Friday we were up early despite protests from one member of the party who thought we were on holidays. We grabbed some supplies from the IGA adjoining the Cabin area and then headed off to Cradle Mountain. We had a reasonably steady drive across through Deloraine and Mole Creek. One of the things that struck us most was the hedges of Hawthorne (I think) – many of which were up to twenty odd feet high - along both sides of the road. Almost all of them were covered in white blossoms. We drove up to a cave known as King Solomon’s Mine only to find that the first tour didn’t start for an hour and a half but that there was another cave about 10 minutes back where the tours started in half an hour. These were the Marapooka caves so we hightailed it back there and did that tour before then going back to the tour at King Solomon’s Mine.
Both of these sets of caves were quite spectacular – the Marapooka caves being known as wet caves and are a lot further below ground level. An added interest here was the spectacular show of Glow worms in one area. These caves are much more active than the King Soloman’s Caves The latter have much more colour as the seepage contains much more discolouration than that of the Marapooka system. There are many quite spectacular formations in both cave systems.
After leaving the caves we wound our way towards Cradle Mountain National Park – and I mean wound as the road across to Cethana and Moina is very winding and quite steep in places- but still an enjoyable drive. It does pass through a lot of forestry country with some large areas having been logged out and replanted only to be clear felled again.
Finally we arrived at Cradle Mountain Resort area where we booked into our cabin, unpacked our bags and had lunch. We were welcomed to our quarters by one of the locals who just happened to love bread. We drove down to the National Park headquarters and checking that it was OK to take our own vehicle as far as Dove Lake. Then it was on to the lake and on with the walking shoes for the 6.6 km walk around the lake. All went well for the first couple of kilometres and we were really enjoying our stroll when Mum caught her foot on a step and caused her knee to lock up, resulting in great pain. Undeterred we battled on and I promised Mother I would massage her knees “if” we made it back to the start within 2½ hours. Onwards ever onwards - but worse was to come after another kilometre or so mum caught her other foot and beggared her other knee – from then on it was pretty slow going – especially when we came to steps, and steps there were aplenty. The views were quite spectacular but I don’t think mum really appreciated them as almost every yard was excruciatingly painful. I thought I might have to leave Mum behind and go get a helicopter or perhaps a boat, however, with me pushing uphill and providing a shoulder to lean on downhill we finally made it back to the car. Alas for Mother it was outside the 2½ hour time limit for the knee massage. Oh, alright, I’m not that mean.
No comments:
Post a Comment