Cradle Mountain National Park
A few months ago we decided that a holiday was just what we needed, and after seeing some amazing pictures and hearing some great travel stories, we booked our flights to Tasmania for a 10-day getaway.
Tuesday 8th November 2016
We had a 2pm flight from Brisbane to Launceston, then picked up our hire car from the airport and headed into Launceston to grab some supplies from the supermarket. We knew we wouldn’t feel like cooking when we arrived at our accommodation, so we stopped at Pickled Evenings to grab some (delicious) takeaway Indian. We arrived in Mt Roland at Rolands Feet Retreat around 9pm and ate dinner, unpacked what we needed to, then got some shuteye so we could get an early start the next day.
Wednesday 9th November 2016
Cradle Mountain National Park was on the agenda today, and what a perfect day for it. The sun was shining and the temperate sat around 10-15 degrees. The National Park was just less than an hour from where we were staying and the drive was stunning. I knew at this point my camera was going to get a good workout this holiday.
We parked at the Cradle Mountain National Park Visitors Centre and caught a shuttle bus up to Dove Lake. We ended up leaving the house a little later than we thought so we didn’t have enough time to stick to our original plan of hiking up to the base of Cradle Mountain. With this in mind we checked out the hiking options and decided we would make our way up to Marion’s Lookout.
Andy testing how cold the water was. Yip, it was freezing!
Things got steep real quick.
There were plenty of places to stop and enjoy the scenery along the way. This is Wombat Pool, just over 1km into the hike.
Looking up to the summit of Marion’s Lookout.
It had snowed on the Saturday before we arrived in Tasmania and there was still evidence of this, and the higher we got, the more snow we found!
The view over Crater Lake, and the path we had just hiked.
After 1.5hrs and 303m elevation gain, we make it to Marion’s Lookout.
We had a packed lunch in our backpacks so we got to rest and eat lunch with this view.
The dreaded journey back down.
The return shuttle bus had various stops where you could get on, so we made our way to the Ronny Creek car park via the Overland Track.
The Overland Track was a great way to see some more of the National Park and around every turn was ever changing scenery.
We were lucky enough to meet one of the locals. We will call him Frank the Wombat (try and spot him!).
What a great first day. Bring on tomorrow’s adventures…