Day 3: Launceston - Cradle Mountain
Okay I AM a bad driver, and that fact was further accentuated by the Tazzie traffic. I couldn't keep to the speed limits, and when the speed limits are off I continued to crawl. I guess I lack the confidence to maintain a speed of 110km/h when I'm required to, for fear that I'll be ticketed or, worse still, become a source of roadkill.
Prior to leaving bustling Launceston (which was still pretty lazy for a weekday morning by the gauge of a Singaporean), we took a slow 10-minute drive (no thanks to me) to the
Tamar Island Wetlands and Conservation area.
Shrouded by a vast area of reed, the reserve is called home by a myriad of wildlife; we spotted black swans, mandarin ducks, egrets and many other species an ornithologist would expertly single out. Despite it being winter, the morning sun bored down mercilessly and almost fried the skin on my already-flaky nose.
Someone else eventually took over the wheel to Cataract Gorge. :|
Just a little off the city centre of Launceston is Cataract Gorge, house to the world's longest single-span chairlift that's still open for rides. The grass was lush and trimmed, the slushing sound of the rapids, the sight of little blond-headed children running across the basin pool... All that was missing from thepicture were a wholesome picnic basket of fine wine and cheese, and a James Patterson novel.
Alexandra Suspension Bridge, built over raging waters in 1940.
Then our stomachs began their melodramatic rumbling, and we knew we had to find food before we cannibalized on each other. :P What better way to satiate our hunger than to pop by one of Tazzie's celebrated cheese farms?
I've probably been to a cheese farm when I visited Australia with my parents a decade ago, but who remembers anything from then?
Ashgrove is a family-run cheese farm dating back to the 19th century. They, however, did not make cheese until the early 1990s.
The cheese lover in me pounced out and attacked the cheese samples. :P The farm also sells bottled milk, honey from farmed bees, smoked salmon from the nearby salmon farm and a variety of other Tazzie goodies. They even held tours for school children, which was sweet to the max. I stopped short of carting a whole load of cheese home only because we were doing a lot of driving and the fat from the cheese would probably separate from the curd before I reached home.
From there, we headed down to
41 Degrees South Aquaculture farm, home to farmed salmon and ginseng. What a weird trade combo, I thought. But we weren't let down by the amazing smoked salmon rillette, which is made of smoked salmon, butter, yogurt and herbs.
We thought we were hungry enough, so we ordered 5 portions of salmon rillette with toast. We were wrong. We all ended up having too much rillette left, and without toast it was kidney-killing salty. We eventually wolved down everything to fuel our long drive, and even gave the farm great business by buying up 10 pieces of smoked salmon mid-sections. (P.s: Jack will never forget this place - he decided the big dogs there were docile enough to pat.)
Then it was the start of the long and treacherous drive to Cradle Mountain. We stopped at a lookout to confirm our whereabouts, and were lucky enough to meet a Mazda MX5 group driving towards Cradle Mountain as well. And guess what? Most of the drivers, from what I observed, sported greying crops of hair. Speaking of hip granddads and grannies.
The road to Cradle Mountain were long and windy, and we would catch sight of roadkill every now and then, no thanks to the limited capacities of rodent brains. More seat-gripping were the huge trucks which would speed past you with such close proximity, you could feel the car sway from the displacement of air which hit it. Gah. And it didn't help that we were piling on clothes in the car as the temperature dipped to 6 degrees C towards the mountain. Our early departure from the cheese and salmon farms paid off - we reached our Cradle Mountain nightstead at 4pm - and the sun was almost nowhere to be seen. Plus it was raining so ever slightly, but the strong wind amplified the ferocity. We deliberately long and hesitantly as to whether we should join the night walk around the mountain to spot wildlife, but decided against it in case the weather changed for the worse. Just check in, lah.
We weren't prepared for the pleasant surprise Nature has prepared for us. Wallabies! And foraging wallabies that are alive and hopping around, not dead ones on the road.
By the way, I loved our cabin at the
Cradle Mountain Wilderness Village, simply because it came with a huge glass window from which we could peer out to do some wildlife-spotting in the comfort of our cabin. As usual, the cabin was spanking clean, and there was enough room to house 6 people comfortably. So we got down to preparing dinner with the stuff we bought from Cosco the previous night - spaghetti, pasta sauce, canned mushrooms (which were, by the way, really expensive), and local produce - wine, smoked salmon and salami. I could do with this kind of living. :)
Day 4: Cradle Mountain
There's always something to love and hate about a place, not excluding Cradle Mountain.
Dove Lake
The Tazzies are lovable people, and are painstakingly intricate and delicate in whatever they do. I could see from the way our cottage was furnished and how things always fell in the correct places. Even the boardwalks were constructed with much care - they bothered to lay wire mesh over the wood so that visitors would not have the slip of their lives while basking in the beauty and magnificence of Nature.
We tooked a 2.5-hour hike that almost took out my toes around Dove Lake first thing in the morning. The lake's water was the color of our tap water - slightly yellowish. We didn't hesitate with the tap water, though. Then it was back to the carpark to retrieve our picnic lunch.
It's decadent, I know. But how many times in your life would you get the chance to munch on a smoked salmon steak in a bun while sitting at the edge of Dove Lake? So despite the wind and the cold (especially when you're immobile and trying to get food down your dry gullet), we wolfed down our lunch and Pepsi max, and set off to Marion's Lookout.
Just because it's rated 'moderate' by the in-park map doesn't mean it's going to be a piece of cake. We spent close to 2 hours before hitting Marion's Lookout, greatly misled by signboards promising 'Marion's Lookout - 10 mins'. They should add in fine print 'if you run'. But it was a climb well worth the time, effort and bruises. The paths were marked out by reflective poles at intervals, since there was no proper paved road or boardwalk laid out on this trail. Instead, we had to grapple with gravel, rocks, muddy paths and even getting on all fours in order not to lose our balance.
We were lucky bunch, my uncle said in his text, because the mountain had been wiped by heavy snow just the week before we arrived. Instead, we reaped the good weather, accompanied by residual snow on the lookout. First encounter with the white and fluffy solid almost drove me to tears - I hadn't expect to see snow, at least not in early winter. The boys, being boys no matter how old they were physically, engaged in a snow fight which culminated in a wet spot on Jack's jeans - on his butt crack.
Tracing our route on the map
For obvious reasons, we didn't climb Cradle Mountain. We got close enough to it at Marion's Lookout and, trust me, the feeling has never been nearer to exhilarating than the moment you stood at the edge of Marion's Lookout and take in the panoramic view of the entire mountain range. For that very moment, anyone could feel like the king of the world.
Bye, Cradle Mountain. You may not be one of the Seven Wonders of the world, but you truly are a remarkable child of Mother Nature.
