The West Coast.............

Sunday 30th November 2008

After a splendid 3 weeks living in Launceston and having said our farewells to Susan and Robert and their lovely family of dogs, Ebony, Evie, Maxi and of course the cat Buddha we made our way to Cradle Mountain - the start of our week long tour of the West coast of Tassie.

Our home for the next 2 nights would be Cradle Mountain Chateau - an hotel on the fringe of Cradle Mountain National Park and the World Heritage Wilderness area. (www.federalresorts.com.au).

The Cradle Mountain area enjoys world wide recognition for breathtaking scenery, wilderness walks and flora and fauna in close proximity.

It was an easy 2-hour journey from Launceston to the Cradle Mountain National Park and, despite the drizzle and grey skies the surrounding scenery was very impressive.

Our hotel lived up to our expectations and an additional bonus were the delightful Christmas decorations! Which, along with the cooler temperatures and lovely log fires made us feel quite Christmassy for the first time this year!

After checking in and off loading our luggage we headed out to explore……..
First, we followed the short-circuit rainforest walk around the hotel where we were lucky enough to see a couple of carrawong (crow-like birds with white tips on their wings), another gorgeous echnida (dells got the best pic yet!), and a lovely wallaby.

We then made our way to the Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre a modern facility providing a wealth of information about the National Park, walks available and the history of the area.

We decided to start from here with a gentle boardwalk circuit through rainforest and overlooking Pencil Pine Falls - the falls alone were seriously impressive but add to that the greenery of the forest - thousands of years old, the fresh air smell, huge grey gums, pencil pines and more, and we were overwhelmed by the natural beauty surrounding us - we did keep an eye out for platypus but alas, none were to be found!

We made our way along boardwalk and through similar rainforest and beautiful heather groundcover and shrubs with vibrant red flowers until we reached the Knyvet Falls - thundering beneath us water gushed into the river below - it was a beautiful sight.

On our return we had our first sighting of the most gorgeous wombat!! As he waddled across the road in front of us we whipped out our camera and managed to get a couple of shots of him munching on grass - they are much bigger than we thought and look like the most cuddly bears - adorable!