Recently I have been looking for new places to climb close to Hobart. I had a look at the map of the coastline around Clifton and noticed that there is actually a strip of Crown Land (and therefore access) all along the coast. Given that there hasn't been any access (or new routes) since about 1991, I was curious:
1. Can you get to the cliffs without crossing private land?
2. Is there any nice wave washed rock like Mt Brown?
3. Would it be worthwhile resurrecting access?
Today I went for a recce with Dave. Answers below - so you don't have to bother!
Yes. There is strip of crown land between 20-40m wide all the way along the coast, and you can walk to all the cliffs listed in the guide by keeping the seaward side of all the fences. The hard bit is the choss cliff at the start. We started trying at sea level but there is a bit towards the end of the choss cliffs where it gets harder. So we went along the top, which is a steep in places bashing though she oaks, but quite doable without going into private land. From the looks of it it looks like the fences have been moved back up the hill a bit compared to the nineties - there are a bunch of remenants of old rusted fences that go right to the cliff edge.
From the end of the choss cliff is relatively easy to follow the coast around to the cliffs. Unfortunately the walking is harder and slower on the seaward side of the fences - on the way back we walked just inside the paddocks which was much faster. It takes between 40-60 minutes to get to the cliffs going along the coast. If going again I would put more effort into the sea level traverse and maybe add some fixed lines, as around the top was a bit shitty.
Hmm, not anywhere near as good. The best bits of rock were the several large boulders below the Tea Leaves cliff, but its too far to go for bouldering. There was an interesting bulge and a couple of aretes at the Henna cliff. The main cliff looked pretty ordinary. Bits of Tea Leaves are ok, but not awesome.
Probably not unfortunately. Can't see anyone bothering with the walk, and I dont think there is enough potential for new stuff to get anybody excited.