​February 17 - Minor bucket list day

Today we crossed something off our bucket list - we walked around Dove lake in the Cradle Mountain National Park. It was beautiful! The circuit is 6 km through heathland and woods of beech, myrtle and other strange and exotic lushness.

Lindsay heading out on the Dove Lake circuit

They list it as an easy walk of 2 hours - we took over 3 hours which is normal for us, we always take longer! In addition to the regular Dweag (Wheat-Doig) stops to look at birds and photograph flowers and generally look at everything that caught our eye along the track, I struggled a bit with the climbs (which weren't expected) such is the dismal state of my fitness level. But we made it! Yay!!! Wet - oh yes because it drizzled and rained much of the walk. But as they say this is Tasmania! We were close to cloud line some of the time - it was gorgeous and we'd both highly recommend it - that's if you can't manage the 6-7 day Overland track! I tell you our thermals and raincoats AND walking sticks got a good work out today.

The next day we left for Wynyard via Sheffield, but with promises to return to do some of the other walks accessible from this northern end of the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair NP.
The north-west coast is different to the north east coast. Calmer waters, big tides, shallower and with an air of calm.

Rain clouds over Wynyard

We camped at Beach Retreat tourist park right on the beach - really beautiful with a board walk right along the beach into the village.
We stuffed ourselves almost sick on a Sunday roast lamb lunch at the local pub and dashed home between squalls of rain. Those clouds were teetering on saturation point!
The weather has been unseasonable it seems with a fair bit of rain and much cooler temperatures than normal - so we took a drive into Burnie to buy more thermals. They have been our life savers.
The next day we were heading  into the wide blue ceiling in another tiny plane in the care of yet another Biggles team whisking us off to King Island this time off the north west corner of Tassie mainland.