Cradle Mountain, Tasmania

Took advantage of the fact that the kids were up in Queensland for the school holidays, to escape to Cradle Mountain in Tasmania.

We caught a Virgin flight down to Launceston, and hired a car to drive to Cradle Mountain. Stopped off at Cataract Gorge first, to see the suspension bridge. Absolutely stunning. Even the peacock, who distracted me while I took a photo of him, and then stole my scone with jam.

On Saturday, Voldemort and I went for a 3 hour guided walk around Dove Lake. It was a lovely, easy walk, and I fell in love with the colour combinations of the lake, trees and sky. Apparently the tannin from the button grass colours the water, creating a wonderful mix. You can check out my photos at www.flickr.com/ozgeekmum.

So, feeling adventurous, we planned to climb to the top of Marion’s Lookout on Sunday. A stunning ridge next to Cradle Mountain, it has views to Dove Lake on the left, and Crater Lake on the right.

That night it snowed. It was beautiful to wake up to, but we weren’t really geared up for hiking in the snow. I didn’t have gloves, and we bought one of the souvenir yellow poncho raincoats, in a nice vinyl.

We chose the difficult path, straight up the side of the mountain, figuring that we should get the hard part out of the way first, then have an easy, longer route back.

We made it to within 10mins of the top. At that point, standing near the top, with only a short, exposed ridge between us and the top of Marion’s Lookout, it was still snowing, and gusty. In fact it was so gusty, the wind actually shredded the raincoat into pieces, off my back whilst I was still wearing it. I’ve never actually had clothes ripped off my back by nature before. There were pieces of yellow raincoat blowing around the top of the mountain. Plus the small matter of being hardly able to feel my fingers, I didn’t think I could make it to the top.

We revived with a little Cradle Mountain whiskey from our room, some vegimite sandwiches we’d brought with us, and a superb dark ginger chocolate. Brought my fingers back to life with a nice warm chest, and set off home again.

Finished a beautiful weekend off with a decadent hot tub in the Health Spa attached to Cradle Mountain Lodge. It’s a beautiful outdoor hot tub, with stunning views over the bush.

An absolutely stunning time. Hope you liked the pictures from my trusty old Canon IXUS.