Qualla: Bay of Fires

Bay of Fires: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aaroncrick, CC BY-SA 3.0. The fires that named this place were real. In 1773, the British navigator Tobias Furneaux sailed his ship Adventure up the northeastern coast of Tasmania and saw flames glowing along the beaches at night, the cooking and camp fires of the Aboriginal people who had lived here for thousands of years. He called it the Bay of Fires. The irony is that the coast still seems to be on fire, only now the colour comes from the rocks. Great rounded boulders of granite line the shore, splashed and crusted a vivid burnt orange, and at dawn, above water the colour of glass, they look as though they are quietly burning still.

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Image: Aaroncrick | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bay of Fires: Fire Made of Lichen

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aaroncrick, CC BY-SA 3.0. The orange is the bay's signature, and it surprises people to learn it is alive. The granite itself is grey, but it is coated across the splash zone in a hardy coastal lichen that glows a deep tangerine, a slow-growing organism that thrives on salt spray and sun. Set against the ...

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Image: Aaroncrick | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bay of Fires: larapuna and Its People

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diego Delso, CC BY 3.0. Long before Furneaux gave it an English name, this coast was larapuna, in the reconstructed palawa kani language of Tasmania's Aboriginal people. It was a gathering place, where family groups remembered today as the Panpe-kanner, Leener-rerter and Pinter-rairer came together alon...

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Image: Diego Delso | CC BY 3.0

Bay of Fires: Whalers and Wild Coast

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eli Duke, CC BY-SA 2.0. The nineteenth century brought a harder trade. In the 1840s, bay whaling was carried out along this coast, the same brutal industry that stained beaches up and down Tasmania, hunting the whales that once passed close inshore. The nearby town of St Helens began life as a whaling s...

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Image: Eli Duke | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bay of Fires: The World Takes Notice

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Comautok, CC BY-SA 4.0. For somewhere this remote, the Bay of Fires has drawn an outsized share of attention. In 2005 it was named the world's second-best beach by Conde Nast, and in 2008 the guidebook Lonely Planet crowned it the hottest travel destination on the planet for the year ahead. The accolade...

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Image: Comautok | CC BY-SA 4.0