Down Under Down Under
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 14 ~ 4 Jan - Cradle Mountain
We walk next door to the camping/caravan park where they have a shop that sells more than sunscreen and wine. But not that much more: we're not impressed. We find a few items of fresh veg, but there's a lot more junk food. Fortunately, we're pretty well stocked because we were warned that this would probably be the case. Clearly "Salamanca Fresh" might appeal to the posh folks in Hobart, but here it's calories per AU$ that rules.I have no pictures of this underwhelming emporium, but I don't feel I'm depriving you.
Now it's Saturday today, and normally Saturday morning would mean parkrun for Amanda, and like as not, parkrun for me if it's somewhere new to us. Cradle Mountain, however, does not have a parkrun. Yet? Maybe, but not now. Ah, but there's a loop walk called the Dove Canyon Track that's supposed to be about 5km, does a virtual parkrun beckon...?
Yeah, right, silly question: a virtual parkrun it is.
Three hours?!
Even my PW is better than that.
Ok, they clearly can't get enough volunteer marshals. "Follow the arrows on the sticks that you can barely see!"
Ah... I don't think we've done such a hilly one before...
Mind the roots.
I think this is a pretty impressively slow parkrun. Actually, we're nowhere near the end of the loop yet. It turns out that while the Dove Canyon Track itself is about 5km, the whole circuit involves a substantial section of the Cradle Valley Boardwalk, and Amanda started her Garmin there, not the point where we entered the Dove Canyon Track proper. It also turns out we've been doing the circuit in the opposite direction to most people, hence our steep rock descent would have been a climb and probably easier that way round.
It's been beautiful, though, and Amanda has been demonstrating her classic "OMG I can't do this!"... "Oh, I seem to have done it" approach to difficult terrain.
The boardwalk leads us on.
This is an impressively twisted tree!
We cross a bridge over Pencil Pine Creek.
And nearing the end now, we're back at Knyvet Falls which we visited from the other direction a couple of days ago.
Ok, time to hop on the bus again to Ronny Creek, to check out the (reconstructed) Waldheim Chalet.
This was originally the home of Gustav Weindorfer, who was largely responsible for Cradle Mountain becoming a national park. He and his wife used to receive visitors there and it was still being used to accommodate guests up until 1974. In 1976 it was demolished after sustaining fire damage and a replica built, recreating its appearance when the Weindorfers lived there.
We start out on the Overland Track again, but will diverge after about 700m or so.
Oops, got to wait for wombat crossing. (I haven't got too many wombat pictures, have I? No, of course not. No such thing as too many wombat pictures.)
Squawk! It's a turbo-chook not being very turbo for a moment.
Well there's an animal we didn't expect: we have discovered a mammoth!
The chalet itself.
The interior reconstruction dating to around the 1910s to 20s. The chalet was built at the end of 1912 and Gustav Weindorfer died in 1932. Read Wikipedia's article about him.
And back on the bus to our own chalet now.
Jo and Amanda strike a sisterly pose. J&M are feeling a bit better and have joined us on our verandah again.
There's a wallaby down there.
Seems to be minding his or her own business.
And now it's back to work in the kitchen for me. According to Amanda's diary entry, I am making a big veggie stir-fry here, some of which I give to J&M and some I put aside for tomorrow's lunch.
Main course for dinner is a frittata with pine nuts, sunflower seeds, egg, cheese and onion, served with sliced tomatoes. Amanda declares it one of her favourite dinners.
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