On our final 2 days, we ventured away from Bicheno, to explore Cradle Mountain, which is part of a huge (about 25% of the Tasmanian Island) World Heritage site within Tasmania. There are no roads through the site, though there are entry points at the edges, with Cradle Mountain being the closest to the East Coast. The little guy above is a Wallaby. . in the wild. . .who graced our presence while we were on a walk around the restaurant where we had a meal on our last day there. He was completely unafraid of us, just eating the ground-cover pictured, and we sat quietly and watched. While they are built like miniature kangaroos (hard to see in this photo), their eating habit was very reminiscent of rabbits, though they obviously aren't afraid the way that rabbits are. We had a nice long look.We saw this wombat while we were hiking around Dove Lake in the Cradle Mountain area. He was running his little rolling run down the boardwalk built around part of the lake. I heard some locals call this walk "The Wombat Expressway" later. Apparently they like the easy travel, though not-so-much the tourists. Still, these guys didn't seem frightened at all. . .just mildly annoyed that we were taking up space on their expressway.
It's easy to see why Cradle Mountain is so named. The shape of it reminded us of our own Sawtooth mountains, though these are isolated peaks. The vistas around the lake are breathtaking, as are some of the other ecosystems along the trail.
Below is The Enchanted Forest part of the trail. It is deepest darkest Tasmania, full of over- and under story flora that we're unaccustomed to, even in the East. It feels more like a rain forest, and though this area has that much rain, it also gets fairly cold in the winter. As a closing remark, we were incredibly lucky to have clear beautiful weather while we were hiking about around Cradle Mountain. They only have 40 clear days a year, and we got one of them!
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