Cradle Mountain National Park

 We spent the morning in Cradle Mountain National Park, which is also a UNESCO protected area. Tasmania has over 40% of its land protected as national parks (most of it in Western Tasmania) and 30% UNESCO designated.  Cradle Mountain includes huge expanses of alpine bogs and meadows, as well as deciduous forests and temperate rain forests. We walked through all of those on a cool and misty morning. Yes, our Australia weather found us again.  At one point in the hike is a place for an iconic photo — Lake Dove and its old boat house in the foreground and Cradle Mountain in the background.  For us, the foreground was no problem.  The background was another thing…the mountain was completely hidden in the low clouds.

This afternoon we walked on a 1.5 km trail that started by our cabin and ended by the main lodge.  The sun broke through the mist at a perfect time, just as we reached an overlook and we actually got a good view of Cradle Mountain.  This area is primary (temperate) rain forest. Although we had walked in another such forest two days ago, this one felt older. The myrtle beech trees grow in a gnarled manner, become covered  in mosses and have a shallow root system— this results in a lot of massive fallen but not decomposing trunks. The effect is both magical and a little creepy. 

After dinner we visited a local sanctuary dedicated to raising « insurance populations » of carnivorous marsupials, mostly Quolls and Tasmanian Devils. Quolls are small (2-6 kg) and nimble, able to catch prey three times their size.  Both Eastern and Spotted-tail Quolls are endangered and dropping in population in the wild, largely thanks to our old friends the feral cats. Tasmanian Devils are much better known, larger, and were thriving before the appearance of the contagious cancer that has killed about 85% of the wild Devil population.  So the center, and others like it, conduct intentional breeding programs (in the case of Devils, entirely cancer-free) to ensure the survival of these species.

The sanctuary consists of large open air pens, where the animals can behave and interact fairly normally. We heard a lot of the famous Devil vocalisations and watched them chase each other and roar. The Quoll enclosures have steel mesh on the top so they don’t climb out. We watched the different species be fed, which in the Devil case was pretty noisy and contentious. 

Pictured: primary forest, views of  Cradle Mountain in the mist and in the sun, Eastern Quoll, Tasmanian Devil