Wombats, Devils and Quolls

Cradle Mountain National Park is one of the places on this trip where I was really, REALLY hoping for good weather. Apparently they don’t get many cloud-free days here, but the karma gods gave us blue skies and a perfect forecast, and we took full advantage.

The park operates a shuttle system for entry, so we waited until 8:45am to jump on the first bus to Dove Lake. From there we hiked the circuit around the lake, with Cradle Mountain above us and the colors of the fagus, Australia’s only native deciduous tree, lighting up the cliffsides. After the two hour hike Audrey let me head off on my own to mountain goat it up the Marion’s Lookout trail, which got progressively steeper until eventually I was pulling myself up cliffs using chains that they had drilled into the rock. I’m always a fan of trails that eschew safety for stunning views, and the views from the top of this trail were one hundred percent worth sacrificing whatever cartilage still remains in my knees.

I tumbled back down the trail and Audrey met me at the Ronny’s Creek shuttle stop, which we had been told was the place in the park to see wombats. It took approximately 0.3 seconds to find our first wombat munching grass next to the boardwalk, where the pig-sized ball of fur and fat showed absolutely no concern whatsoever for the hikers who were standing a couple of feet away; my 500mm lens was definitely overkill for this particular location. During our visit at least a dozen of the rotund marsupials were out and about, and Audrey managed to capture some fairly amazing video by holding her phone out as one of them ignored her from two feet away.

Since I refuse to let a minute of any day go to waste, I booked us a night tour at the Devils@Cradle Wildlife Park, a non-profit breeding program for Tasmanian devils as well as quolls, Tasmania’s other carnivorous marsupial. We entered to find numerous large devil habitats, with some very fired-up Tasmanian devils patrolling the grasses and trees. Devil populations in the wild are crashing due to a transmissible cancer that was first documented in 1996, so the government and non-profits have set up a number of breeding programs to ensure that the species survives until they can find a vaccine or other solution. Tonight’s experience at this park may have been even better than our Devils in the Dark evening four nights ago, with more time to spend with the devils as they growled, sniffed, screamed, and otherwise lived out their very unique lives.

Sadly we’ve got only a couple of nights remaining on this awesome little island, but we have a few fun plans still in the works before we move on to other parts of Australia.