Day five in Tasmania - Wed 17th Feb

The plan for today was to drive down to the Freycinet Peninsula going via Bay of Fires.  This was going to be another reasonably long day in the car but a lot of the route was down the coast and very pretty so we did not mind....  The drive from Launceston to the Bay of Fires was pretty uneventful without much to take pictures of but the Bay of Fires was stunning - really blue water and white sand and empty beaches - beautiful!!!!

We then continued our drive down to Freycinet and arrived late afternoon at the Lodge (http://www.freycinetlodge.com.au/) where we were going to be staying for the next 3 nights.  The Lodge was nice but was overpriced because of it's location.  The same was true of the restaurants within it.  We booked some of our activities for the next couple of days there - we were going to go kayaking on the Bay, do a food and wine tasting and go on a boat trip to see Wineglass Bay from the water as well as some walking.

Day four in Tasmania - Tues 16th Feb

Today we said goodbye to Cradle Mountain and headed up to Launceston for the night.  Not a lot interesting from the drive - just lots of little windy roads and big logging lorries coming in the opposite direction making it not the easiest drive ever!

We arrived in Launceston around lunchtime and decided to head off to the Boag's brewery for a tour -http://www.boags.com.au/.  We were lucky enough to arrive just in time for a beer and cheese tasting and tour - beer and cheese together - what could possibly go wrong and all the essential food groups together in one meal ;-).  The tour was really interesting and the tasting fantastic!

Then after that we went on a walk around the Catarct Gorge Reserve which is a wee walk outside the centre of Launceston.  This was a circular walk but one half of it was a lot more difficult than the other!!!!!  There was also a chair lift but Chris would not let me get it!!!!  It is a lovely walk though and really pretty.

 

Day three in Tasmania - Mon 15th Feb

What a difference a day makes!!!

The day after we attempted and failed to summit Cradle Mountain in the rain we woke up to brilliant sunshine!  It was sooooo different to the Sunday and so we got some good pictures around the Lodge that morning...

We had decided to walk up to the ranger run visitor centre just within the Cradle Mountain National Park and from there walk up the board walk which would take us to Lake Dove and close to the Boatshed we had seen the day before where would hopefully get some pictures of Cradle Mountain that were not shrouded in cloud.  The board walk is quite an easy 7km walk which passes lakes and gives excellent views of the surrounding countryside.  The only thing that we were slightly disappointed by was the lack of wildlife we saw.

Once we got up to the beach where you can see the Mountain and the Boatshed from we were not disappointed and got the perfect views which we had been hoping for the day before....

We then got the bus back to the Lodge and from there decided to go to a Tasmanian Devil conservation park which  was next door to the lodge http://www.devilsatcradle.com/.  The Tassie Devil is currently under threat from a cancerous disease called Devils Facial Tumour Disease which affects 30-50% of devils in the wild.  It was first identified in 1996 and causes the devils to die...  There are a number of breeding programs being set up to try and safeguard the species and the folks at Devils at Cradle hope the join one.  We got an amazing tour of the park, patted a devil and learnt a lot about this fascinating marsupial.  These guys do a great job and I would definately recommend a visit if you are in Cradle Mountain.

Day two in Tasmania - Sunday 14th Feb

Attempting to climb Cradle Mountain

We had decided on the Saturday night that we would attempt to climb Cradle Mountain on the Sunday...  This was going to be quite a long walk and potentially quite difficult but we decided to give it a go anyway....  Disappointingly on the Sunday the weather was still a bit cold and wet but we thought that this might go in our favour and keep us cool....

We got the shuttle bus from the Cradle Mountain visitor's centre to Lake Dove and from there walked down to see the Boathouse and the Mountain - or not as the case might be... We could hardly see the top of Cradle Mountain but undaunted continued on our way.....  The map of the walk is shown on below. We were due to follow the Dove Lake track round passed the boat shed, go through the Ballroom Forest, pass Lake Wilks, join the Face Track, join with the Overland Track at the Kitchen Hut where we could take the path to the Cradle Mountain Summit, and come back down via the Overland Track passed Marion's Lookout, branch off down the track passed the Wombat Pool and Lake Lilla and back to the Dove Lake Car Park.

Part of the walk was noted as being steep and slippery in the guide book - they were not lying either!!!!!  Unfortunately as the weather was not too good we did not get the amazing views and pictures we hoped for but here is some of what we saw on the way up to the turn off for the Cradle Mountain summit path.

Disappointingly, by the time we got to the turn off to the summit, the cloud and rain had came in even lower and we decided not to try to reach the summit...  I had had a bad fall already slipping on wet rock and we figured we would not be able to see anything anyway!!!

 

So we continued our walk off the hill passing the Kitchen Hut on the Overland Track.

As we walked off the hill, the weather started to clear up a bit and we managed to get some better views of Cradle Mountain and the surrounding countryside.

In the evening we did a night spotlit drive to see more of the native Australian animals.  We saw heaps of wombats, wallabies, possums etc.....  We were very fortunate to see the flash of a Tassie Devil as it ran off the road as well.... 

Day one in Tasmania - Saturday 13th Feb

Chris and I headed over to Tasmania on the 12th of Feb for a week.  We flew with Qantas on the Friday night and landed quite late in Hobart to pick up our hire car - a big blue Mitsubushi Lancer!  Here it is up at the Bay of Fires....

We had been upgraded from the Toyota which we had requested.... This was good as it was bigger to put our cases in but bad as we had heard some bad things about some of the Tassie roads!  We stayed in Hobart on the Friday night but did not do much as it was late by the time we got to our hotel.....

On the Saturday, our real first day, we went to the Salamanca Market in Hobart in the morning.  We were not overly impressed - it was raining, really busy and we could not get near a number of the stalls so we just decided to get some breakfast and start off on our drive to Cradle Mountain.

We headed up to Cradle Mountain via Queenstown.  Unfortunately, the weather was not great and we did not really get out of the car much because of this.  However, we did see lots of animals - wallabies, echindas and wombats which was a prelude of things to come on our trip!

We arrived at Cradle Mountain Lodge in the early evening and just decided to have dinner in the restaurant there and planned what we were going to do on the Sunday.....  Cradle  Mountain Lodge was located next to the Nationa Park and the lodges surround a lake (which apparently had a platypus living in it but we failed in trying to find it) and lots of other animals like wallabies, tasmanian devils, wombats etc....