3 November 2013 - Discovery Parks Cradle Mountain, Cradle Valley, Tasmania

How fabulous is this; that I should have from my window, the romantic vista of snow falling gently onto the flowering bushes of the Tasmanian forest. “Romantic?!” exclaims my husband whose childhood memories include trudging through the cold wet snow to school in England. For me as I gaze out with my rose coloured glasses, and see the delicate red flowers on the plants, it reminds me of the Christmas cards that were standard here in the Antipodes until fairly recently when we started to show Santa enjoying the sunshine and barbeques of the southern hemisphere. I guess I would feel a little differently if we had come back in shivering, with our jeans and walking shoes wet. But I jump ahead of myself.

There was no snow on Mt Murchison this morning, or at least not on the lower reaches we could see from our camp. It had rained heavily through the night and continued to do so as we prepared to leave; we counted ourselves lucky to attend to the outdoor matters during a gap in the weather. With no on-site manager, we were not too concerned if we overstayed the departure time; although it was only minutes after 10 am when I checked the time on leaving.

The road climbed steeply north out of Rosebery, making us realise that this mining town only  differed from Queenstown, also in a deep valley, by the pollution-caused devastation. It was a very slow climb up the side of Mt Black and down the other side, second gear most of the way, with pull-off spaces few and far between. Fortunately there was little other traffic on the road this morning.

Tullah lies about fourteen kilometres up the road from Rosebery beside the bank of Lake Rosebery, created by the Murchison Dam. The tourist brochures sing Tullah’s praises and I had been looking forward to stopping here and enjoying the beautiful scenery, however the rain and mist was so overwhelming that there was little point in stopping at all.

The town is divided into two parts, the older part originally a mining town called Mount Farrell, named for the mountain of 712 metres under which it sits, and established in 1900 after silver lead ore was discovered in the area. But today it is the hydro-electricity and tourism that holds the population of a little under 200 here. This is part of the Pieman Scheme, named after the Pieman River which empties into the sea more or less west of here. During the construction of the scheme which includes five dams, the Murchison, the Tullabardine, Mackintosh, Bastyon and Reece Dams, and three power stations, the population of Tullah reached 2500. Construction began in 1974 and was completed in 1987. It reminded us so much of Jabiru, the mining settlement near the Kakadu National Park, although here in Tasmania, there was an obvious absence of aboriginal folk.

Now that is a lot of information for a place we barely paused in, but as I said, there was a lot of potential here and I regretted that we had not passed through on a nicer day.

The contour of the land on the route across this very rugged land did not change much from there on, although north of Tullah roading contractors are making an effort to improve the conditions. Here there is opportunity to build passing lanes, although looking at the work-in-progress, it would appear there is only a very small window of appropriate weather conditions to undertake such major work. A number of yellow diggers were dotted along the way, appearing to be sunk deep into the mud of the forest; I was reminded of that wonderful children’s book “The Little Yellow Digger” that I have often read to my grandchildren. Perhaps there is an opening here for a sequel set on these north-west roads of Tasmania?

About twenty kilometres north of Tullah, we turned east out along the Cradle Mountain Development Road, and travelled mainly across tussock plains, surprisingly coming upon cattle grazing land, fenced and signed with “Beware Livestock on the Road” style warnings. After not having noted any farming land ever since the land north of Hamilton passed through nearly a week ago, it was indeed amazing to find such enterprise here in this elevated desolate land.

We crawled steeply up the road, dropping down to first gear and soon passed over the highest point of this road at 930 metres ASL. We descended again, before turning south for about six kilometres arriving at this caravan park which still sits at an elevation of 915 metres ASL.

I have mentioned previously that we had pre-booked here, totally out of character, and so were well prepared for the check-in. Or so I thought. I had checked the price a week or more ago and found that here the Discovery Park charged an exorbitant $44 for a powered caravan site. Again the captive market effect, and thus no complete surprise, however today there was more. Today the price (before our park loyalty discount) was a grand $49! How could this be? Had there been an increase? Well, actually, yes, there had been on 1 November. Now why did I not think of that? Of course there would be an increase on 1 November! Yea, right.  

At that point I thought we would surely only be here for two days, not the open ended three or more. I know the extent of my husband’s indignation.

View from the Dove Lake carpark

On the subject of price gouging, diesel here sell for the princely sum of $1.93 a litre; we filled yesterday at the remote Rosebery paying $1.67 a litre.

We found our way to our site, by which time sleet was falling, not the first time for the day. Our site is in a rather strange access way, not level, and altogether something more suited to a small “Wicked” style campervan. This was one of those sites where you have to jack up the tow bar end of the caravan in two stages, knowing that the re-hitch will be just as problematic.

Around Dove Lake

Once we had set up, we brewed up some soup, from a can no less, so complicated, and lunched before considering our level of satisfaction with life. I suggested we walk over to the National Park Information Centre, just 300 metres from the camp reception, to see what walks were on offer, although we had already done some research about this.

Cradle Mountain is the starting point for the famous Overland Trek, referred to when we were at Lake St Clair, from where Chris set off on one of the two memorable walks of his life, the other being his hike to Base Camp in the Himalayas, so this was yet another of Chris’s pilgrimages.

The Boatshed

The sleet fell in spurts, between snow showers and short sunny spells; we decided to take the shuttle bus up to Lake Dove and see how the spirit grabbed us when we got there. And so that is how we came to do a couple of very short walks from the base there at Lake Dove; that to the Boatshed on the lake and in the other direction, to Glacier Rock, which affords superb views of Cradle Mountain, on a good day. The skies changed from one minute to the next and in brief moments, we had beautiful views of the mountain. But by the time we reached the Rock, clouds had come over the peaks, and sleet rushed down the lake, driving us back to the shelter where we waited for the next shuttle bus.

Walking back to our camp

We alighted again at the Ranger’s Station where there is an excellent Interpretative Centre, however we were near closing time and only had ten minutes for a taste-tester of what is on offer. By the time we found ourselves outside again waiting for the shuttle, icy rain was falling and we were certainly glad when the heated bus arrived.

Back at camp we turned the main heater on, something we normally avoid using because it is so noisy, but ten times more effective than our little fan heater. Dinner was soon cooked, oven heated pies after an excellent Skype session with Larissa and her whole family; a real treat, contact with the whole family that is, not the pies which are too often the main part of our dinner on cold nights.

Staff at the park office assure us that tomorrow’s weather will be better and the next even better; we may have to extend after all. There are so many wonderful walks on offer. In the meantime, snow is still falling gently outside; the bonnet of the landcruiser is already well blanketed with snow. And we may have to keep that noisy heater on all night.