Cradle Mountain National Park

We drove south through increasingly hilly and tree-covered country and entered the Cradle Mountain Park just before dark. In order to get an early start at the mountain trails, we found a spot on a quiet side road just about 10 miles out. The night was cold, the morning was foggy.

Beautiful Dove Lake lays just north of Cradle Mountain. This is one end of the most famous backcountry treks in Australia, through the wilderness about 50 miles. We only had time to sample the park, so decided to hike the trail around Dove Lake. Harold spotted a platypus swimming, with a nose barely above the surface.

Of course, the mountain hike above was calling, so I decided that a side trip to the summit of Cradle would be just right. Sure, I promised to be careful....

The trail around the lake is in wonderful strange woods, and is well-constructed.

Some nice Japanese guys took our photo on the boardwalk trail, with the mountain just behind us.

Sue continued on the trail around the lake (Honeymoon Island in the foreground), and she then ascended to a great lookout spot at the top of the rocky hills on the left of this pic.

I took a connection trail to the summit route and took this shot of the whole lake below.

Here is the last slope to the summit rocks. The obvious route up the middle delivered a fellow hiker and I to the top of the wrong summit! By checking the water bottle level, it seemed we needed to make our way about a quarter mile further west. The great dolorite boulders made a great interesting scramble.

My new climbing buddy Don, from Holland, and I traded hero shots at the highest boulder.

This plaque included sighting lines to all the visible high spots in the distance. Obviously, the sign was installed before Australia converted to the metric system.

The view back to the false summit we had to cross from. Really great stuff.

I could not resist this shot.

On the way down, another hiker took this one for me. It has warmed up pretty good by now.

The view from Madeline's Lookout, the spot Sue hiked to while I was wandering in the dolerite.

We thought this pair of discarded hiking boots left at the park headquarters would tell quite a story, if they were able. Someone apparently had a tough time on the trip through the mountains....

That my friends is the dumb end of a wombat. They are known also as "furry boulders". Quite solid and tough, it is said that if you hit one on the highway, it will harm the wombat but will kill your car. This guy crossed the road as we walked just before dusk. He is about 3 feet long, probably weighs 100 lbs. I found it tough to get a good picture of one; it's dusky when they are out and they don't like the process involved.

Another busy little echidna (e-kid-na). They are often on the slopes along the road, and are in danger, but we never did see the remains of one that had been hit.

This is a young Bennetts wallabie, flicking its ears at the flies.

At the end of the hiking day, we found ourselves too low on gas to make it out of the park and down the highway to the next town. Also, the gas station at the park closed at 5 PM sharp, which we learned at about 5:08 PM. So, no more miles that day. No problem, we are self-contained, we parked nearby and got tickets for the evening "spot-lighting" tour of the park's night time animals. It was about 2 hours long, and we saw and learned a lot about wallabies (there are no kangaroos on Tassie), wombats, brush-tail and ring-tail possums, echidnas, and we even saw 3 tasmanian devils! It was a great way to spend the evening.

During our travels, we did see hundreds of kangaroo and wallabie carcasses (at least), and two dead wombats, many dead possums, several fatally damaged snakes and blue-tongued lizards.

Note: We are presently in Sydney, near Bondi Beach (wow!) ready to return our van in the morning and get to the airport. I'm using the good internet access to post some more pics before we fly.