Westward Ho!

OK, so to back up a little, the kids went to Melbourne and kindly lent us their car. Never having been to the western part of the state, we planned to make a quick visit to Strahan in the west, then up north to Devonport before getting to Evandale. Evandale being a historic town a little south of Launceston. Oh, cripes that's a dull link. Here's a better one. Evandale being the lovely town where the first National Windjam festival was held this past weekend.

Oh, and we drove through Queenstown on the way west to Strahan. Queenstown is an old mining town. I guess I should say Mining Town. There are whole parts of mountains cut into 90 degree angled shelves with only exposed rock, no vegetation at all. Some would say eerie. Others would say beautiful. I won't try to duplicate what you'd see on Wikipedia. But, if you'd like to learn more about western Tasmania, Wikipedia has some really good information.

But the defining moment of driving into Queenstown was an amazing hairpin turn'd road on the ledge of the rocky, multicolored rock face. With the steering wheel on the right hand of the car (my seat) in the middle of the road, the passenger (Liz's) seat had the bird eye view of the precipitous valley. And, there was not much of a guardrail to block her view. We know a woman here who drives here each week for her teaching job. We now worship her.

Strahan is a lovely, tiny, tiny, tiny, town. Although, there seemed to be many people in town eating in one of the three restaraunts. If we had planned to spend time, there are some activities to recommend the stay. A tour catamarand into the Gordon River is a highlight. Just not something we made time for this trip. And, you know me. I'm not driving through Queenstown ever again.

The thing that we wanted to do on the way up to Devonport was to see Cradle Mountain and take the hike near there. It is a large national park which is the beginning of the famous Overland Track. People hike that in 6 - 10 days. It would take me 3 weeks probably. But, I'd have to hire someone to carry everything. So, that's not going to happen. But, I figured the 2 hour hike around Dove Lake would be nice. The visitors center has a shuttle bus to take people to the start off points. Good thing. There were pictures of the road all clogged up with cars before the advent of the shuttle. They say it helps to preserve the environment.



Here's a shot of Dove Lake in the foreground with Cradle Mountain in the distance.



I didn't actually see any of these dangerous rectangles, but I'm glad they warned me.



My home made hat needed to be on over my cap because there was a chill in the air. There's many cloudy days at Cradle Mountain. We were lucky to hit one of the nice ones. It had snowed in the morning, though, and there was some slush on the path here and there. Kids were having fun making snowballs.



Getting closer.



I'm kind of amazed how palm-types of plants survive in this climate.



Although, there was water dripping all around us from melting snow. So, there are rainforest conditions.





This is about the half-way point.



Now we're walking back towards the car park, away from the mountain and, hey, what's with this uphill climb????



Hey, what's with this uphill climb?



And, why is the path covered in 3 inches of water melting off the mountain?



Oh, well, here's a wombat feeding on a bush. Maybe that was worth the climb. :-)



Well, here we are back down to 'lake level' again. We made it all around. Took about 2.5 hours, not too bad for a 6km hike.





Liz thought the scenery was a bit stark. But, I got some good photo's and it was kind of nice to see snow again after a year and a half.

We hit the road again and drove the rest of the way to Devonport. We were both asleep by 9:30pm.