Launceston to Cradle Mountain to Burnie

---

Off to a lateish start but made good time today. Bit of a miserable day but can't really complain. First stop was the Christmas Hills Raspberry Farm for all thing delightful and raspberry! They were doing a roaring trade there. We stocked up on some raspberry jams, clothes and bought some ice creams.

On leaving we noticed Van Diemans Land Ice Creamery. I have heard good things about them, so even though we were literally finishing off our raspberry ice creams as we drove in we just had to give these a go. OMG simply heaven in a cone! Every flavour known to man and some odd ones as well.

We had heard from friends in Brisbane about the best place for scones is in Sheffield at The Old Scone Shop. Sadly they closed their doors some months previously. Can't say I saw anything appealing about Sheffield. They obviously had some great murals all over the place but the town itself didn't do anything for me. I've since heard from others that they enjoyed some of the stores there and that I should give it a go next time.

Travelling through this part of Tassie are a lot of forests in all stages of growth. What struck us as wasteful was the amount of fallen timber that was left after they had harvested the paddocks. Couldn't it be used or given away to those in need?

The drive up to Cradle Mountain took a couple of hours. The country changed to more of a heath like appearance that wouldn't be out of place in the west of Scotland. The closer we got, the colder and bleaker it became. Once there we had time to do the Dove Lake Walk. Not a bad stretch and you could see the snow still on top of the ridges. There were warning signs about not leaving too late to make the walk so we were surprised at the number of mainly Asians starting to walk. You wouldn't want to be out there too late. On the bus back we saw a small herd? mob? group? of wombats just doing what wombats do I suppose.

We probably left it a bit late but I wanted to get to Brunie for the night. Our ever unreliable GPS decided to take us the long and winding way through the hills. Visions of us hitting roos, wallabys, tassie devils and wombats never actually eventuated but we did have 3 or 4 near hits.

The Brunie Caravan Park was a welcome sight by the end of the trip. Again it was nearly empty, bit old and in need of a big reno it was nevertheless clean like all caravan parks in Tasmania.

---