Best beaches in Tasmania: 15 stunning stretches of sand you won’t believe exist
Tasmania’s beaches are a secret that Australians have been keeping from the rest of the world — possibly because they’d like to keep them that way. While Queensland’s Gold Coast and New South Wales’ Bondi gather all the attention, this island state at the bottom of the world has beaches that are, genuinely, among the best on Earth. The light is different down here: sharper, cleaner, more luminous. The sand is whiter. The water is a shade of turquoise that looks like someone dialled the saturation up past what nature should allow.
They’re cold. Let’s be honest about that. The Southern Ocean doesn’t warm up the way the Coral Sea does, and swimming in Tasmania is an experience for the brave and the energised rather than the lounging and the leisurely. But if you’re prepared for a brisk dip — and the beaches are so beautiful that you will be — the experience is extraordinary. And even if you never go near the water, the beaches themselves reward hours of wandering, photographing and simply being present in a landscape of exceptional beauty.
Here are the fifteen best beaches in Tasmania, from the world-famous to the completely unknown.
📋 TL;DR – Best beaches in Tasmania
- 🏆 Wineglass Bay is one of the world’s most beautiful beaches — a perfect crescent of white sand ringed by pink granite mountains. The walk to the lookout is unmissable.
- 🔥 Bay of Fires is an extraordinary stretch of coast famous for its bright orange lichen-covered boulders and turquoise water.
- 🌊 Friendly Beaches in the Freycinet National Park is less visited than Wineglass Bay and arguably just as beautiful.
- ❄️ Water temperatures average 12–16°C — cold by most standards but worth it for the sheer quality of the setting.
- 🦅 Wildlife is outstanding on Tasmanian beaches — sea eagles, shorebirds, seals and occasionally dolphins.
- 🌞 Summer (December–February) is the best time — longer days, warmer (relatively) temperatures, and all facilities open.
🏆 1. Wineglass Bay — one of the world’s great beaches
Wineglass Bay in the Freycinet National Park on Tasmania’s east coast is genuinely one of the most beautiful beaches in the world — not a marketing claim but an objective assessment backed by the fact that it has appeared on virtually every credible list of the world’s best beaches for the past thirty years. The bay is a perfect crescent, about a kilometre of brilliant white silica sand between two headlands of pink granite, with the still, turquoise water of the bay reflecting the surrounding peaks on calm mornings.
The famous approach is via the Wineglass Bay Lookout, a 45-minute return walk up granite steps through coastal heath to a saddle between the peaks, where the view of the bay below you is revealed suddenly and completely. The beach is a further 45 minutes return hike from the lookout, descending through she-oak forest. Spending time on the beach itself — walking the full length of the crescent, swimming in the cold, clear water, eating lunch on the sand — is an experience worth every step of the hike. Arrive early: the lookout car park fills by 9am in summer.
🔥 2. Bay of Fires — the most distinctive coastline in Australia
The Bay of Fires stretches along Tasmania’s northeast coast for about 29 kilometres from Binalong Bay south to Eddystone Point. It is one of the most visually distinctive coastlines in Australia — the beaches are brilliant white, the water is a surreal shade of turquoise, and the enormous granite boulders that punctuate the coast are covered in vivid orange lichen that has given the area its name. The effect, particularly in the late afternoon light, is painterly: the orange of the rocks, the white of the sand and the blue-green of the water create a palette that photographers travel from the other side of the world for.
Binalong Bay, at the northern end, is a small town with a few accommodation options and an excellent little café. From here you can walk south along the beach, swimming at the cleaner, less-visited bays between the boulder outcrops. The Bay of Fires Walk (a guided four-day lodge-to-lodge walk operated by Freycinet Experience Walk) is one of the great Australian walking experiences — sleeping in remote eco-lodges, eating exceptional food, and walking through the extraordinary landscape with a knowledgeable guide. But even a self-drive day trip to Binalong Bay delivers some of the most beautiful coastal scenery in Australia.
