Happy Christmas y’all! It definitely does not feel like Christmas Eve here, despite the Lodge playing Christmas songs all day...Oh, and I apologise for the crappy formatting of my previous posts – turns out the e-mail blogging is not that bothered about formatting.
Today has been another excellent day, complete with lots of walking (obviously) and pristine weather conditions. Whereas I was moaning that I was too cold, today I will be whinging that I was too hot. This was just my luck seeing as I packed extra layers and my hat this time so I was prepared for the cold, but without the biting wind, it was a fine fine day.
Following breakfast (they had some proper lush muffins today – YUMMY), I set back off to Cradle Mountain National Park, where I went yesterday if you do not recall. On the way I see lots of road kill; I forgot to mention this on my day one post. Tasmania has lots of road kill, perhaps even more than England....but there is a big difference. Whereas England perhaps has the odd rabbit and bird, here they have possums, wombats, and many wallabies. This is why I have been driving rather slowly, which may explain why I get overtaken rather a lot. Better to be safe than sorry I say.
I reached my destination once more, but after my hardcore day of hiking yesterday, I thought I would take it a bit easier today (saying that, I didn’t ache too much at all). I started the day with a very pleasant 3.5km walk which is apparently one of Tasmanias top 100 short walks. It was very lovely, passing through forest and meadows, with a nice river cutting through the area with the odd waterfall. During this walk a wallaby scared me half to death*; there I was, minding my own business, when all of a sudden this wallaby hopped pretty close to me, which obviously made me jump, and then it hopped off some more. I sat watching this wallaby for 5 minutes or so, during which time a baby wallaby (are they called joeys too?) came out to join its mother. They were quite far away, but I thought I would change the lens on my camera to take a photo. You know what’s coming next...as soon as I got the lens on, they bloody hopped away! I also saw a wombat (the second of my trip) in very close proximity; it was very nervous and didn’t want to pose for a nice photo either L
That walk done, I continued the day by walking to the origin of my next walk (I hope that makes sense). This was the “Cradle Valley Boardwalk”, which I did a bit of yesterday – it was the highlight of my day if that helps jog your memory. So I retraced my steps from 24 hours previously, but continued for an additional 2.1km (making it 5.5km in total). In the proper sunshine, the walk was even nicer – I just love the diversity of the ecosystems you find, the wildlife present, and generally just the feel and look of the place; simply magnificent. Having reached the end of this walk, and the starting point of the next, I thought I would stop for a bite to eat. Here I was harassed by a crow (I think) that seriously wanted to eat me or something. On two occasions it flew right at me, scaring me half to death – I’m sure there must be some omen about that.
Following this near-death experience of nearly being eaten by a crow, I thought I should really set off. This walk starts with the “Overland Track”, which some of you may heard of. It’s a 60km walk starting from Cradle Mountain, and ending in Lake St Clair (where I stopped on my way here) – I will complete this walk one day. After following the Overland track up through Crater Falls, I reached Crater Lake, a beautiful glacial lake. Now my walk could have finished there, but again I decided to extend the walk slightly. I continued climbing to reach Marions Lookout (1223m asl), which afforded fantastic views over Dove Lake and the cloud-free Cradle Mountain itself (a rarity I am told). The walk was quite hard as it was pretty steep, but the views at the end made it very worthwhile. With the steep climb up, came the even steeper descent, providing views of Lake Lilla, to reach the Dove Lake path I walked yesterday, thus completing the ~7km walk or so . As the weather was much better, I thought it would be wise to go and re-take a few pictures...
And that was day four. I should mention that my sun/windburn is sooooo bad. My face is ridiculously red – I left my aftersun in Sydney and there is none for sale here. Whoops. Tonight I shall be treating myself to another dinner here at the lodge – it’s expensive but definitely worth it.
Merry Christmas!
*speaking (or typing) of things that scared me to death – yesterday during my waterfall walk, I turned around after taking a picture of the waterfall, and actually screamed a little bit at a fern that was merrily growing behind me. I’m not exactly sure what I thought this fern was, but it scared me fo’sho! Another screaming story – there I was on day one, walking around Lake St Clair, came round a corner and an echidna was sat there – again I jumped and may have screamed a lil bit! I’m sure there will be many more things to scared me in the days to come.
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