Weather, Wilderness & Wombats

I wish I could be well paid to be wrong as often as the weather forecasters are.

As we had freed up time today by visiting Cataract Gorge yesterday, there would now be enough time to make a visit to Cradle Mountain on our way to Queenstown - but the weather forecast indicated it would probably be a waste of time.
“90% chance of rain, cloudy, strong winds” were the salient features of the unpromising forecast, so we made plans to fill in the bulk of the day in other ways that didn’t demand clear skies and sunshine to make it worthwhile.

I couldn’t help but think this was a real shame, because I had promised Josie* (one of our staff at work) that I would send her photos of wombats from Cradle Mountain . . .

Confused? Let me explain.
While assisting me in the surgery a week or two ago and discussing the upcoming trip to Tasmania (well, TELLING a patient who was temporarily unable to take an active part in the conversation due to us having fingers and instruments inside their mouth), Josie* had confided that she had always wanted to visit Cradle Mountain because . . . she wanted to see a real live wombat.

This comment of course prompted a sideways glance from me towards Josie* across the recumbent patient, and also a sideways change in direction of the conversation as we worked our way through the treatment. From the corner of my eye I could also detect the patient’s eyes widened a little at the same time.

I suggested to Josie* she only need travel about an hour out of Sydney to be in ‘wombat central’ - the Southern Highlands. This was a surprise to Josie* who had grown up in New Zealand and Fiji and had obviously developed a fascination for meeting a wombat face to face. She had heard (somehow) that the best (and perhaps only) place to do this was Cradle Mountain in Tasmania.

So I promised I would do my best to meet a wombat there on her behalf and send photos etc. to satisfy her curiosity about these furry creatures.

The discussion about the wombats must have been agonising for the patient who couldn’t respond. When finally he had his mouth back in communicating order he advised Josie that he himself had a house in the Southern Highlands and that not only were the wombats prolific - they were quite the pest - but I had to cut him short on his description of things they would sometimes do to wombats to remove them from under houses etc. The details would have been way too distressing for Josie* . . .

On reading the weather forecast this morning I was sad for Josie* that I wouldn’t be able to fulfil my ‘Cradle Mountain promise’, but upon opening the curtains we were greeted with magnificent blue skies and just a zephyr of wind. Hmmm. Perhaps the bad weather was arriving a little later, so we left Launceston enroute to our ‘Plan B’ destinations without getting our hopes up too much about Cradle Mountain and wombat possibilities.

Our first stop was even more distant than yesterday’s time travel to Perth. 20 minutes after leaving Launceston we were in Switzerland - specifically the Swiss town of Grindelwald.
Yet another patient had suggested that Grindelwald was a worthwhile diversion on a ‘wet weather’ day and so we duly arrived. It is indeed a fully functioning, quintessentially Swiss village. All the houses in the town must be constructed in Swiss style and the little village area was quaint and authentic looking.
Sounds kitsch? Sure, but it was all rather enjoyable.
We basked in the morning sunshine while sipping our coffee, before climbing ‘Tamarhorn’ (as opposed to ‘Matterhorn’) for excellent district views of the Tamar valley and beyond. I scanned the horizon for dark clouds but everything remained calm and blue, however we still persisted with our ‘plan B’ and drove further away from Cradle Mountain to the town of Latrobe.

In one of the tourist brochures Loriene had spotted a fascinating looking giftware / toy shop called ‘Reliquaire’ and she had expressed clear interest (several times) last night in visiting it. Of course I had no hesitation in agreeing to this as the inside of a shop is not a bad option during inclement weather. After about 50 minutes’ driving from Switzerland, we pulled up at ‘Reliquaire’ noting that the day’s weather seemed to be improving rather than deteriorating.

I have to admit that Reliquaire was a pretty amazing store with cleverly themed rooms of magical content. I got off fairly lightly with only a couple of purchases completed for the grandkids.
Our track to Queenstown was loaded into Waze and as it was only a short diversion to Cradle mountain from our route we could make a decision at the last moment if we felt there was a chance the weather could still hold out. If it turned bad as expected, we would drive on through the circuitous Tarkine region to eventually arrive at Queenstown.
On reaching the turnoff, the blue skies prevailed so in we went.

40 years ago the road into Cradle mountain was gravel and we drove right to Dove Lake. There was no visitor centre and all we remember was one tattered sign at the edge of the lake pointing out a few directions for walks. Today we were greeted by a very large carpark and visitor centre part way in. A shuttle bus then transported us to a second visitor centre at the edge of the lake, cleverly designed to hide the spectacular view until it was perfectly framed through glass to be revealed at the last moment. Think winding down the siq at Petra before the grandeur of the The Treasury Building explodes into view.

The photos paint the picture of our enjoyable time there. 600m one way took us to the Boatshed, 600m the other direction to ‘Glacier Rock’. All very stunning with just one patch of snow remaining on the mountain’s right flank.
There was one major disappointment though. We scoured the area for wombats - but nary a one was to be seen. We saw echidnas and wallabies and lizards - we even thought we’d spotted a Tasmanian Tiger at one point but that sighting turned out to simply be a foreign tourist in designer clothing - but no wombats. However, just as we were thinking that the existence of wombats at Cradle Mountain was a myth, we found unmistakable evidence, documented in the photos for Josie*.

A coffee at the visitor centre “cash only sir, as the EFTPOS is down - it might be fixed next week, or possibly the week after”, back on the shuttle bus to the Ranger’s station and the 20 minute “Enchanted Walk” before bussing back to the car then driving on to Queenstown through stunning mountain scenery.

After settling in to our 3.5 star accommodation there was time to do a little local exploring around this stark, gritty copper, gold and silver mining town. Up the hill to the ‘Horsetail Falls’ and lookout over an abandoned copper mine, then back to Queenstown for dinner.

Arriving at our first choice restaurant, we were unceremoniously refused a table - ‘Fully booked tonight, sorry. It’s because of the Shutdown” even though we could see 3/4 of the tables were unoccupied.
We toyed with returning to our motel room to change into hi-viz, as that seemed to be the ticket to being accepted at the restaurant.
But we persevered in our street clothes and tried another restaurant around the corner - “Yes, we can look after you - but there’s a limited menu because of The Shutdown”.
Enquiring whether ‘The Shutdown’ was some sort of miner’s strike or a West Tasmanian version of ‘The Troubles’ that plagued Ireland for so long, the lady at reception smiled and explained that periodically all the mines are shutdown for a week for essential maintenance and a hundred or more maintenance workers descend on the town for this purpose. This certainly explained the sea of hi-viz we had encountered and also why accommodation had been hard to secure.

The ‘Tassie Devil Schnitty’ was enormous and satisfying and we retired to our motel room hoping that one of the workers for The Shutdown hadn’t put in a higher bid for our room in the meantime.

And the sun was still shining.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is (I kid you not) wind and rain, with snow falling above 900m turning to hail in the afternoon.
But perhaps we’d better pack the sunscreen just in case.

* Josie is a fictitious name to protect the identity of my innocent assistant :)Læs mere