Missy and Emily's Tassie Trip - Cradle Mountain

Over New Years we took our friends Emily and Missy to Tasmania for a few days to show them some of our favourite Australian places, creatures, and food and drink.  Tasmania is a quick 40 minute flight from Melbourne so we took an early flight over and made the two hour drive from Launceston to Cradle Mountain.  

December 27 is the busiest day of the year in Cradle Mountain National Park, but fortunately there is very limited accomodation there so even on the busiest day the crowds weren't bad.  There are limited parking spots in the park, so we took the shuttle to the end to hike the Dove Lake Circuit.  We've been to Cradle Mountain a few times now and knew not to have expectations when it came to the weather there.  It was a stunning day though with a nice clear view of the mountain and the perfect hiking temperature.
Ready for some fun!
Starting the Dove Lake Circuit Hike
Great View! 
Even better without the silly people in the picture

Stunning form any angle
Tasmanian Waratah


Dove Lake Boat House
Rather than hop back on the shuttle, we chose to walk to the next shuttle stop to enjoy some more of the scenery.  The grasslands along the path were pretty, but the best part of this detour was seeing wombats and an echidna going for a splash.



Missy looking for wombats
Echidna going for a swim
 That evening we went to the Devils at Cradle Mountain Park to watch the Tasmanian Devil feeding.  We'd seen these creatures eat before but it's always surprising the horrible noises they make when they're fighting over a piece of food.  It's also interesting to hear how the wildlife parks trade devils to make sure they can diversify their genetics to try to build the population back up.  The devils have been nearly wiped out due to a very contagious facial tumour disease and so these efforts may be their only hope of avoiding extinction.
Phil and I started the next morning with a 5k run through the park and then we woke up the others and headed back towards Launceston to check out some of the sites there.







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