Long Beach Reserve

The undercover barbecue pavilion next to the play area can be booked. Bookings for this site can be made for a minimum two hour booking period. *Bookings are currently available until to 28 February 2025. The booking does not include the nearby grassed area. Please also note that alcohol is not permitted in the fenced area.

Booking enquiries can be made using our online form, by phoning 03 6238 2711, or in person at the Hobart Council Centre, 16 Elizabeth Street, Hobart (corner of Davey and Elizabeth Streets).

For details on the cost of booking the BBQ site, please refer to our fees and charges booklet.

*Bookings for the Long Beach Rotunda BBQ are being trialled until end of February 2025.

Booking enquiry

Terms and conditions

You must agree to and follow the terms and conditions when hiring a BBQ facility.

BBQ Bookings - Terms and Conditions of Hire(PDF, 32KB)

Dogs are permitted in this park. There are on and off lead areas which are signposted. For more information please see the Dog Management Policy page.

In 1836 an inquisitive and imaginative young naturalist came ashore from the HMS Beagle and took a walk along the foreshore near here.

He made notes on the Geology and botany and admired Sandy Bay's neat farms, with their tidy crops of corn and potatoes, on the lower slopes near the coast.

It took him two attempts, but he climbed kunanyi/Mt Wellington and 'enjoyed a most extensive view'.

Charles Darwin was close to the end of a five-year voyage of scientific observation and he had the beginnings of the world's biggest idea in his head.

After spending 10 days in and around Hobart, he sailed home to England to develop his theory of natural selection and eventually publish the monumental work On the Origin of the Species, which outlined the theory of natural selection that became known as 'evolution' - although Darwin did not use the word.

The searchlights at Alexandra Battery were an essential part of the Derwent Defence Network from 1890 until the Second World War.

Initially there was only one searchlight on Blinking Billy Point. This was designed to intercept the beam from the searchlight at the Queen's Battery so that the river could be lit up during a night attack.

The light from each lamp was enhanced by projectors that incorporated mirrors.

The engine that ran the searchlight was housed in a loopholed casement on Sandy Bay Road. In 1913 a second searchlight was installed on Blinking Billy Point - the position on the Queen's Battery was now redundant. After 1909 the searchlights on Alexandra Battery acted as the 'eyes' of the artillery based at Fort Nelson, built in that year.

With Federation in 1901 responsibility for defence had passed to the Federal Government, and the Volunteers were replaced by a reserve force. The men of the 36th Fortress Company Engineers were responsible for the searchlights.

On the night war was declared in 1939, 80 men of that Company were called from their beds to man the searchlights in case of invasion. The men spent 12 months in barracks on the hill behind the Battery before being posted elsewhere. Some were transferred to Fort Direction at South Arm, built during the Second World War. Others went overseas to fight, some did not return.

"Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!"
- From A Smuggler's Song, by Rudyard Kipling.

In the early days of the colony, smuggling was good business. Barrels of wine and spirits and wooden kegs of tobacco were off-loaded from vessels in the harbour and brought ashore under cover of darkness. Free from duties, the contraband was sold on the cheap to local publicans, without much interference from the customs men, some of whom lived in Sandy Bay and drank in the bar of the Traveller's Rest while the sly grog was being brought in through the back door.

The smuggling trade left its mark on the local landscape - Porter Hill was named for the barrels of porter, a style of dark beer, that were hidden in the bush there.

In conversation with the chief Woorrady.

Said he saw the first ships come to Van Diemen's Land when they settled at Hobart Town, called Niberlooner...

.. when they saw the first ships coming at sea they were frightened and said it was Wrageowrapper (the Devil), that when the first pepole settled they cut down the trees, built houses, dug the ground and planted that by and by more ships came, then at last plenty of ships that the natives went to the mountins, went and looked at what he white people did, went and told other natives and they came and looked too.

... that the Pydare natives speared some white men who landed in a boat, one man in the thigh that white men went after the natives, the natives see them come but did not run away, saw their by and by white men shoot two blacks dead when they all become frightened and run away.

George Augustus Robinson,
11 July 1831. Van Diemen's Land.

Near this place around 26 million years ago, a sluggish river of ash and a gush of molten rock flowed down the hillside to the south and into the valley of the ancestral River Derwent.

In those days, the sea level was much lower than it is now and the river meandered across a broad, flat plain. At each bend, it deposited its sediment of silt and sand. When the volcanic activity began, a layer of rubbly as rolled over the sand. Later, the liquid rock flowed down, cooking the top layer, then hardening into the dark-grey basalt that forms the shoreline around Blinking Billy Point.

You can see all this quite clearly today - take a stroll around the point and walk along the cobbled beach to the cave.

The stories of the Earth are as clear as they were when Charles Darwin wandered along the same coastline in 1836 and jotted notes about the same rocks.

Spotted handfish only live in the sheltered bays of the lower Derwent. These remarkable fish get about by walking along he sandy sea-bed n their fins. Spotted handfish are an endangered species - their limited habitat is threatened by the introduced Northern Pacific sea star and by coastal development, which increases silt run-off.

Another endangered species that uses this area is the swift parrot, which needs mature blue gums found here for food and nesting hollows.