Natural Splendour. - Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Australia
Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Australia
16-03-16 Cradle Mountain drive
Arose at 6.30 to get an early start for a 40 odd kilometre
drive to the National Park.
Just as well as they now limit the number of cars within the
park with a boom gate count. We made it
through and I enjoyed the drive through narrow passing sections at a speed
limit of 40k per hour. Most were going
my way so no big deal.
Many memories brought back from the family trip there 30
years previously. That time we took the
6 berth camper in and free camped in the carpark of the historic Weindorfer’s
Waldheim Chalets. It was so cold that summer night that I ran the gas cooktop
to keep us warm! Mercy! We survived
however!! Would never happen now!
The authorities are doing their best to maintain the park in
the original condition it was in when Gustav Weindorfer first established
Cradle Mountain as a wonderful destination with the construction of the
Waldheim Chalet, which you can still enter to inspect it today.
There is a link from him to the Indian Motorbike. A group rode to the destination and stayed as
house guests. It was a motorbike that
finally took him when he was leaving the hut for winter on his bike and he
found it troublesome to start. He was
later found dead and then buried at the Chalet with special permission from the
current authorities in 1932.
We came across about 5 Indian motorbikes in the Information
Centre’s carpark during our visit. Were
they making a pilgrimage we wonder?
We drove to the end of the road to Dove Lake. A splendid vista of water framed by huge
rugged mountains. We rugged up – Gil
with her bright coloured gloves so that she could be found if she got lost and
I with my purple knitted hat. By the end
of our two short walks there we were perspiring but the wind was cold enough to
keep us rugged up.
Our first destination was the boat shed at the Lake’s
edge. It was shingle covered and well
worn. Vandals had written their names on
the interior walls – a desecration of an old building full of history more
stunning than theirs!
We then retraced our steps to climb up to a glaciated worn
rock which rose out of the water’s edge.
You could observe the striations scored into its surface by ancient
glacial ice. The view was splendid and extended from the car park to the set of
peaks which featured a saddle between them. I later saw old pictures of the Mt
Cradle summit…full of scatted scree being observed by a walker in a long skirt
complete with a fancy hat! They bred
them tough in those days!
Next we retraced the narrow road until we reached a shallow,
rocky waterway called Ronny Creek. We settled at a picnic table and enjoyed the
ham and cheese sandwiches we had brought.
The sun was delicious and the air fresh with the sound of water running
over pebbles. After lunch we went off up
a board walk to the Waldheim Chalet. It followed the water way for a while
where we saw the evidence of wombats - cube-shaped poo! There was plenty of it but we didn’t see a
wombat until later when we were returning to the car. The 10 minute walk turned
into 15 as the grade increased. Might
have done it according to recommended time a few years ago!! Eventually we were
enjoying the charm of the alpine chalet that had been there since about 1911.
We dropped into the Interpretation Centre to see displays of
the relief of the area, old photos and info re the local fauna and flora.
On our way back to the camp at Gowrie Park we took a turn
off the road to a lookout. There we
discovered a dam with a hydro-electric power station nestled in some deep
valleys. Later we found the dam wall off
another road. Our first look at an HEP
station.
A long day of walking – for me at least - saw us having a
superb dinner of wine and cheeses under the awning until the sun disappeared
after 7.00pm. By gees that Brown Bros Pinot Gris is a fine drop. We had bought that at Shepparton. Obviously it had matured to perfection
between there and Gowrie Park!