​Cradle mountain revisited - Wednesday 12 April

The walk passes through eucalypt woodlands and button grass and heath regions

The woodlands were ablaze with 'mountain currants'
They tasted like unripe tomatoes

These are Pepperberry and as the name suggests they have a really peppery kick
We encountered so many berries (the brown bears would love it). All quite edible albeit not always terribly palatable.

Yesterday was a perfect day to end a wonderful, fabulous, exciting and rewarding time travelling in Tassie - we revisited Cradle Mountain NP for a final walk. The weather was superb - not too hot, not too cold, just right.

Having walked around Dove Lake at the beginning of our Tassie odyssey and being blown away by the beauty of the area we decided we wanted to come back some time to walk the Cradle Mountain Boardwalk. And so we did! The path meanders ​beside Dove River from the Ranger station to Ronny Creek where the Overland track begins. (We we also took a couple of other very short walks).
Amazingly this walk is ALL boardwalk which seemed so incongruous in this wilderness and such a luxury after some of the walks we've done, but the paths are designed to protect a fragile and precious environment from being trampled by people wandering all over the shop - 'plants grow by the inch but die but the foot!'

They all seem to go up! Lindsay reckons we walked up well over 400 steps;
way beyond Jacob's ladder. Where would we end up? 

It was easy going - except for all the ..... steps! They all seemed to to go up - I don't recall too many downs but ..... We take our time and stop for breaks when needed.

This little chap quietly chomped on the button grass close to the board walk.
What an adorable face. 

This is a tireless eating machine (the wombat!).
We saw the lots of evidence of that on the boardwalk!!

We encounter a bit of wild life. Got up close and personal with this adorable wombat, Bennetts wallaby, a metallic skink, saw the scat of other animals including Tassie Devils and almost missed this gorgeous moth minding its own business in a rock out of the wind. Of course we saw some fungi! but I reckon you might be all fungied out so I'll only show you one. You realise that most fungi usually grown on the ground, right? Well think about that when you contemplate me taking a shot of the underside of this little beauty, which was about 12cm across - yep almost standing on my head!

A metallic skink minding its own business

I think this is one of the Russula (in the group of Agarics which are fungi with true gills). Because I'm a curious cat always wanting to know everything, I travel with some great resources - TreeFlip, EucaFlip and FungiFlip which are wonderful colourful charts of some of Tassies lovely 'flora'. Also carry a great little reference written by Bruce Fuhrer, Aussie micologist and fungi photographer. (For other states I have various books on plants and rocks.)

No idea what species of moth this is but it caught my eye - look at his gorgeous hair do. 

Awesome view of Cradle Mountain! We were getting close to the end of our walk.

Pencil Pine Falls. Rivers and creeks were lined with leatherwood (some flowers still evident),
celery-top pine (which is not a pine but has the overall shape of some pines),
and humongous ancient craggy pencil pine 

It was a lovely day and we were sad to leave but leave we did, each harbouring secret longings to walk the Overland track.

We headed for overnight in Devonport ready for the Spirit . After a yummy fish and chip dinner we bunked down for an early start in the morning.
Roll on the next adventure! Talk to you up the track to the northern tip of Oz.