Wineglass Bay is one of Tasmania's most beautiful beaches. Tasmania has beautiful fresh food. Greg Clarke soldiers into a mix of the two.

Some of us at lunch are ready to hoist the white flag, but waves of extraordinary food keep coming. We are surrounded … by food and wine and beach. There aren't any options. No good crying "I'm stuffed". We must fight on. Pass the sautéed scallops...

There are no roads where we've stopped for a five-course lunch and the nearest permanent dwelling is about three hours walk away. A stretch of sand and stand of she-oaks away from our dining table is Promise Bay. Despite the isolation, our table is set with cloth napkins and sparkling wine glasses.

Superbly fresh ingredients
Course one was abalone and oysters. Course two included meaty pieces of rock lobster. Number three: quail, King Island beef and baby potatoes. A Kelvedon pinot noir complements the supple steaks. The chef has a brilliantly simple battle plan and serves up uncomplicated dishes which do justice to superbly fresh ingredients. Clearly he has a battalion of provedores supporting him.

Plates four and five are almost unnecessary — the flow of food could just about rival one of those banquets of extraordinary masticator, Henry VIII. The rotund king would be chuffed as we valiantly soldier through cheese and the white chocolate brownie with raspberries.

Walking it off
After lunch the ideal thing to do would be to take the six-kilometre walk back along the not-so-well-trodden path we strode to get to this dinner table. But nobody has much truck with that. It took us (three walkers and a guide) about three hours to trek to this deserted beach via Tasmania's iconic Wineglass Bay. It'll surely take double that to waddle back to the hotel.

Thankfully there is a boat to ferry us around the Freycinet Peninsula and back to Great Oyster Bay. Fellow banqueteers are excited about the good chance of spotting whales. I'm not so sure. I'm not keen on going anywhere on water. I've told the guide I'm a competent swimmer but that was before consuming most of the fresh food harvested in Tassie during the week of November 19.

Hazard-ous waters
And this peninsula has a history of unscheduled swims. Captain Albert Black Hazard lost his ship Promise on what is known as Promise Island. Local lore suggests Hazard was a Black American sealing captain who was rescued by Silos Cole after swimming to a part of the Freycinet Peninsula. Hazard not only saved all those marooned on the island but gave his name to the handsome hulk which helps keep Wineglass Bay and the rest of the peninsula safe from modern marauders like cars and tarmac roads.

The Hazards is a granite range that rises sharply from the coast. Four hundred million years ago the Hazards (as cooling magma) were in Earth's womb. This range wasn't born in the dramatic style of a volcano. It was a reluctant baby and labour was protracted — there were 200 million years of pushing. All the while the rock rose and cooled and was fractured by earth's gyrations. The locals reckon the Hazards are prone to turning pink. It's either something to do with the dramatic birth or the (mineral) feldspar in the rock.

Seasoned with wildlife
This walk began at Freycinet Lodge. Our guide Tara Larby met us at 8am, bundled us into a 4WD for the short drive to the start of a trail through the Hazards to Wineglass Bay. Bennett's wallabies scooted out of the way of the Toyota but one in the car park was in no hurry to go anywhere.

From the car park the trail snuck through gum trees and granite boulders. Sculpted rather than hacked, it rose sharply to a saddle. Endemic green rosellas and fan-tailed cuckoos twitched and put on a musical in the forest. The lookout is set in a saddle.

From the Wineglass Bay dress circle, the qualities of one of Tassie's best beaches spread out before you. There is no need for those naff little glasses they offer at the theatre because Wineglass sledgehammers its beauty: this beach is famed for its eponymous shape, but also for the fact that there is not a sniff of commercial whim about it. This beach doesn't look as though it has experienced much at all beyond freakish natural gifts.

Fortifying sweets
Some 200,000 people visit the Freycinet Peninsula each year. About 70 percent of them visit the Wineglass Bay lookout, just a 30-minute walk from the car park. Yet only a small percentage of those visitors get beyond the lookout to the beach itself. It's an easy walk down to the water (the hard part is going back up, but we won't be visiting that option).

Coffee and muffins on the sand fortified us for the two-hour stroll from Wineglass to the wine glasses. We crossed an isthmus to an even less visited beach, and then languidly walked along it to lunch.

Fabulously, we have to get wet to board the boat for the trip back to Coles Bay. We board the same boat our chef arrived on. But there is no jetty and we wade through the shallows to the twin-hulled speedster.

We are to cruise around a part of the peninsula, through the Schouten Passage, on our return to the lodge. At certain times of the year whales and dolphins are not uncommon in these waters. Thankfully the locals long ago signed a peace treaty with them.