Cradle Mountain — RachiePie

We arrived in Cradle Mountain on Tuesday after leaving Stanley. The drive takes around 2 ½ hours and, before entering the park, we stopped at the Cradle Mountain Lookout. The park is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, diverse in both vegetation and wildlife.

We headed to the visitor center where we parked and hopped on the shuttle bus which dropped us off at the start of the trailhead for Marion’s Lookout. The three-hour circuit did get a bit steep at times and we even had to use a chain-link rope to climb some rocky boulders. Once we got to the top of the lookout, we had a great view of Cradle Mountain, Dove Lake and Crater Lake. It was a perfect day with lots of sunshine and a cool breeze. We took another path down where we passed Wombat Pool and ended at Dove Lake Carpark where the shuttle picked us back up.

Top of Marion's Lookout - Cradle Mountain & Dove Lake

As an added bonus, a little story on how to get Alex to sleep in past 6:00am - the time his internal clock insists on waking up each morning, irrespective of what time he goes to bed:

Wake up in the middle of the night due to a weird “chewing” sound
Turn on a flashlight to investigate weird “chewing” sound
Freak out when a mouse runs across the floor
Jump on the bed due to mouse running across the floor
Lay awake with wife for fear mouse will return
Finally fall back to sleep and then sleep in until 7:30am!

Please note our accommodation in Cradle Mountain is a cabin in the woods surrounded by nature and (obviously) creatures. In response to said mouse, we moved all food from the cabin and into the car for our second night!!! And I’m pleased to report there were no more mouse sightings and Alex was back to waking up at 6:00am!

After our late morning sleeping in (!!!), we drove back to the Cradle Mountain Visitor Center to hike the Dove Lake Circuit Trail. We did pass a short portion of the trail the day before when we hiked to Marion’s Lookout track but completed the full loop around the lake today. It was an easy hike and although the weather was cloudy today, the views of Cradle Mountain and the lake were pretty spectacular.

We ended the afternoon at Devils@Cradle, a sanctuary which breeds threatened carnivorous marsupials. These include the Tasmanian devil, Spotted-tail quoll and Eastern quoll. We have not seen a Tasmanian devil since arriving here in Tassie and, to be honest, I had low expectations for this sanctuary thinking it may be a tourist trap. However, much to my delight it was really interesting, and we got to see multiple Tasmanian devils. We took a 45-minute “keeper tour” and the guide was very knowledgeable. We ended up being the only people on the tour which made it so personal and fun. They are the goofiest looking creatures and really do make “devil” sounds which we heard a couple of times throughout the park. Given they are nocturnal and difficult to come across in the wild, I’m so glad we visited the sanctuary to see them. It cracked me up to see a few just lounging in the sunshine!