Cape Schanck – Bushrangers Bay

On a warm (hot) day in March, so a couple weeks ago during the heat wave, we headed down to Cape Schanck for a bit of a walk and wander around the beach. We parked at the Cape Schanck Lighthouse car park, and headed for Bushrangers Bay along the Bushrangers Bay walking track.

It’s only a 40 minute walk (or so) so it’s not especially difficult, the only issue is the heat as there is no shade at the beginning of the walk, after about 10-20 minutes there is a shaded section with trees on both sides of the trail which was a very welcome relief. For some reason we decided not to take our swimmers (and we left our sunscreen in the car thinking that we wouldn’t be down there for long) so we were pretty much just looking for a shady spot on the beach, of which there really aren’t any. We had a lunch which was pretty much crackers with cheese and salami (yum!), and then decided to go for a wander down the beach.

The water is beautifully cool which was great for getting our feet wet (apparently it’s not a good swimming beach, a bit dangerous) but we didn’t have our swimmers any way (surprisingly it wasn’t very windy), if you look at the pictures (the one with the red tent), the big rock on the right hand side, just past there is an arch that has crashing water, a rock pool, and the big rock is scaleable as well, actually third picture is taken from the top of the big rock, and the arch is to the left. Parts of the rock are super hot as they don’t get wet at all, so for that reason, as well as the fact that the rock and sand and plants under foot are quite abrasive, I would recommend wearing shoes, or at least thongs (unlike silly me who went with bare feet, and was in agony the whole time I was up there!). This is part of a national park, and the place is really quite pristine, we definitely want to head down there again with a bit more preparedness though, the lighthouse is very picturesque, unfortunately the sunset wasn’t particularly dramatic so I didn’t end up with anything that I am particularly happy about. We’ll go again though. We had dinner at the Flinders Hotel (in Flinders) at the Deck (which is a pub), it was pretty good, but we were quite rushed due to me wanting to rush back for the sunset after dinner.