Down Under Down Under
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 16 ~ 6 Jan - Cradle Mountain
Today is our last full day here, so we'll have a morning walk before doing most of our packing up.We're back to slightly damp and chilly weather, but not too bad. We are taking the Speeler Track and King Billy Trail, which sounds terribly grand, but it's named after the tree species, the King Billy pine.
I realise I've not talked about the King Billy pines, Athrotaxis selaginoides, so I shall elaborate now. It's a tree endemic to Tasmania, and although it's an evergreen conifer that resembles the true pines (genus Pinus), it's not actually one. [This is very common in colonial societies, of course: to name something after a similar thing from the homeland despite it being completely unrelated.] "King Billy" is supposed to be a reference to a certainWilliam Lanne, the last full-blooded Aboriginal on the island.
Read about King Billy and his eponymous tree at Wikipedia.
The route is mostly in woodland, but here we leave it for a while.
Dead trees from past fires.
A particularly sophisticated log to cross the stream, with a rope and everything!
That's it for now. Back to the cottage and we have some travel prep to do.
Later I'm all for a sit-down and a bit of reading in front of the fire, as I've got a long drive tomorrow, but Amanda fancies one last little spin around the trails before she leaves, so off she goes.
Then we all reconvene for a last drink on our verandah.
Let's raise a toast to Cradle Mountain, where a fine time has been had by all. Oh, I didn't mention earlier why Jo and I have our G&Ts in half-pint jugs: we simply don't have any tumblers in the kitchen!
And so to bed, with the log burner keeping us warm and our own dim reflection in the window opposite.
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