centre

Ocean Beach

Tasmania's longest beach is impressive for its power alone – this is no swimming beach.

Stretching more than 30 kilometres north from Macquarie Heads near Strahan, the hard-packed, hard-pounded beach is the quintessential place to watch the Southern Ocean roar ashore – the largest wave ever recorded in Australia (18.4 metres) thundered into Tasmania near the beach’s southern end in 2010. The beach is just a few minutes' drive from Strahan, or you can walk in through the expansive Henty Dunes for the full sand experience.

More info: West Coast Tasmania

Lake Rhona

Not all of Tasmania's best beaches are found on the coast.

Lake Pedder's famous pink-sand beach may be long drowned, but tucked into the slopes of the Denison Range in the remote Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is this incredible alpine beach with its white sands in high contrast to the lake's stout-coloured water. The only way into Rhona is on foot, and it’s a full day of walking, so you’ll just have to camp the night on the beach when you get here, damn it.

More info: TasTrails