The Loch Ness platypus!

I've always wanted to see a platypus in the wild, but had resigned myself to the thought that they are much too rare and, to see one, I'd have to be very patient and spend days sitting near a likely river. On the third day of our trip we saw one! I'm still rather excited!

For the entire road trip we'd been passing signs saying "Cradle Mountain 50km" with Alice enthusiastically trying to convince us to turn off and head up to the mountain. Anna and I had ignored her. However, on our last day we had to decide between seeing the wild North-West coast of Tasmania, or heading inland back to the mountains. Alice won! We first went off to "Boat Harbour" to get some breakfast. The views of the perfectly clear ocean were beautiful. We ambled around a deserted beach, got very wet when a wave came from nowhere while I was looking at the brightly coloured sea anemones in the rock pools and then decided to continue our hunt for breakfast elsewhere. We drove through Scarborough to Burnie where we had an enormous breakfast before continuing to the Burnie cheese factory. It was good! We spent a happy half-hour tasting all the different cheeses and honey before setting off again towards the Cradle Mountain national park.

We were soon back in the "Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area". The wikipedia article on this area doesn't seem very good (maybe we should update it?), but does give the interesting piece of information that "The Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park is a significant location of Tasmania's endemic species - 40-55% of the park's documented alpine flora is endemic." I'm sure that you'll also be extremely excited to learn that the Cradle Mountain area also has "Australia's only deciduous tree" which has the exciting name of Nothofagus gunni. Now you know!!

Anyway, Anna skillfully drove the car down a very narrow road with a few tour buses coming in the opposite direction (I must admit that I shut my eyes a few times as our car seemed to be about to plunge over the edge) until we reached Dove Lake. It was raining and misty! We went to register that we were going on a walk, tried to find some dry clothes (and failed) and headed off to hike around the lake. Wow! The photo on the link that I provided above shows a beautiful, calm lake with some gorges mountains around (the mountain at the back is Cradle Mountain). We had wind, freezing rain, mist amongst the snow capped mountains and huge, thundering waterfalls that were pouring off the mountain sides. It was exciting. We kept imagining huge monsters that lived in the lake and had a huge shock when we stopped for a very wet picnic to spot a shape in the water moving towards us. It was a platypus! It didn't stay on the surface for long, but it was swimming less than 10m away from us!

We also walked through wonderful forests where the trees were completely covered in fungi and mosses. It was stunning and the walk has really made me want to get back to this area in Tasmania to have a go at the Overland Track. Anybody want to come with me? I recommend packing something waterproof!

After completing our walk we had assumed that it would only take us an hour or two to get to Launceston where we could find some wineries in the local area. However, our time estimation didn't take into account my extremely slow driving. There was one stretch of road where I think that I averaged about 30km/hr due to the number of 180 degree bends in the road. I enjoyed myself. Alice felt sick. We went to see a huge dam, drove through a beautiful farming area and ended up in "Paradise". I'm glad to be able to report that Paradise is very green, very wet and doesn't have a tea shop. Unfortunately, all the wineries were closing by the time we reached the Launceston area and so we simply went to the airport and chatted about what a great holiday we had just had.

(P.S. the flight back was quite funny as the guy in the seat behind us took a fancy to Alice and Anna and got quite excited showing them photographs of his house - "This is my sink", "This is where I keep my tractor" ... I've decided that I like Tasmania!!)