Cradle Mountain

The forecast for today has been for clear skies all day, so we had put it aside for a trip to the local World Heritage Site which is the national park of Cradle Mountain. We arose reasonably early for us and departed in glorious sunshine with temperatures similar to a typical English spring day.
The drive to the visitor centre, which is where everyone has to go to get into the park, was through the lush green countryside. As we ascended through forestry plantations and the occasional farm smallholding we arrived on a high plain with a thick moorland landscape. We could see the snow covered top of cradle mountain in the distance. We knew we were in for a good day.
Kirsty had passed by here on one of her adventures a few years ago, as she started the 65k Overland Trail in the National Park which is done from north to south. We had heard about the beauty of this area from her, but could not believe how stunning it all was.
We arrived at the visitor centre to be met by a wombat which was foraging in the carpark. Alan has always wanted to see a wild wombat in the flesh - so a good start to the day.
Formalities completed at the visitor centre we boarded a courtesy bus along with other visitors which took us into the park. There were four men on the bus all packed up with haversacks for the 6 day walk south, but most were day visitors like ourselves.
The short bus ride into the park was useful as the driver gave a commentary about the park, walks to do, stop off points etc. and reminded us that if we missed the last bus back it would take three hours from the pick up point back to our motor.
We were advised that there would be a lot of wombats to see in the button grass around Ronny Creek, but we opted to go further into the park to complete a couple of walks directly under the mountain.
The Dove Lake walk is a popular walk. It encircles the lake which lies under the peaks. It was formed by glacial activity a few million years ago along with others that we walked to.
The mountain looked magnificent. There are not that many days of the year when there is no cloud cover so we chose our day well. The path around the lake was beautiful. We stopped for our picnic lunch at a small lake side beach, all we could hear was the sound of nature. After completing the circular walk we then doubled back on ourselves a little bit to do the walk to Ronny Creek via Lake Lilla, another upward climb through bush. There was an option to nip up to Wombat Pool half way along which we couldn't resist a look at. This involved another steep climb up shingle/ rubble paths and over 320 steps. At the pool we turned around to return to the Ronny Creek walk. Soon we were amongst the button grass plains and wombats were busy grazing as we passed by.
On the bus back to our car we both said we enjoyed the day so much that we thought it would be great to come back again tomorrow. Definitely the highlight of our trip so far.
We felt some envy for the lads doing the 6 day hike south. The countryside at the start of the walk is spectacular and Kirsty says that the views just get better and better as each day goes by.Read more