Goats to Clifton

The Goats Beach to Clifton Beach connects two reasonably popular surf beaches in the Hobart region. The traverse is a high quality adventure, passing two climbing areas that were quite popular before land access issues reduced their convenience ("The Rookeries" and cliffs in the Clifton area). There is a good amount of genuine traversing above water on high quality rock and in a generally characterful environment. The area is subject to big swells, but will also experience some days of relative calm. We negotiated several quite tricky short swims due to the complicated behaviour of swells in the rocky zawns.

After the initial chossy mudtsone bluff between the main Goats beach and the smaller secluded beach ("Lumpies"), the rock type changes to dolerite, though it is in sheets rather than columnar form. Once the first cliffs are reached (around 10 minutes or so from Lumpies beach), there is a lot of good traversing connected by a few short swims and some easy ramps.

Eventually, an interesting medium-sized beach is reached: an unusual feature is that around half way along there is an imposing overhanging cliff jutting from the hill into the beach (the rock is not very good quality from a climbing perspective). From here the coast becomes more jagged, with very convoluted zawns often blocked by small islands, creating an almost sinister feel. While the upper sections of the cliffs in this area can be a very loose, at sea level the rock quality is still good.

The final sections of the traverse (heading towards Clifton Beach) involve only rock hopping, but there is probably not much more of this than about 15 to 20 minutes or so (out of very roughly around 2 to 3 hours).