Feb 16: Cradle Mountain, and then on to Sheffield and Burnie.

We arrived at the visitor centre at about 9:30, spoke to a ranger, and boarded the shuttle bus for the 20 minute ride to Dove Lake. 

http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/?base=3297

The ranger said on the first trip of the day, the sky was clear and the view perfect. That was no longer the case. As we arrived at Duck Lake this was our view.

Can you see Cradle Mountain dead ahead? I thought not.

We decided to take the 6.5 km (4 mile) walk around the lake and hoped it would clear.  

Slowly it did until 2 hours later at the end of our walk we saw the iconic view.  Enjoy.

Then on down the trail for another 1.5 miles to a replica of the home built by Gustav Weindorfer and his wife Kate. Gustav came to Melbourne from his native Austria to work in the embassy in 1900.  There, he met Kate, and in 1906 at the age of 32 (Kate was 43!) they married and moved to Sheffield in Tasmania.  There he farmed but explored farther into the wilds.  He fell I love with Cradle Mountain and there he and Kate built Waldeim in 1912 out of local King Billy Pine.  Kate died in 1916 but Gustav works tireless to both make the area known and to protect it.  In 1922 the Tasmanian government make it a reserve and then a national park. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Park.   It is hard to learn of this story and not think of another immigrant who also worked tirelessly to preserve parks in his adopted country, John Muir.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Weindorfer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athrotaxis_selaginoides

We took a short walk to pencil Pine Falls. most of Aussie's significant waterfalls are in Tassie.

Along the way, we passed the pencil pines. Ancient trees that go back to the ancient continent of Gondwana, there are early in the family tree of the cypress and pine.

On walk back to the shuttle bus, we stopped traffic to let this little guy cross safely.

Finally, after walking a bit more than 6 miles, we headed back to the car and drove through Sheffield and admired Mt. Rowland.

http://sheffieldtasmania.com.au

Then on back to the north coast to Burnie, a beach town with more penguins…and a single malt distillery (that’s for the morning)!  Tonight…more penguins.

At dusk we walked across the highway from the caravan park, went down onto the beach, and identified likely penguin burrows in the 6 to 8 foot cliff face where the road meets the beach.  We arrived at 8:30 and sat. Finally a bit after 9 pm, when darkness had fallen and the beach was only lit by the faint glow of the street lights behind us, the first penguins appeared.  We were one of three couples spread along about 50 yards of beach.  All sit of us sat motionless.

Over about the next 45 minutes about 2 dozen penguins, 1 to 4 at a time, would arrive on the surf, look around, sometimes go back, then courageously walk up the 40 foot deep beach, stopping, freezing, checking it out, then when they were ready to make a break for it, crossed the final 20 feet in 2-3 seconds.

Absolutely amazing.  No photos because it was so dark and flash would distrub them, and even an f-stop of 4.5 and a 1 second exposure were not enough to show them.   But these were the Little Penguins, just like at Phillip Island, so check back to Feb 11 to see them.