Steam train and nocturnal animals

I’m currently at my accommodation at Cradle Mountain. I’m doing a night spotting tour at 8:30pm so thought I’d make a start on this rather than leaving it all until after I get back.

I went from Strahan to Zeehan to start with. I went to the West Coast Heritage Centre which has a lot of information in it. Mainly mining and history of the area. I’d not realised just how much mining went on and still goes on in Tasmania before I visited. I could have spent much longer there but I restricted myself to just an hour or so.

Next up was Tullah although I did stop in Rosebery to look at the Stitts falls. They were pretty but minor compared to the others I’ve seen. Rosebery has an operating mine which is mainly zinc and lead. The infrastructure is very visible.
Tullah has a steam train (a relic from the mining days) that only operates two weekends a month. Fortunately this weekend is one of those weekends. So while I missed the west coast railway in Strahan/Queenstown I did get a train ride.
I timed my arrival to find the train at the station although we had to wait for the driver to finish his lunch. The ticket seller was making everyone toasties.
The trip was quite short but interesting. There was only one other passenger on the way down plus a volunteer. The other passenger knew enough to ask interesting questions so I just listened to the conversation. At the turn around we pick up two blokes who had stopped to look at the train. The volunteer offered them a ride. They had to walk back though as the volunteers were worried about a bearing and I think this trip was going to be the last of the day. They were planning to replace the bearing tonight.

I picked up some lunch and had it at Macintosh dam. The wind really started to pick up while I was there. Most of the day I’d gradually been increasing altitude and that continued the closer I got to Cradle Mountain. I stopped at a lookout in the Black Bluff Range which was at 930m. I’m probably only slightly above that now, Cradle Mountain is about 1400m. Queenstown is just over 100m above see level.

I did see an echidna in the car park at the Cradle Mountain Discovery Park which is where I’m staying. It seemed to have more fur and fewer quills that the ones we see in WA. I’ve been upgraded to a deluxe cabin. They are new cabins which is nice although they aren’t completely finished.

Back from the night spotting tour and it was brilliant. We saw so many animals - Bennets wallaby, pademelon, wombats, a brush tailed possum and an eastern quoll. An hour before the tour was due to start it was raining heavily but it had stopped by the time we were picked up. We were able to get out of the bus at Ronny Creek and that’s where we saw most of the wombats. I’m looking forward to seeing it all in the daylight tomorrow.Read more