The final stop in the Tassie Adventure was Launceston, Tasmania's second largest 'city'. Nowhere near as beautiful as Hobart and sadly lacking in atmosphere it was a bit disappointing. We stayed just outside the city in a suburb called Grindelwald which amused the Harry Potter fan in me, in a strange thing called a Swiss Village...a collection of small villas clustered around a small lake (pond) and a golf course. Our villa was basically a large-ish room with two double beds, a sofa, a dining room table and a kitchenette squeezed in it. It also had a lovely large bathroom. We went for a wander in Launceston and some pub food but it wasn't very inspiring so we went back for some TV and bed.

The next day was a biggy, we headed west to Cradle Mountain National Park which is a World Heritage Site. It took the obligatory two and a half hours to get there (according to Lonely Planet, longer in reality) through the windiest mountain roads where the speed limits dropped to 35kmph for hairpin bends. Nightmare! The last part is so narrow and twisty that you have to do it by shuttle bus!

We arrived at the park entrance and dutifully signed in to the log book so the rangers might know where we were if we got lost - reassuring eh!? Then we headed off on the two hour hike around Dove Lake at the base of Cradle Mountain. When we started it was quite cloudy and cool, the summit of the mountain was barely visible and the lake water looked grey and uninviting but a bit later on the sun came out and the clouds cleared and all was well! The hike (well walk really, it was mostly on handy boardwalk!) took us around the perimeter of the lake for about 6km through some forest and along the shore. We even saw two Tiger snakes (yes they are venomous) having a snooze on some logs which, as you can imagine, I was very excited about! My first deadly wild beasties!

We finished the walk in just over two hours due to haribo stops with some mad American grannies who were eating their sandwiches and then headed up to the visitors' centre for recuperative chips before heading back on the same road to Launceston. Or so we thought...it turns out that whilst desperately trying to pass a really slow minibus and being relieved when it turned off we should have actually followed it instead of haring off in the wrong direction. We ended up in Devonport, a slight detour but only about 30km out of the way so it wasn't a disaster! Serves the speed demon in me right I suppose!

Our last day in Tassie dawned drizzly and grey, after a bit of a mooch around the town (including visiting the city park where a colony of Japanese macaque monkeys live randomly) we headed towards Cataract Gorge where it started to properly tip it down. We thought we better had do it anyway so headed off to pay our $15 for the chair lift up to the top. The gorge, I'd imagine, would be wonderful and impressive in the sunshine but looked a bit sad in the rain. We got drenched walking around but were determined to make the most of it. We then got back to the car about two hours before we needed to take it back to the airport and couldn't really face heading back into Launceston centre or walking more about Cataract Gorge so instead we put Music and Lyrics on my MP3 player, rested it against the gear stick, had an earphone each and sat in the carpark watching it and eating all our snacks - we're a pair of losers!

And with that we headed back to the airport, said goodbye to our little car (they didn't notice the dent in the front bumper!) and boarded our plane in the pouring rain back to sunny Melbourne.