After another hearty breakfast in the hotel restaurant, we checked out from the hotel. We decided to take the route via Zeehan rather than go back along the windy mountain road via Queenstown. This turned out to be a much better road than the one we came in on.
We reached Cradle Mountain at about 11:45am. Unfortunately our cabin wasn’t ready. We booked in for some walks and activities for the afternoon and evening. These included a guided walk around Dove Lake, the Enchanted Stroll around the lodge site and a spotlighting trip in the evening.
The receptionist said the 9:30pm spotlighting trip was already booked out but she could offer us the 10:30pm trip which is intended for carnivores. At first I was confused by this expression because I thought she was referring to the participants as carnivores. People often describe me as a carnivore and so I thought it would be ideal. Then I realised that she was referring to the animals we were likely to see.
We decided to have lunch in the tavern. However, the service was very slow because they were short-staffed at the counter and in the kitchen. In the end, it was a rush to gobble down our food in time for the 1:30pm walk around Dove Lake.
As it turned out, we needn’t have rushed our meal quite as much because we were the only people booked in for the tour. I suspect the guide would have been prepared to wait a few minutes for us.
He drove us into the national park for the 7.5km trip to Dove Lake. The walk went right around the lake. Much of the track is a gravel path and the remainder consists of a narrow boardwalk. It was pretty flat most of the way except for a moderate climb for one stretch. There were plenty of opportunities to take photos of the lake and Cradle Mountain behind it.
When we got back from our walk at 5pm, our cabin was ready for us. It was one of the many cabins on the hill. It was a spacious cabin with a kitchen, an open fire and verandas at the front and back of the cabin.
After settling in to the cabin, we drove back down to the reception area for the Enchanted Stroll. Joel was the guide for this tour too. The path took us along both sides of the creek that flows down between the lodge and the national park. There were about 20 people in the group this time. Joel told us about the native flora and fauna again. We saw some wallabies that Joel called paddymelons.
We decided to have dinner in the tavern rather than the restaurant. To avoid the crowds, we went there before 7pm.
After dinner we retired to one of the lounge areas. Several people from an APT tour group came in while we were sitting there. We got chatting to one couple in particular. It turned out that Carol was the marketing manager for APT. Ian was also in marketing but not with APT. We told them how much we enjoyed our APT trip to the Kimberleys and Kakadu.
We found that we had a lot in common with Carol and Ian. They even have a golden retriever. We chatted with them for hours until we had to go on our spotlighting trip at 10:30pm.
Joel was our tour guide again. He took us into the national park in a jeep while holding a spotlight out the driver’s window to find wildlife. We saw Tasmanian Devils, wombats, possums and wallabies.
On the way back to the lodge at about 11:30pm, another animal scurried across the road. Joel said it was probably a quoll but it could have been a feral cat.
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