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....

A sunny Sunday afternoon in St Kilda

Last Sunday afternoon we headed down to St Kilda...  there was meant to be the St Kilda festival on but it was not really that interesting... So we went to the arts and crafts market which is always work a look and we took a load of photos. The weather was great so I thought I would upload them here for people to see......  St Kilda always has something going on - it is a bit Bohemian and touristy but is good fun! 

We took some good ones down at the beach - looking out to the pier and looking back at the city...  Lots of people were out on the beach and on the bay having a fab Sunday afternoon in the sunshine....

We then headed up towards Acland St going passed Luna Park and the Palais Theatre on the way...  Luna Park is good fun but it is most definately not Blackpool Pleasure Beach!!!!

We continued up Acland St and saw a few interesting things (which is pretty normal for St Kilda!).  This included this interesting camper van as well as the decorations above a couple of shops which I just think are kinda cool!!!

Never thought I would say this about a game of cricket!

It was awesome!  A few of us went to see the twenty/20 Australia vs Pakistan cricket match at the MCG last Friday....  Cricket has never been a game that interested me but I went along anyway...  We had fab seats in the bottom of tier and had a few beers whilst we were waiting for the game to start.....  Once it started, I was amazed by how fast and exciting the game was!  Lots of Mexican waves, music and fireworks - everytime someone hit a 4 or a 6 or was out!  The game itself was close - Australia really didn't look like they would win it but they did by a couple of runs!   The other interesting thing was watching people being thrown out the MCG!  We were sitting close to the notorious Bay 13 but for the most part we could not work out what they had done which was soooo bad!  Bring on The Ashes - Go Australia!

Tears for Murray

Chris and I were fortunate enough to get tickets for the tennis Men's final at the Australian Open.  We had been to the tennis the week before and seen Murray play on the Margaret Court Arena and we were hoping that he would get through to the final...  When he did there was lots of celebrating in our house followed by a shopping trip for blue and white face paint!

On the day of the final, I painted a couple of Saltire flags on my face - I had planned on going for the full Braveheart look but it was way too warm to do that! So I settled with a couple of small flags and the Lion Rampant wrapped round my shoulders....  We also took a Saltire to wave....

We went and saw the mixed doubles final before the men's final....  This game was ok - nice and quick - just the best of 3 sets...

And then it was onto the main spectacle! Luckily we were surrounded by lots of other Scots so there was lots of shouting and support for Murray and only a few for Feds.....The atmosphere was fab and lots of people were hoping that Murray would finally win his first Grand Slam...

 Disappointingly this was not the case - this time!  He has really came on as a player though so hopefully it will be soon.....  He also endeared himself to the crowd with a wee bit of a cry when he had to give his speech...  fingers crossed for next time Andy!