Well we lucked out again with the weather. This morning was cloudy and threatening
rain but most of today will be taken up with the 4 hour drive across Tasmania
to the west coast and Cradle Mountain. After breakfast, we took a short walk to
Honeymoon Bay, ½ km from our cabin.
I think that the other beaches we saw yesterday were much more
appropriate for a honeymoon.
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| Honeymoon Beach |
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| Kookaburra and Gray fantail |
The drive took us on some pretty small country roads through
beautiful countryside.
Interestingly, this area, between Railton and Sheffield is the medicinal
poppy capital of the world, where a good portion of our Tylenol #3 and MSO4
comes from. We were fortunate to
be here when the poppies were blooming making for great photographs.
Mt. Roland
dominated the scenery in this area, and we were able to see it in varying
lights and angles.
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| Mt. Roland |
These small towns also have their own claims to fame. Railton is the topiary town with over
150 tree/bush sculptures along the main street and side streets.
Sheffield is the mural town. Milt thought that this might have just
been their spin on graffiti. En
route we stopped at a tourist information center to try to find someplace for
lunch that was opened. Today is
Boxing Day here, and most everything is closed. We have been asking around to find out the origin of Boxing
Day and we’ve gotten lots of conflicting answers. Milt and I decided that this
would be a good Leno interview on the street question. Our first response was
that it was called Boxing Day because you had to get rid of all the empty boxes
from Christmas presents the day before.
Another answer was that the name referred to boxing matches and other
types of sports events that took place after Christmas. The third and most plausible one came
from an elderly British gentleman who said that it referred to the custom of
putting away special Christmas top hats into hatboxes the day after
Christmas. Most of the people we
asked first responses were “I don’t really know”.
Still perplexed about Boxing Day, we were directed to a
restaurant along our route that was opened, Christmas Hill Raspberry Farm and
Café where nearly everything had raspberries (which Jeri hates). But, we were
able to find a sandwich that lacked the red fruit, and a dessert (lemon tart)
with the raspberry sauce on the side.
I envied Rhonda and Milt with a delicious looking raspberry sundae for
dessert.
The drive up to Cradle Mountain required us to negotiate a
narrow, twisting, steep mountain road,
similar to the drive over Smugglers’ Notch, except I’m driving on the wrong
side of the road. When we finally
reached Cradle Mountain Lodge, they had to pry my fingers off the steering
wheel. The lodge is situated nicely inside the national park close to the trail
head parking lots. At reception,
we were told there was a platypus that lived in the pond in front of the lodge
and it can often be seen at dawn and dusk.
After dinner, we bundled up (it was pretty cold in the
mountains especially at night), and camped out around the pond.
We stayed out
from 8pm to 10pm watching and waiting patiently. But by 10 we were cold, tired, and frustrated and decided we
will take up the vigil again at 5:30 tomorrow morning.
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