We were up early to avoid the heat of the day - at 0600 it was overcast, a cool 18 degrees with some rain in the air. We packed up, left Driftwood Villas and headed to Banjos bakery for breakfast - coffee and a ham and cheese toasty for John and coffee with a cheesy herb pita for me - a different but unusually nice breakfast. We were soon on the road to travel the 140 kms to Cradle Mountain - luckily not as twisty as yesterday but still some twisty parts - we passed through some more mining areas and rustic run down towns. As we turned towards Cradle Mountain there was a map of the area and a vivid scene of the white of dead trees alongside green mountain vegetation. We were now feeling thirsty so stopped at the visitor centre to pick up walking information, book ourselves on tonight's after dark wildlife tour and buy a cup of coffee.
Next stop was Devil@ Cradle a conservation project for the endangered carnivores - the Tasmanian Devil, Spotted Quoll and the Eastern Quoll. The main focus of the centre is the Devil and we were fortunate to arrive just after 1000 and get on the 1030 tour ( they only run 3 per day and some evening feeding tours). While waiting for the tour to start we looked round the enclosures eventually spotting some snoozing animals. In one enclosure there were a couple of orphaned wombats - they will be released but are currently doing very well and looked very content eating grass. The presentation which included a film and a verbal briefing explained that the fatal devil face cancer was not caused by a virus but by biting during feeding and came from a mutation in a female 20 years ago - because of the inbreeding there was no immune response and once bitten by an infected animal a devil was vulnerable. To date this has resulted in some areas losing 95% of their population. There is hope as there are some different genetic pools which are disease free but they don't know if in the long term this will be sustainable; the Devils may eventually , even if a cure is found for this, succumb to a different genetic mutation. While being shown the devils a little girl dropped her toy devil in just the wrong pen - home of the 11.2 kg prime male of the centre ( today's photograph), who is currently raging with testosterone as the breeding season is about to start! He attacked the toy and watching the keeper,with the help of another, retrieve it was interesting - when he heard the keepers he took it to his shelter and had to be distracted while it was retrieved - he was very aggressive and took some handling we watched as he bit and growled at a sack the keeper was holding as a foil. The tearful girl was reunited with her toy which will apparently be fine after a wash and a few stitches to poke the protruding stuffing back !!
A great tour which we thoroughly enjoyed and learnt a lot.
Next stop Peppers Lodge - we checked in and had lunch but as we couldn't move into our room until 2pm we walked to the parks interpretive centre to learn some more about Cradle Mountain. It was definitely hotting up and when we finally got the key to our cabin the temperature was registering 32 degrees.
Our afternoon was spent sleeping - after our early start, busy morning and the heat we were bushed - the sleep ensured we were ready to enjoy the night tour.
We were collected just before 2030 hours by the National Parks bus, we then collected 19 other people and headed back to Devils @ Cradle to see the night feeding of the Devils and Quolls. It was good just to hear the piercing screams of the Devils as they fought and postured over the food - dead pademelon was on the menu tonight. As they are solitary independent animals it is normally the hungriest who dominant a the feed - they don't have hierarchies like other carnivorous animals. Feeding over we used a spot light to find other nocturnal animals in the area i.e. wombats, pademelons, Bennett's wallabies and brush tailed possums. It was the first time I realised that wombats have a backward facing pouch - as we saw one with a baby poking out and possums carry their young on their back - we also saw mum with one on top scurrying into a ditch. We finished just after 2230 and were dropped back at the Lodge where we had a hot chocolate in our room while preparing for our self guided walk in Cradle Mountain tomorrow.