cradle mountain

I was searching through all my thousands of photo's over the weekend (I have an idea that I'll share with you next week) and found these pics that I'd taken over Easter when my friend Joh and her children visited. We were lucky enough to have a snowy day, so we packed up the car and took ourselves off to Cradle Mountain National Park. Every time I go there I think to myself that I must visit more often, but you know how it is....... life gets busy and I just forget till the next time. We've been in December when the weather is quite summery, in autumn when the Antarctic beech trees are a glorious orange and twice on a snowy winters day - not that Easter is exactly winter but it seems that way when everything is covered in snow! 

I think my favourite time to make a pilgrimage to Cradle would be autumn/winter...... the weather is crisp, there's a clearness and cleanness to the air and of course there is so much colour. Green shades of tufty lichen and mosses, red berries, pink wildflowers, russet leaves and fungi and snowy white ice crystals. If you are really fortunate there'll also be clear blue skies! We had both - snowing clouds and wind, then blue sky and sun, and in a short space of time, more snow and wind! We have a saying here that if you don't like the weather just wait 20 minutes and it will change........ and thats certainly true here at Cradle Mountain! 

Cradle Mountain is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area and attracts huge amounts of visitors each year. The walk around Dove Lake is a fair hike on boardwalks and up and down chunky stone stairs but has some beautiful views of Cradle as well as a diverse range of microclimates. I'm also a bit of a fan of Gustav Weindorfer, whose vision brought it all into being......  he was a lovely Austrian, after all! 

If you ever come down to Tassie and don't mind hundreds a few, tourists, it's well worth the trip to visit  this special place, no matter what season it is!