Saturday, May 2, called for rain the whole day. We took our time in the morning getting ready and then headed for Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. The park is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, which is one of the largest conservation areas in Australia, covering almost 20% of Tasmania. We had reservations at the Wilderness Lodge there, so we had no choice but to go. We weren't going to let a little rain stop us anyhow!
On the drive, we stopped at Guide Falls. It was sort of raining, but we decided to check it out anyhow. Once we saw the falls from the top we decided to take the steps down to check it out. What a fun surprise - this was a great waterfall that we could have easily passed by during our drive.
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| Top view of Guide Falls, May 2, 2015 |
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| Kids at Guide Falls |
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| Guide Falls, Tasmania |
Unfortunately, it rained almost the whole hour and a half drive to Cradle Mountain. Once we arrived, we checked into our cottage. Barry and Lydia stayed behind at the cottage while Hannah, Kiernan and I went to the visitor centre to eat lunch and figure out what to do during our stay. We went back to the cottage, picked up Barry and Lydia and drove into the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. We purchased a 24-hour pass. I was impressed with the park system compared to other national parks I've been to. Basically, we approached the park gate with our paper park pass on the dash. If the car limit inside the park hasn't been met then the gate opens, otherwise you have to take a free shuttle into the park. Since we were there on a rainy day and in the "off-season" it was no issue and we were able to get right in. The road is basically one car width and has pull-outs if you meet an on-coming car. Still, it was a much better system than others I've seen!
We stopped at the Interpretive Centre and talked to a nice ranger who'd lived in the area almost 40 years. She told us about the different types of animals in Tasmania and the different plants in the park. There was a short rainforest walk (20 minutes) to Pencil Pine Falls. It was raining pretty hard during the walk, but it was still neat to see the falls. Barry and I were impressed by the trails and boardwalks. They are well-maintained and there are plenty of placards with information about what a person is looking at on the walk.
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| Rain can't stop us!! |
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| Pencil Pine Falls |
Next we drove out to Cradle Mountain. This place just feels majestic. It sure would have been fun to do the summit hike over a few days, but with an almost 3 year old that really is out of the question. Maybe another time!
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| View from drive out to Cradle Mountain |
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| Cradle Mountain, May 2, 2015 |
After we drove back from the park, we played board games and watched a movie - all borrowed from the lodge. We had a really nice meal at the lodge restaurant - Hellyers Restaurant. There were plenty of books for children to read while we waited for our food. GENIUS IDEA!! Here's an interesting fact found in one of the books:
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| How the word "kangaroo" came about?! |
When we woke up Sunday morning it wasn't raining, so we decided to go try to hike some short trails before we needed to leave for the airport. There were two Tasmanian pademelons outside our cottage door as we were leaving.
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| Tasmanian pademelons outside our cottage |
Our first stop was the Enchanted Walk. This was about a 20-30 minute walk and was a hike that was supposed to be geared towards families with children. It was misting the whole time and had the feel of a movie set (think Princess Bride forest, or Lord of the Rings elves). It was just unreal. We had never seen anything like this place! We drove to Cradle Mountain area again in hopes of catching some better views of the mountain than we had the previous day. Unfortunately it was still wet and clouds were covering the peak of the mountain.
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| Enchanted Walk, May 3, 2015 |
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| Amazed by the super calm wallaby |
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| Beginning of our walk (notice all the green...than look at next pic) |
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| Look at the detail! Amazing! |
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| Not snow-it's white granite! |
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They had a couple tunnels with images of the flora and fauna of the area
for kids to go through on the walk-cool idea! |
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| Amazing flora! |
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| Look at those rocks that are covered with green-looks like carpet. |
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| More carpet |
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Wombat burrows - these burrows can be hundreds of years old - reused
by generations of wombats. We thought they looked like hobbit holes. |
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| Falls at the beginning/end of Enchanted Walk |
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| Dove Lake view |
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| Checking out Dove Lake near Cradle Mountain |
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| Toddler view |
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| Cheeky girl |
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| Mom-can we make funny faces? |
This park was just gorgeous. It certainly would have been neat to see the sights on a clear sunny day, but hey, you can't win them all!
Kiernan wrote journal entries for the last two days we were in Tasmania as well.
May 2, 2015: We drove to Cradle Mountain. There's a hotel there. We saw two wallabies. We went on a mountain trail.
May 3, 2015: We're on the same mountain today. This morning we left our hotel. We saw 5 wallabies - 2 near our hotel, 1 on the start of a hike, another one in the middle of the hike and one more at the end of a bridge. The hike was called Enchanted Walk.
On the way to Launceston to catch our 2:55pm flight back to Melbourne, we stopped at Villarett Gardens in the countryside. This place was beautiful and the food was good too!
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| View on drive to the airport (we finally had sunny weather again!) |
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| Enjoying the Villarett Gardens |
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| Villarett Gardens view |
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| Our view during lunch, Villarett Gardens |
What a great trip! Barry and I thought we could have been there for 2-3 weeks and been happy. In fact, we loved it so much we said we could live there. Tasmania definitely has a different feel than the other parts of Australia we've been. It's a gorgeous place!
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| Hello again Melbourne |
Now we catch up on laundry, get a little school squeezed in, and prepare for our next trip!
Sarah
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