Cradle Mountain to Strahan

Another cool morning here at Cradle Mountain but the sky is clear again so we had a quick breakfast, packed the car and headed back to the Visitor Centre. The trip up the road was crowded (being the first bus away) but we were only going to the first stop about 2km up the road.

We spent just over an hour walking a couple of the short walks near the Peppers resort. The light and temperature was perfect for walk in the bush walks and the waterfalls impressive. We didn't see any Platypuses but the stream looked perfect for them. The photo below is Pencil Pine Falls.


Can you spot the Wallaby in the next photo?


Once back at the Visitor Centre, we popped in to their café for a coffee and ham and cheese Croissant for second breakfast. Then hit the road heading for Strahan.

Along the way we diverted to the Tullabardine Dam on Lake Mackintosh. This is a hydro lake with camping and boating options. We drove to one of the campsites and talked to a family who were there to celebrate their son's 21st birthday. They had just been shocked to see a Tiger snake swim ashore from somewhere else in the lake and they shooed it off to a nearby island! Glad we didn't see it. The fact that they swim around in lakes was a bit of a surprise.

When you drive across the dam and travel up the side, you drive below a spillway which is used to let the lake drain excess water if it gets too full. Hopefully, they close the road when this happens!


Next stop was Zeehan for another picnic lunch to finish some cold meat and bread we had with us.

We also stopped at the Henty Dunes where some huge sand dunes are gradually encroaching on the bush. I climbed to the top of one - boy that was hard and only about 20 m up. Coming down was much easier.

We finally got to Strahan at around 4:30 pm. It seems that almost the entire front is owned by the same company with all the accommodation and eateries owned by Strahan Village.

Tomorrow we have to get down to the jetty by 8am (only 50m away) for our 6 hour Gordon River Cruise.





Popular posts from this blog

Remarkable Cave

Image
 We left Port Arthur around 3:30 pm and headed back to White Beach. On the way we made a detour to see Remarkable Cave. This is an incredible geological feature where the sea has eroded a cave through a dolerite sub-surface layer overtopped by sandstone. There are around 150 steps down a series of metal stair cases to where the cave breaks through to a large cavern with a collapsed roof. There are actually two entrances but you can only see through one out to the sea. The wave action was impressive but it was not a particularly stormy day so in rough sea conditions it would be even more amazing.
Read more

Port Arthur

Image
 We started the day with a walk to a local pop-up café which had good reviews but sounded a) all vegan and b) only open Friday to Monday (meaning today was our only chance to go). It turned out to be great find with new owners (they have been there three weeks) set in a Pear orchard with great coffee, We shared a wonderful pork, apple and fennel sausage roll with crisp light pastry. Judging by the number of cars that had arrived during our visit, I think the locals like this place too! A great way to start the day. Next stop was Port Arthur (about 20 minutes drive away). We had planned to just check out the prices and times before exploring other things in the area before 'doing' Port Arthur tomorrow. We hadn't realised quite how big the place is and the tickets cover you for two consecutive days so we decided to start here today and finish our visit tomorrow.   Another reason for doing it this way was that tomorrow there is a cruise ship coming in and there will be 3,000 v...
Read more

Auckland to Hobart

Image
Once again the flight was very smooth and we arrived in Hobart ready to start our holiday. The plane was only about half full. No wonder Air New Zealand don't have many direct flights from Auckland. When we were taxiing after landing I thought the terminal building was just a service area for the airport! Not much different from a rural airport like Gisborne or Napier. No air-bridge but at least the access stairs turned out to be a ramp rather than steps. Another long walk followed along the edge of the apron to the International Arrivals building. Once we were through immigration the next step was to get picked up by East Coast Car Rentals and collect the car. This turned out to be more of a challenge than I had thought. My plan to save on daily roaming charges was to keep our phones in Flight Mode and use local Wi-Fi to allow us to use Wi-Fi calling to make calls since we have free calls to NZ and Aussie numbers. Not so easy! It turns out that Hobart airport's Wi-Fi does not ...
Read more