Cradle Mountain

We turned inland and ventured into a mountain kingdom worthy of a fairytale. It was fortunate that the land had so much to offer because the people left a lot to be desired. My relationship with the Cosy Cabins reception staff was anything but cosy. Our bus arrived from Launceston at 10:30am and we walked up to our accomodation in the rain. We greeted a few girls behind reception and 1 of them, a blonde freak, replied with 'check in's not til 1'. So much for the importance of a first impression, surely they teach you that at Reception School.

The National Park is a hiker's heaven with unbelievable alpine scenery and vegetation all easily accessible on day walks. We must have had our energiser batteries in because we covered a huge amount of ground in our 2 days in the area, doing a loop around Dove Lake, a circuit past Crater Lake and a tough trek to the summit of Cradle Mountain. This involved quite a bit of scrambling over massive dolomite boulders and I'd definately not recommend it to anybody afraid of heights.

The landscape was coloured with wildflowers and we saw wombats, echidnas, Padymelons and even Tasmanian Devils. I won't mention the possoms because they are really starting to irritate me, which brings me back to the reception staff. Our 2 nights at the lodge would conveniently be in different rooms and we had to check out, store our luggage and check back in later the same afternoon. When we arrived back to our luggage we discovered that 1 of our bags was missing. Jacks mentioned this to reception and we were told that a bus driver had probably taken it by mistake. By this point my sense of humour was also missing and I told them that I probably wouldn't strangle anybody if our bag was returned immediately. Luckily it was with us within the hour and my criminal record remains intact.