Cockle Creek

Cockle Creek is the southern most point of Australia that is accessible by road. This is the furthest south you can access by road in Australia, and it ends just past the sign, literally at the edge of the world. To reach the true southern most point, there are walking tracks through the Southwest National Park.


The drive from Ida Bay is gravel at best and dirt at other times. At least half of the distance is pretty rutted with pot holes and such you need to drive reasonably slow to avoid tyre damage or worst. Though it is very possible to take any type of RV vehicle through to the bottom, we are so glad we left our motorhome back in Ida Bay and just took the car down for a day trip. Still the 20 kms of rough track to Cockle Creek was rewarded by beautiful bays and coves with extraordinary aquamarine water and the gentle quiet lap of the sea on the rocks and shores.




Cockle Creek has beautiful beaches and bays and pristine cold waters though we did see some brave souls in the waters and great fishing. We are so glad we had a lovely sunny day as it was mighty cool at the tip and if you were not protected from the winds you would believe it to be much colder than it really was, even though it was late January and thus middle of Summer it was still mighty cold. It is not hard to remember that the Antarctica is not very far away. There are a few camping grounds in the area, mostly within the National Park but a few are free camping and I think I saw one commercial park.


Being adjacent to the national park if not already within at NP, there’s plenty of wildlife including Tasmanian Devils, wallabies, spotted quolls, pademelons (Rufous Wallabies) to name the most prevalent ones.



We went straight to the tip with its very short walk to the life size sculpture of a 3 month old whale to commemorate the whaling industry that founded Tasmania's industry. There was a whaling station employing two hundred people in the immediate vicinity of the beach, butchering whales and even attracting sharks that fed on the discarded 'offal' that couldn't be converted into money.


On our way back we stopped at one of the campgrounds for a picnic lunch. There is a huge flywheel and some other equipment where we had our lunch. There is an information board giving information of a unique family which included 2 teenage girls who worked alongside their father felling giant trees and transporting them back in the ‘good old days'. It was here that I dipped my toes in the Great Southern Ocean. Brrr it was cold. I keep saying to anyone who will listen, that "I think Tassie forgot to have a summer this year!"

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