🌊 3. Friendly Beaches, Freycinet National Park
The Friendly Beaches sit on the other side of the Freycinet Peninsula from Wineglass Bay, facing the open Tasman Sea rather than the sheltered bay. The result is a very different character: wilder, longer, with waves that make surfing and body surfing possible, and a sense of exposure to the ocean that the sheltered Wineglass Bay doesn’t have. The beaches stretch for several kilometres of unbroken white sand, and on a weekday in the shoulder season you can walk for an hour without seeing another person.
The access road through the Freycinet National Park passes through beautiful coastal heath before opening onto this extraordinary stretch of coast. The car park is a short walk from the main beach. Wildlife here is excellent — sea eagles (one of Australia’s most impressive birds) patrol the shoreline, and large brown southern elephant seals occasionally haul out on the sand in winter. Swimming is possible in the calmer sections, though always check for rips before entering the water on this exposed ocean coast.
🌅 4. Bicheno Blowhole Beach and surrounds
Bicheno on Tasmania’s east coast is one of the most pleasant seaside towns in the state, and the beaches around it are excellent. The town’s most famous attraction — the penguin tour at dusk, when little penguins waddle up from the sea to their burrows — is not technically a beach experience, but it happens on the beach and is wonderful. The Bicheno Blowhole, accessed by a short coastal walk, sends spray up to ten metres in the air in the right conditions.
Waubs Beach in the town itself is calm, sheltered, and good for swimming. Diamond Island, accessible by a sandbar at low tide, has beautiful beaches on its far side with excellent snorkelling around the rocks. The twenty-kilometre stretch of coast from Bicheno north toward Scamander is one of the most scenic coastal drives in Tasmania, with beach after beach of white sand and turquoise water accessible via short tracks from the highway.
🌿 5. Fortescue Bay, Tasman Peninsula
Fortescue Bay is one of the most beautiful camping beaches in Tasmania: a wide, sheltered bay of white sand surrounded by towering eucalypt forest in the Tasman National Park, with the dramatic coastal cliffs of the Tasman Peninsula visible to the south. The campsite here is excellent — flat, well-maintained, with the forest behind and the bay in front — and the walking tracks from Fortescue are some of the best on the peninsula.
For more inspiration, check out Best Hidden Beaches Australia.
The Tasman Coastal Trail passes through Fortescue Bay, connecting it to the rest of the Tasman Peninsula’s dramatic coastal scenery. The day walk north to Cape Hauy — with its extraordinary dolerite columns rising from the sea — is one of the best short walks in Tasmania. The bay itself is good for kayaking, and on calm days you can paddle to the sea caves in the cliffs at the southern end. It’s about an hour’s drive from Port Arthur, and often combined with a visit to the historic convict settlement.
🏖️ 6. Ocean Beach, Strahan — the wildest beach in Tasmania
Ocean Beach on Tasmania’s wild west coast is a 35-kilometre stretch of sand facing the Southern Ocean with nothing between it and Antarctica. The sea here is almost never calm — the “Roaring Forties” push swell after swell onto this coast year-round, and the beach is not suitable for swimming. But as a spectacle of pure natural power, it is extraordinary. Standing on Ocean Beach in a westerly wind, watching the waves build from swells that have been running since the South Atlantic, you understand something fundamental about the planet.
The beach is accessed from Strahan, the only sizeable town on Tasmania’s west coast and the gateway to the Gordon River and the Southwest wilderness. Sunset over Ocean Beach is spectacular: the sun drops into the Southern Ocean horizon, turning the waves gold, and the whole enormous beach glows. This is not a beach for swimming or sunbathing — it’s a beach for standing and watching and feeling very small.
👉 Book a Tasmania beach and wilderness tour on GetYourGuide →
🦭 7. Ralphs Bay — seals and shorebirds near Hobart
Ralphs Bay Conservation Area, about 30 minutes from central Hobart in the Clarence municipality, is one of the best easily accessible beach-and-wildlife experiences near the Tasmanian capital. The bay is shallow and calm, backed by seagrass meadows that support enormous numbers of shorebirds — migratory waders from Siberia and Alaska arrive here each summer — and the beaches themselves are quiet and beautiful for walking.
