June 29th (Monday) - Day 120 - Cradle Mountain and Strahan
We left Burnie behind and headed south to Cradle Mountain. This is the biggest mountain range in Tassie. It takes up around ¼ of the island and is mostly uninhabited, but it gives way to a breath taking national park. When we arrived the weather did not look too promising but after a visit to the park centre and the drive up the valley to Dove lake the weather had cleared, but was still freezing cold. Once we had signed the walking book (to allow the rangers to know who to look for if you don't come back) we set off. The summit of the mountain was covered in fog but within minutes that cleared and with the sun behind us we got some fantastic views of the mountain. Once we got moving the wind dropped and we soon warmed up. Going up left hand side of the lake was easy and it didn't take us long before we had done half the loop and were on our way back. The other side was not so easy and it took us longer than we thought. Once back at the car we drove back to the visitor centre so we could pick another walk. The problem was the bad weather was coming back and we didn't want to wander too far. Hence we picked a short waterfall walk. As it had been raining a lot the past few days the falls were in fall flow and we got some really great pictures. Just as we got back the heavens opened so we decided to push on to the place we were staying overnight. We stopped on the way at a massive sand dune range to have a look around. We arrived in Strahan just before dark which gave us enough time to realise nothing was open and no one was about. We checked into a cabin (there was 1 other person in the whole park) and had an extremely quiet night.