Blogs from Cradle Mountain - Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania, Australia, Oceania - page 4

After a very cold night - even colder than in Cradle Mountain, i was wearing 2 pairs of socks, 3 trousers and 5t tops and a jumper, woke up so many times, ended up using our gas stove to warm the tent up, we had breakfast with Simon and Fi. We decided to go on the 5hr walk on the Shadow Lake Circuit. You could also catch a ferry up to Echo Point or Narcissus Bay and walk down along the lake, which is part of the Overland Track. There was also a walk up to Mount Rufus but that was a 7 hour walk! Lake St Clair lies at the Southern End of Cradle Mountain and is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Carved by ice during several glaciations over the last 2 ... read more

Part 6 Monday 15th December Felt far from good this morning and had to wait an hour or so until I could drive...why does wine seem like such a good idea at the time but such a bad one in hindsight??! Especially as I was the only driver........Lack of coffee and a hangover bacon and egg roll didn't help either!! BUT had a surprisingly good day and felt fine once we'd stopped at a cafe for the above noted goodies........ We drove to Lake St Clair over the Franklin River to the National Park. We took an easy (Martin was being kind to us that day - probably something to do with his own immense hangover) walk along the lake to Platypus Bay where all the Platypus hid from us - but we did see a ... read more

Back in Melbourne from Tassie. I just finished hiking the Overland Track from Cradle Mountain to Lake St. Claire. It was a 7-day trek and we covered over 100km. I was surprised to see how green and non-flat Tasmania is compared with the rest of Australia that I've seen. I had heard that Tasmania is the closest to BC that Australia gets and I was certainly reminded of home as we drove through the state. There are a lot more sheep in Tassie though. I'd say the theme of our trip at least for the first couple of days was 'lower your standards'. We started walking with rain drizzling but that quickly turned to a complete downpour. We had planned on doing a side trip up cradle mountain, but it was so miserable we lowered our ... read more

We spend the night in Deloraine's YHA hostel, a rather regimented place - not quite necessary, since we were the only people staying there - where the somewhat eccentric owner felt the need to post signs absolutely everywhere, of which my favourite was "beds are for sleeping in, not on". Still, the hostel's quiet location at the top of a small hill gave us fabulous sunset views, with Tasmania's rugged central mountains silhouetted against a truly technicolour sky. That and not far off a century's worth of National Geographic back issues made for a nice peaceful evening. Deloraine is a quaint, small place, nestled on the banks of the aptly named Meander River, and consists of little more than a couple of streets lined with shops. Strange to think, then, that Deloraine is actually "Tasmania's largest ... read more

Cradle Mountain, located near the north end of the Cradle Mountain - Lake St Clair National Park in central Tasmania is one of my favourite places on Planet Earth. Though not high, about 1545 meters, it has a quiet serenity which allows the consciousness to image itself drifting back more than 5 thousand years and observing the same scene. The shingled hut in the foreground is called the Boat Hut, though when it last had a boat, I have no idea. Coupled witha small sandy beach in front of it, it is used as a resting place for overland and day walkers. Like so many lakes in Tasmania, the lake, Lake Dove is a glacier lake scoured out during the last ice age which ended about 10,000 years ago. The orange colouring on the mountain side ... read more