Cradle Mountain

Cradle Mountain National Park is part of a huge World Heritage Area, covering one fifth of Tasmania. It is one of numerous national parks that the guide books say cover a total of four fifths of the land area of an island that is about the same size as Scotland or Ireland.

 Cradle Mountain was named by an English explorer called Fossey, who thought the mountain resembled the outline of a baby’s head and torso between the left and right hand pinnacles.

There are numerous hikes in the park, ranging from eight-hour return trips to the summit of Cradle Mountain to 20 minute loops around waterfalls. Some walkers set off on the Overland Track for hikes of several days, and we are told the Track is cited as the most memorable and popular long-distance walk in Australia.    

The starting point for many of these walks is Dove Lake, which is reached by a narrow twisty road that runs about 8 kms from the Visitor Centre. In Devon, it would be posted “Single Track Road with Passing Places.” Parking for cars within the Park is very limited, and a barrier descends at the Park entrance when the fifty or so places are taken. It is far easier to take one of the fleet of free shuttle buses that run every six minutes at peak periods of the day. The drivers are all connected by walkie-talkie, and they report their positions, coming and going, by reference to numbered posts along the road, giving buses coming in the opposite directions a chance to pull in at one of the passing places.

The bus drivers are very knowledgeable about the Park and its flora and fauna, and once you start them with a question—“what tree is that?”-- every tree by the roadside will be identified for the duration of your ride—“Pencil Pine, Myrtle Beech, Pepperbushes, Sheoaks, Celery-top Pine, King Billy Pine…”

        

Or a question about a Wallaby prompts a dissertation on the reproductive system of marsupials, including the information that a female wallaby is constantly pregnant.

         The circuit of Dove Lake is some 6kms, and the hike takes about two hours. There are other much smaller lakes close by—Lilla Lake, Crater Lake, and Wombat Pool (its sign humorously defaced).

    




A tougher hike is to Marion’s Lookout via Wombat Peak. We chickened out when we saw the steep and rocky climb above Wombat Peak, from where we could look at Crater Lake, and also view the vastness of the mountainous area around us.

       
 One striking feature of the hikes is how much of them are on boardwalks—miles and miles of them, and in many places long flights of wooden steps. As you walk on them, you realize that tracks would easily wash out, and the ways through the densely wooded parts around Dove and Lilla Lake would be impossible without the steps and the boardwalks.

One minor problem with the boardwalks is that they seem to be the favourite place for the Park's animals to defecate. Heaven knows why they prefer to climb onto the boardwalks to engage in this activity, but they do--copiously. The most remarkable faeces left on the boardwalks are those of the wombats; this is because they actually produce CUBES--not precisely, but very close. So you can immediately tell when you see those little brown bricks that they have come from a wombat.

        





The flora in the park varied in abundance: these white flowers were everywhere, mostly in white but sometimes in pink, and the size of the bushes varies from small trees to quite small plants.

These are different, and we do not know their name.

The yellow flowers were rarer but quite striking--a bit like English primroses but with much shorter stems.

  





And there are stumpy palm trees along the creek beds.

But the fauna are mostly nocturnal, allowing the bus drivers to “moonlight” (literally) by running night trips to shine lights on the wombats, Tasmanian Devils, and possums for the benefit of those willing to pay $25 for the experience.

That's the rental wreck car in the background

         

But as it got to the end of the afternoon on a dullish day, out came the wombats (vombatus ursinus), mother and child, free of charge.  Apparently these rather chubby creatures can run 25 mph, and can kick fiercely with their rear legs if threatened.

 And—in captivity—one can see the infamous Tasmanian Devil, as well as the lesser-known Quoll. The Tasmanian Devil is a small creature up to 26 inches (looking like a cross between a bear cub and a beaver).  It has a bad but undeserved reputation as being vicious (presumably because its jaws open to a frightening wide 90-degree angle, and it emits a loud, howling yelp), but there is no record of a human ever being attacked or bitten by one. They apparently snarl and scream at each other, bare their teeth, and act viciously to assert their presence, but never actually harm each other. The Devil is the only carnivorous marsupial (at least since the extinction of the Tasmanian “tiger”, which was in fact a  fellow marsupial and the devil’s major predator). 

Today, the devil population is seriously threatened by a contagious cancer of the facial area, to which it is susceptible because of extensive inbreeding.  Efforts are being made to breed the devil in captivity in order to preserve the species.

Quolls, another species indigenous to Australia, may look like a spotted squirrel, but they are vicious killers. They will drop from a tree onto their prey and very accurately break its neck with one bite.

  

  

And there is the occasional poisonous snake along the hiking route.

All in all, Cradle Mountain is an incomparably beautiful area.