Down Under Down Under
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 13 ~ 3 Jan - Cradle Mountain
First off, we're going to walk back down the road and investigate the "Enchanted Walk", just before the park entrance (opposite the bit of the Dove Canyon trail we did yesterday). What will we see today?
Well, we have a green rosella, Platycercus caledonicus to its friends, a type of parrot. I will grant you that it doesn't look very green in this picture, but it is more so from behind. It is apparently common all over Tasmania, so we are not racking up any serious bird points here, but hey, it's exotic by Home Counties standards.
And chickens - turbo-chooks, anyway - crossing the road.
And then right by the start of the Enchanted Walk, this rather fine snake. He (or she) is a Tasmanian tiger snake, so called because the mainland subspecies is not black, but striped with a pattern resembling a tiger's coat. The Tassie tigers are not at all tigery in that regard.
They are quite poisonous, and people have died from their bites, but they are not aggressive and won't bother you if you don't bother them.
Another wallaby.
The walk is quite pretty, but it's not long and there's not much new to be seen. We'll now jump on the bus to Dove Lake and take the path that circles it.
And here we are, Dove Lake. Rather different from our last view.
We will be good boys and girls.
"CAUTION TRACK SURFACE ICY" it says. I'm not convinced.
We like the twisted and tangled roots and branches.
Cradle Mountain itself is clear to see today.
It's some sort of fallen-over dead tree fern, but I don't know exactly what. Just another interesting bit of plant geometry.
Almost halfway round the lake here, the boardwalk cuts through surprisingly lush vegetation.
A lot of the time we can't really see the lake through the trees, but here we spot some kayakers. We vaguely half-thought about it ourselves, but it's been a bit cold for us anyway. When the sun shines and you're walking through a sheltered area it's quite warm now, but that hasn't been the case much so far.
This is a spur off the lakeside track. We must investigate.
It turns out that it soon becomes pretty rough and doesn't really go anywhere particularly interesting, so we reverse.
Why "Ballroom"? We have no idea, and the Internet hasn't helped.
It's an area of quite dense trees, roughly halfway round the lake from our starting point.
Several kayaks are ready for use at the car park. Close up they look like very fine wooden constructions.
The concrete textured wall shows some interesting moiré effects at this resolution: visual dark stripes that don't exist in reality.
Look at the humped curves towards the left of the picture.
And now look at this zoomed-in crop from the exact same original: the broad diagonal stripes are nowhere to be seen.
I'm reminded of an experience with my first ever digital camera, back in 2004. When I did a side-by-side comparison with the film camera I had been using, I was blown away by the quality improvement, but with one exception. A picture I took of a fine steel lattice structure (a radar dish as it happens) showed massive amounts of moiré artifacts in a way that chemical film would never have done. Technology has moved on a lot since then, but just occasionally it reminds you that it's still not magic.
We meet up with Jo again here. She's going to take the bus back, but there's quite a long queue for it, so we think we'll walk instead.
We've seen a number of these curiously random spider webs. Google has not helped me identify their likely species, so you'll just have to remain in ignorance unless you are more arachnologically inclined than us and already know better.
Back on our terrace for pre-dinner drinks and nibbles, and it's now lovely and warm in the sunshine. We will, I confess, light the wood-burner when the sun sets and the temperature drops rapidly later. Dinner tonight is wallaby casserole!
A little post-prandial wombat-spotting and it's time for bed.
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