Cradle Mountain

We said goodbye to Strahan for another cross-country journey – this time heading to Longford, near Launceston, for a two-day stay in a cottage on the Woolmers Estate. On the way, we headed up to Cradle Mountain to take in the sights there.

Cradle Mountain has a number of walks, of varying lengths and difficulties. Some folk go camping and hiking for days from there. As the name implies, it’s up a mountain, and the temperature was noticeably cooler when we parked the car. We took the shuttle bus to the first stop, and from there were about to embark on the walk to Knyvet Falls, when someone told us that there was a snake 100m up the track on the Enchanted Walk, so we took that instead. We didn’t spot the snake, though, probably because we were overtaken along the route by a gaggle of teenagers, which any self-respecting snake would have avoided. We kept our eyes and ears open, but, apart from some distant birdsong, there wasn’t much to be seen. It wasn’t until we reached the end and were heading back to the road that we found a wombat, just wandering through the seats and benches at the Peppers resort.

Wombat

We then located the Knyvet Falls track, and went back to plan A. Right at the beginning, Nicola spotted a flame robin, but by the time I’d located it and pointed my camera it had gone. We continued to hear their calls but none came low enough to see, let alone photograph. We reached the Pencil Pine Falls, and then the Knyvet Falls, which unfortunately aren’t really visible from the track. We headed on a bit further in the hopes of being able to see the falls, but to no avail. What we did come across, however, was a pademelon, just by the side of the track, so it was worth the effort of going on a bit further.

 

Pencil Pine Falls

Knyvet Falls

Pademelon

Just as we were heading for the bus back to the Visitor Centre, a lorry load of contractors arrived and started blocking off the road. We got to the bus stop, boarded, and the driver drove off…for about 100m before he had to stop. The road was completely blocked, and the contractors were busy resurfacing a section of the road! After a bit of toing and froing on the radio, and talking to the chief contractor, who told the driver he was going to be there for 30 or 40 minutes minimum, we all got off the bus, walked 100m past where they were working, and boarded another bus on the other side. Phew! We were able to get back to the VC and went to the café for a quick lunch.

We then hit the road again, and eventually reached our cottage in late afternoon. We located the key from the locked box, figured out how to get to the cottage, and got inside. So far, so good. It’s one of a number of cottages available for rent on the site, the rest of which are all grouped together a little further down the road. We’re in the Gardener’s Cottage, and, being separate from the rest, it appears we have no internet coverage here. We went down to the other cottages and were able to pick up the wi-fi there, so we’ll investigate in the morning once there’s someone to ask about this. Otherwise we’ll just have to keep whizzing down there every time we want to get online.    

The other feature of the cottage is that there’s no breakfast provided, so we headed into Longford, found an IGA, and picked up enough supplies for the next two days.

In the evening, we’d booked a restaurant in Launceston. This is about a 25 minute drive from the cottage, and we weren’t sure of parking, so we set out early. Just as well we did, as we missed the turn-off into the restaurant car park, and had to find a way to turn around to get back. We made it, and were still 10 minutes early. The restaurant, Stillwater, is in fact one of the best in the city, and we had oysters (natch!), tiger prawn dumplings, wallaby and lamb rump, followed by caramelised honey parfait.

Now we’re back at the cottage, I’ve no idea when I’m actually going to post this.

 

Cross Country

We rose at lark o’clock to make an early start. Today’s mission was to cross the island from east to west – fortunately not at its widest point – and reach our second destination, the village of Strahan on the west coast of Tasmania. We’d investigated some places to stop along the way.

 We managed to get away despite the Hobart rush hour traffic (yes, that’s a thing), and drove uphill to the central highlands, to our first stop at Russell Falls at Mount Field National Park. The falls are on a 20 minute loop track, so we wandered along that looking out for wildlife along the way. We could hear birds in the trees but nothing came very close to us – certainly not close enough to positively identify. After a break and a beverage, we drove off on a longer leg of the journey, which would take us to Derwent Bridge.

Russell Falls

 

A big tree

As we approached Derwent Bridge we spotted The Hungry Wombat café, and decided that looked as good a place as any to stop for lunch. Toasted sammies and chips! We’re living the high life! A minute away from the café is an art installation called The Wall In The Wilderness, which is a Thing To Do, so we went in and had a look. This is a carved wooden frieze work in progress by sculptor Greg Duncan. It’s housed in a long building, and is a depiction of his interpretation of the history of Australia. Parts of it are unfinished – he says, sometimes deliberately so, sometimes bit that he plans to come back to later…or not, depending on how the whim takes him, I guess. At the beginning there’s an entreaty from the artist to not take pictures, invoking copyright law, and saying to disrespect this is “UnAustralian”. Got bad news for you, mate. I’m not Australian, and harbour no ambition to become one, so your plea falls on deaf ears.

It was a good job we stopped at the café, as our onward journey revealed the size of the Derwent Bridge CBD…basically, that was it. Our next stop was at the Franklin River Nature Trail, another loop walk of around 20 minutes, and again we tried to spot some of the wildlife, but to no avail.

Our final call was at Nelson Falls. This location is home to the pink robin, apparently – a close relative of the New Zealand toutouwai, or North Island robin. Again, we could hear some twittering in the trees, but clearly they haven’t adopted the behaviour of their New Zealand cousins, who will come right up to and even hop onto your boots on occasion. So no birds, but the waterfall was cool.

After that, it was straight to Strahan. I say “straight”, but it was along twisty, winding roads. Fortunately we didn’t encounter any traffic on the road apart from at the beginning, when the car that pulled out in front of us had spotted a sign that said “55kmh”, but failed to register the “From Dusk Till Dawn” part of the sign, in an attempt to protect wildlife at night. Judging by the carnage we’d seen at the side of the roads for the last few days, this isn’t particularly effective. Anyway, we zoomed past them at the earliest opportunity.

Strahan is a small village, originally built for cargo and as a passenger port, then a fishing port. Nowadays it is a tourist place, for the West Coast Wilderness Railway and river tours. We’re staying at Franklin Manor, a house built in 1896 for the harbourmaster, now converted to a hotel. It doesn’t provide evening dining so we walked along the waterfront In the evening to View 42°, one of a handful of restaurants serving the other accommodation sites in town, and had a seafood buffet where we dined on oysters, smoked salmon and prawns to start, calamari and Portuguese fish, salads and noodles.