Thursday, 12 April 2018                                   Strahan  -  Cradle Mountain  -  Moina

Oh, the mist-covered peaks of Cradle Mountain! Sadly, she remained swathed in mystery (and cloud) today and we did not see her at all ☹ Alas, our lucky streak with the Tasmanian weather has come to an end quite decisively!

We were up bright and early this morning in our little unit in Strahan – there had been some periods of heavy rain during the night which were quite loud on our roof, so we were woken a few times. But it was just heavily overcast when we got up, had our breakfast and packed up again. We could hear peeping noises from the steam train across the road, so I popped over to see it as they hooked it up ready for today’s full day trip to Queenstown. We were finally ready to leave by about 8.30 and headed off. There were periods of pouring rain and heavy cloud as we wound our way through the mountains to Zeehan. Here we stopped for a toilet break, then wandered across the road to look at the old steam trains outside the museum there, and to get a hot coffee/cuppa before heading on. You can see that it was a grand town during its glory days, as the town centre has some beautiful old buildings, but there are heaps and heaps of empty houses and shops in town. According to our friendly coffee-seller, Zeehan is also a victim of the ‘fly in, fly out’ curse.

Steam train about to leave

 Zeehan town centre and museum

 

We continued on our way through the mountains winding our way ever higher and higher, until we finally reached the Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre by a bit after 11. It was pouring with rain and FREEZING cold by this stage! We fought our way inside and considered our options. Because of road works at present, they are severely limiting car access to the park, so we had to take the shuttle bus which runs every 10 or 15 minutes. We paid to upgrade our National Parks pass of the other day to a 2-month pass – really only the same price as paying for another 24 hour pass, but it gives us Saturday as well if we want to go into a National Park on our last day. This also gave us access to the shuttle bus. So we had lunch at the café there, then rugged ourselves up and jumped on the next shuttle bus to go to Dove Lake.

 Lex on Glacier Rock. Somewhere behind him in all that cloud is Cradle Mountain. Allegedly...

 

 

 Cold! So cold and wet!

 Button Grass is the reason that the water on this coast is so brown - tannin from it leeches into the waterways.

Glacier Rock from the start of the walk

The bus took us about 20 minutes to get to the lake – unfortunately we arrived to find it was blowing a gale and raining. NOT pleasant walking weather! Anyway, we battled our way around the lake to Glacier Rock, a huge rocky outcrop about a ten-minute walk around the lake. Cold, freezing rain; howling winds….call me a sook, but that’s not my thing! I was bitterly regretting the fact that I seemed to have left my gloves behind (as is usual on this sort of holiday, you search your bag for five minutes and decide that you must have put them in another bag….then once you get home, there they are at the top of your bag, giggling at you!) Anyway, I wasn’t exactly cold, with five layers on, but it certainly was not pleasant.

After that walk, we headed back to the shelter to wait for the shuttle bus again, and were lucky enough to just fit onto it when it arrived some fifteen minutes later. By this stage, we were able to head on to Moina, about 20 minutes away, and book into our lovely chalet. It is quite big and roomy and has a lovely heater.

We settled ourselves in and unpacked the car before having a cuppa and enjoying the view from our verandah. A lovely little robin was flitting around, but I had very little luck in capturing a photo. To our amazement, the sky then cleared – there was actually blue sky above and the sun was shining!

 View from our veranda - below: the cute little robin just about to fly away!

We decided to go and see what there is of Moina, the little place where we are staying. It appears to consist of our accommodation and an inn, so it didn’t take long! Rather than go anywhere else, we figured that we might as well go back to Cradle Mountain and see if we could actually get to view the mountain, so headed back there.

Predictably, by the time we were half way there, it had clouded over again. But we decided to go to a boardwalk on the map, which seemed to be a place we could drive to and not have to worry with the shuttle bus. Unfortunately, this all came unstuck when we came to boom gates just outside the Ranger Station which blocked our way (bloody roadwork). So, we parked at the Ranger’s Station and went off on the ‘Enchanted Walk’, a really lovely 20-minute walk on good boardwalk and paths all the way through some fascinating rainforest. The variety of mosses and lichens that can grow on trees and everything is just amazing. It was a really incredible landscape.

 Enchanted forest. At least it wasn't raining!

Moss and lichen galore

 

After that, we were going to go and check out the ‘interpretive centre’ at the Rangers’ Station, but they closed (4pm) just as we rolled up. So we headed out along a boardwalk to see if we could catch a glimpse of Cradle Mountain (highly unlikely as the cloud was rolling lower by this stage!). We walked a bit of a way along the path when it began to blow and spit rain, so I bailed! Lex wanted to go on, so I headed back to the car and got there just as the rain began to pour down again. I sheltered quite happily there until he finally turned up just before 5; cold, damp but happy because he’d finally seen a wombat!

 I saw this lovely mother and baby

Lex striding off to adventure

It's a wombat!

We were really glad to get back to our little chalet, put the heater on, and contemplate tea. There’s a lovely little inn at the bottom of our hill, so we got changed and headed down the hill while it was still mostly light. We had a lovely meal there of a pumpkin and fetta pizza and salad, and are now back in the warmth of our cabin, watching the news and finishing off our bottle of ‘Iron Bay’ Pinot Grigio (won’t fit in the ports to go home!)

We are nearly out of holidays – today is our second last full day in Tassie. Sad! We are off to Stanley tomorrow, so hoping and praying for some nice fine weather.