-day 4 of our 5 day trip to Tasmania-
Big breakfast at the Lodge, like really big: bacon, beans and eggs, pancakes with fruit, and a croissant with smoked salmon…
No internet reception in Cradle Mountain, so looked on the Lodge’s internet kiosk for Tarraleah comfirmation. At the same time checked out the new Apple iPhone announcement :), and my mail. Noticed that this day Google Wave hackathon registration would be opened at ten, hmm. So between 9 and 10 we did the Enchanted walk right at the beginning of the national park, and then headed back to this internet kiosk to register (#iamageek :).
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(http://www.flickr.com/photos/halans/3620280799/in/set-72157619587780690/)Next we did the King Billy loop walk at the Lodge, another easy walk, though it was raining a bit, leaving Cradle Mountain at 11:30, when heavy rain started. Backtracking part of the same road back. At Delaware the road started to get interesting again. At Mole Creek lot of rain, when I wished it would snow in stead (as we didn’t have snow yet). We stopped at a lookout where there was nothing to see because of the rain, where it then started to snow! We drove on and a ute was blocking the road. The car had crashed into the road railing, and it’s front wheel had broken. The local (in a t-shirt in 0C weather) managed to get the car of the road and we gave him a lift till past Bearnie, the next village. It turned out people here also don’t have (Telstra) reception, so dropped him off at a phonebooth, near Great Lake.
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(http://www.flickr.com/photos/halans/3621189946/in/set-72157619587780690/)Snow at this height had stopped and we passed some great views of the Great Lake. The road turned into gravel road, for the next 50 km. We found ourself on the great plateau, the Central Highlands, at about 1000m. Very desolate landscape (reminds me of Iceland don’t know why because I’ve never been there). More lakes and more dirt road. We finally got some asphalt again, and boy the car looked dirty. Had to clean the back window of car as it was covered in dirt.
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(http://www.flickr.com/photos/halans/3621038063/in/set-72157619587780690/)We drove past vast hydro works and arrived at Tarraleah around 4pm. Tarraleah is a village turned into a holiday village. It used to house the workmen working on the hydro works, but they have long moved on. We stayed at a refurbished school building, which was pretty cool, but also cold this time of the year. We had dinner at the local Highlander tavern (the only place for dinner), having warm smoked trout mouse and a big scotch fillet with mushroom saus. The Inn keeper was trying to scare us saying two days of snow was expected and we would be stuck!
Read on, final day 5.