I left Hobart and headed up the east coast to Swansea and the Freycinet Peninsula. I was sick of just looking at photos of Wineglass Bay; I wanted see it for myself.

‘The lookout for Wineglass Bay,’ I said to the girl behind the counter at the Visitor Centre, ‘is it a hard walk?’ She shook her head. ‘So it’s not difficult, then?’

‘No, it’s okay.’

She obviously hadn’t done it – or being still a lithe teenager, wouldn’t have noticed the incline if she had. Middle-aged couples were draped variously along the track, faces purple and hearts pounding.

‘The girl told me this was going to be easy,’ I said to a rotund man, who was going so slowly, even I passed him. He mumbled something in reply and forged onwards. It was at this moment that the sun came out, for once not helping my situation but making me even hotter.

I finally reached the lookout and joined a grumpy-looking woman and her husband and their children.

‘Look, Sean,’ the father said to an eight-year-old, ‘look at the view.’ Sean ignored him.

‘Will, come and look.’

‘I can’t see,’ said Will, without moving.

‘Emily.’ He pointed across toward a sliver of Wineglass Bay. A twelve-year-old girl materialized and squeezed up against him.

‘Can we go?’ whined Sean.

‘I’m tired,’ carped William.

Emily and her father exchanged a look. The mother started moving away and the boys suddenly got their energy back and pounded down the steps.

I had to admit I was a little disappointed myself. No, I was very disappointed. The sliver of Wineglass Bay was just that – a sliver. Obviously, this was not where the photos are taken from.  Maybe I took the wrong track, read the wrong sign. It’s a regular failing of mine.

The trek back down gave me a chance to look around me. The peninsula is, effectively, two massive, eroded blocks of granite – the Hazards and Mt. Graham – joined by a sand isthmus. It seemed impossible that anything could erode these majestic, apparently impenetrable giants. Halfway down, I stopped and rested against a massive rock, vacated by a couple heading upwards. The rain and freezing wind of yesterday was gone and the dark stone glittered in the sun.