After maria island we stayed the night in Hobart and drive north towards cradle mountain. This is one of Tasmania's best known attractions although some argue mount field is nicer.
We traveled north on the A5 which is the slower older route but which takes in some amazing scenery like the imaginatively named "Great Lake". Driving this route shows you just how sparsely populated Tasmania is. Long periods passed with no towns or settlements of any sort. Those that we did see had out of place names like Bagdad, Ross (also the English town i lived in growing up) and Melton Mowbray (of pork pie fame). These places are tiny and don't even seem to show up on Google maps.
At Great Lake the sealed tarmac road gives up and becomes a gravel road for a few miles. We were in a remote place, this added excitement to the game of trying not to run out of fuel in a car with no working fuel gauge!
The great lake is beautiful perfectly clear and still. Land owners allow the public to access it using their roads but these are the rockiest and bumpiest i have ever used. But it is worth the drive.
After four hours of driving we had planned to go to cradle mountain for a little hike before doing the big hike the next day. Instead we lay in the campsite's dark cool entertainment room to avoid the baking sun. The drive was draining with all the crazy hairpin turns that old roads often have.
Our campsite had some unexpected visitors in the form of pademelons, which are small marsupials. These look to me like fat hopping rats. They would casually browse in the scrubby bushes near our tent. If you threw a scrap up bread they would very slowly and tentatively browse towards it pretending that you didn't exist before hopping off at full speed if you moved at all. These made night trips to the toilets interesting as you would have to dodge them speeding past you.
On the drive to cradle mountain we saw an animal I'd been excited about seeing for our whole time in Australia. Spiky, long nosed and egg laying the echidna is from the same order as platypuses. One of these sauntered across the road and if i hadn't stopped wouldn't have sauntered again. We had seen one running away from our bikes as we cycled through a puddle it was drinking from on the Tasman peninsular but this was our first clear view of one. It waddled across the road but stopped to inspect the red giant that had nearly run it down. I beeped the horn but instead of running away it curled into a ball, the opposite reaction to what i was hoping for before scampering off.
Cradle mountain and the surrounding plateau are beautiful. It forms part of a week long overland trek and seeing hikers doing that made me yearn to do it too. Maybe next time.
Our hike to the plateau was hot and easy with beautiful views of valleys and lakes along the way. At the base of cradle mountain we stopped in a kitchen hut to drink some water and snack before heading up the mountain. The hike was moderate and just before the real scramble began Kirren decided to rest while i climbed to the top. This is probably the hardest scrambling I've done to date. The path degenerates into car sized boulders with the past only shown by occasional steel poles sticking out of rocks, "snow poles". Thankfully it wasn't showing but there were one or two areas where hand holds were free and far between and i had to be very careful. I made it to the top and back alive though.
The way down looked easy but was in many places little better than a step treacherous dried up stream bed. Kirren and i were very glad to reach the bottom!
We drive back to Hobart then flew out for a final week in Australia.
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