6th Week - Thursday - Cradle Mountain

Slow pack up today.  We are heading to Cradle Mountain which is an hour away and we can't get on the site until 11:30 so no need to rush as there is nothing in between.  A lot of people choose to stay at Waratah and drive in and out each day as they think the site fee at Cradle Mountain is too high.  We prefer to save ourselves 2 hours of driving.  Drama free drive in, and set up in time for lunch.  The site is narrow but we have trees between us and the neighbours.   Seems very pleasant, not that we will be here much during the day.  After lunch we walked the 500 metres (from our van) down to the visitor centre and car park.  Included in your Parks Pass is a ticket for the shuttle bus.  They are trying to cut down the number of cars travelling through the park, especially during the busy season, so provide shuttle buses that run every 10 minutes to the 4 different points the walks start from all day long.  I have no idea why people still drove their cars around.  Anyway we jumped on the bus and travelled 20 minutes up to Dove Lake car park.  There are 3 or 4 walks starting from here.  We elected to do the Dove Lake circuit walk which is 6km and Cradle Mountain's most popular walk (according to the brochure).  The walk weaves through rainforest, past quartzite beaches, Glacier Rock and the historic boat shed while circumnavigating Dove Lake.   About 50% of the walk is extremely easy on a boardwalk with the rest being over rocky terrain and tree roots.  There are 3 up hill places with each one testing me out but I made it.  A beautiful area, the views were spectacular (even though it was cloudy and you couldn't see the mountain peaks).  Well worth the effort.  Jumped on the shuttle bus and went down 2 stops.  As we are driving along the bus driver slammed on his brakes and I was waiting for the bang which didn't come.  He had seen a wombat on the side of the road so was stopping for us to have a look.  Jumped off at our stop and did the Pencil Pine Falls and rainforest walk which is wheelchair friendly so easy peasy.  My kind of walk.  Strolled 300 metres to the start of the Enchanted Walk. This is a 1.1 km walk past a cascading river, through the rainforest and is said to be the home of quite a few wombats.  Another easy stroll along the boardwalk and as we rounded a corner there was a wombat sitting there.  Don't know who got the biggest fright me or the wombat.  He snorted at us and started to go into his burrow.  We had stopped walking so he turned around and looked at us looking at him.  When Ian went to get his camera the wombat snorted at us again and disappeared into his burrow.  We continued back to the bus stop and caught the shuttle bus back to the visitor centre before walking back to the van.  A very enjoyable day but boy are the legs aching now.

Dove Lake

Dove Lake boat shed