Australian fur seals haul out on the rocky outcrops at the southern end of the bay. These large, confident animals are surprisingly approachable — they seem almost entirely unperturbed by human presence, as long as you keep a respectful distance. Birdwatching is excellent: spoonbills, royal spoonbills, stints, sandpipers and numerous other wader species congregate here in impressive numbers during migration season (October to April).
🌊 8. Boat Harbour Beach — northwest Tasmania’s gem
Boat Harbour Beach on Tasmania’s northwest coast is one of those places that utterly surprises you the first time you round the corner and see it. The colour of the water here — deep turquoise over white sand, in a sheltered cove ringed by low headlands — is almost Caribbean in its intensity, though the temperature will quickly remind you that you’re not in the tropics. The beach is protected from the prevailing swells by the headlands and is generally calm enough for swimming, which is unusual on the exposed northwest coast.
The beach is surrounded by a small holiday community and has a good café and some holiday rental accommodation. It’s often combined with a drive along the northwest coast to Stanley — a remarkable town built beneath “The Nut,” a volcanic plug that rises dramatically from the coastal plain and rewards the cable car ride to its flat top with extraordinary views.
🌺 9. Little Beach, Maria Island
Maria Island, reached by a short ferry from Triabunna on the east coast, is one of Tasmania’s most beautiful and least-visited national parks. The island is entirely car-free — you walk or cycle everywhere — and the beaches here have a remoteness and beauty that’s hard to match. Little Beach, on the eastern side of the island, is a gem: a small crescent of white sand in a sheltered bay, with clear water and excellent snorkelling around the rocks at each end.
The island’s wildlife is extraordinary: wombats have no natural predators here and roam everywhere with complete confidence, often within touching distance of visitors. Cape Barren geese (rare elsewhere) are common. And the historic buildings of Darlington — a former convict probation station and World Heritage listed site — make Maria Island one of the most culturally and naturally rich places in Tasmania. Stay overnight in the old Penitentiary building (now a basic hostel) to experience the island after the day trippers have left.
🌅 10. Dennes Point Beach, Bruny Island
Bruny Island, accessible by a short car ferry from Kettering south of Hobart, is a destination in its own right and has some of the best beaches in southern Tasmania. Dennes Point, at the northern tip of North Bruny, is a calm, sheltered beach popular with local families and excellent for children. The Adventure Bay beach on South Bruny is longer and more exposed, with excellent surf on the right swell.
But the real reason to come to Bruny Island is the Bruny Island Cruises experience: a three-hour high-speed boat tour around the dramatic southern cliffs of South Bruny, passing sea caves, fur seal colonies, sea birds in the thousands, and the extraordinary dolerite columns of Fluted Cape. The combination of beach time, local food (the oysters, cheese and whisky from Bruny Island producers are some of the best in Australia) and this extraordinary coastal boat tour makes Bruny Island one of the best full days out from Hobart. Drive in Australia’s most scenic state.
👉 Book a Bruny Island day tour from Hobart on GetYourGuide →
🗺️ Tips for visiting Tasmania’s beaches
The best time to visit Tasmania’s beaches is summer (December to February), when the days are long, the weather is at its most reliable, and the water reaches its peak temperature of around 16°C. December is often the best month — before the main school holiday crowds arrive in January. Spring (October–November) is also excellent: the coastal heath is in flower, the bird migration is at its peak, and the parks are quiet.
A few practical tips: the Freycinet National Park and many other Tasmanian national parks require a park pass — purchase online before you visit through the Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania website. Most Tasmanian beach car parks are free, though peak season at Wineglass Bay can create significant queuing — arrive before 8am or after 4pm to avoid the worst. Take sun protection seriously even in cooler weather: Tasmania’s clean air and the strong southern UV can burn you quickly. And always check tide times before beach walks that involve headland crossings — several Tasmanian beaches are only accessible at lower tides.
Looking for more beaches and water experiences in Australia, read our guides to the best beaches near Cairns, the best beaches in Queensland, best restaurants in Hobart, best day trips from Hobart, how many days in Tasmania, and Sydney to Hobart yacht race start.
