Tasmania to Tokyo – Freycinet National Park – Day 11 can be found here.
We had a sudden, late-night realization as we were drifting off to sleep – we had forgotten to double-check that the unit we’d booked in Cradle Mountain has the right number of beds.
This is prime nightmare material for us, right up there with having to write an exam for a course that you forgot you had – and by the way, you don’t have any pants on.
It’s also the natural consequence of us booking these holidays so far out. The e-mail chain for the booking in question is more than a year old, and it involves my wife specifically asking if she could book for a family chalet.
After they initially booked us in for the wrong dates – and changing descriptions at some point in there – that got changed to a superior two bedroom chalet. The issue? One version of the two bedroom chalet has two beds, and the other has three.
The kicker? We were also supposed to have paid a deposit last week – and no reminder has been sent out, and no deposit has been paid.
Perhaps worst of all, we have violated one of our prime travel commandments – Thou shalt not decrease the luxury level of your stay. If thou wishest to stay at budget accommodation, thou doest so at the start of thy trip and then increase thy luxury from there.
Not so with Cradle Mountain Discovery Village – it’s the least expensive accommodation from our entire trip, and by a significant margin.
Long, deep sigh.
So, we went back to check the details – and realize that what we really want at this stage is one of the newer deluxe suites instead of a superior. There are still some available on the website, so we e-mail our request.
Combine this – however – with a 6 am wake-up the following morning, along with a rapid commute to our horseback riding in Harveydale, and you have the makings of a terrible night’s sleep.
Ah, well. No matter how expertly you spin the plates, eventually one of them is going to fall.
Up not-so-bright and extra-early the following morning. Thankfully, we have mostly loaded our gargantuon rental van Stay Puft with luggage the night before, so it’s mostly just a matter of reminding one another that yes, we do truly want to be awake and dragging ourselves out to the van. My wife also manages to make peanut butter and jam sandwiches for everyone’s breakfast.
We swing by the front desk on the way out to settle up the bill. We are there moments before they are due to open, but the clerk takes pity on me and opens 5 minutes before 7 am. We needn’t have bothered – she could have billed everything to the credit card on file – but I’m still glad to have it done and dusted before we hit the road.
We could have potentially taken some pastries with us, but no such luck – breakfast doesn’t start for a few more minutes, and the pastries aren’t out yet. We are also fully out of time – we have a 2 hours 38 minute drive, and we need to be there in 2 hours 45 minutes. It’s going to be tight.
Thankfully, there aren’t many cars on the road and we’re able to make up some time enroute, even while strictly adhering to Australia’s speed limits. (Even a 6 km / hour overage is enough to get you a ticket here, according to their signs – which is not the case in Canada, where speed limits are often treated as polite suggestions.)
More stunning scenery enroute to Harveydale:
The clock ticks downward – until we hit construction, and it starts ticking upward once more.
Time passes, and the kilometres continue to slip by. We enjoy some cold pizza for second breakfast. It’s a definite morale booster.
Eventually, we reach the Harveydale Rodeo Grounds – right on time! We pause long enough to apply some sunscreen and use the bathrooms they have on site. They even have toilet paper and sinks with running water – which is more than we expected from rodeo grounds, or from most Ontario conservation areas to be honest.
The people running the ride are incredibly friendly – safety conscious but easy going. We pick our helmets, meet our horses, attend our safety briefing / demonstration, and we are on our way.
(Sans GoPro this time around, as Australia has new regulations regarding helmet attachments – we’d be fine if we had a magnetic mount as those can be easily dislodged, but my strap attachment is unfortunately forbidden as it could compromise the effectiveness of the helmet.)
Fair enough! They have kindly offered to take photos and video for us during the ride, and I will be sure to pick one of those new mounts up once we get back to Canada.
We are also able to make contact with Cradle Mountain Discovery Parks, who confirms that they can offer us a deluxe unit with three beds. And would we like to take advantage of that? Why yes, we would.
We e-mail to confirm – after stomping up and down the rodeo grounds a few times, looking for signal – and reassure them that we will be there well in advance of Reception’s closure at 6 pm. (Which seems like a reasonable timing, so far…)
With that now settled, we head off on our horseback ride. It’s a quiet ride today, with just us and two other riders – with four staff to accompany us, or almost as many staff as riders.
The scenery is beautiful and varied.
We start out along a gravel road before moving to forested paths, and eventually to wide open vistas.
We’re serenaded by the chattering laughter of the Kookaburra – it brings to mind the lyrics of an old campfire song:
Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree,
Merry merry king of the bush is he.
Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra,
Gay your life must be!
And then my wife spots a Tiger snake. That’s less of a happy moment – though, despite being the second most venemous snake in Tasmania, they rarely bite unless cornered. And it isn’t! This time!
My wife also deeply appreciates that her horse, Evie, is not deathly afraid of snakes – unlike certain horses she normally rides, which have hysterics when they spot a stick that could possibly be considered a snake, despite having already walked past said stick five times already.
The ride lasts for a full two hours on horseback, not including preparation, mounting and dismounting time. It’s a good length for a ride – any more and you’d really need to have some sort of lunch break in there, and then we have to wonder whether the kids are going to eat the food, and there’s the time it takes to get back onto the horses again, and so on and so forth.
(This is why we ended up at Harveydale as opposed to Cradle Mountain – which only offers half-day rides with lunch, and which are not ideally suited to younger children. And to the best of our knowledge, they have since stopped offering rides at Cradle Mountain entirely since we first contacted them 15 months ago. Baker’s Beach remains an option, however.)
They even gave our daughter and other experienced riders the chance to trot around the ring both at the beginning and the end of the ride. This was a good compromise, as several riders did not have the skills and experience needed for trotting or cantering during the group ride.
And on the way out, we made another fine discovery – a juvenile echidna!
A rare treat, indeed.
We try to get the photos from the ride at this point, but the technology gods are not cooperating – so we plan to receive them via WhatsApp later on instead.
Off for lunch at the Hub Cafe in Westbury. I start with a cappucino:
They use beautiful stoneware for their mugs
Then I have a cheeseburger:
My wife has the roast beef sandwich:
Our son has the chicken burger:
And our daughter has eggs and toast (not pictured).
The Harveydale staff also strongly recommended the Western Tiers Distillery as a great option for lunch, but the Hub Cafe has something that Western Tiers does not – namely, proximity to a grocery store. So we ply the kids with ice cream cones as we pick up groceries for the next few days.
But no wine, sadly. There is one bottle takeaway spot – “Love Lucy Boots” – but sadly it’s closed on Wednesday. So we continue our drive to Cradle Mountain wineless. (But not entirely dry, as we have absconded with the contents of our Freycinet Lodge mini-bar.)
Another 90 minutes to go – perchance to arrive before reception closes. Since we haven’t pre-paid it’s non-negotiable that we arrive before 6pm. So it’s back on the road:
And… we make it! Better still, they have a deluxe suite available for us – with not 3 beds, but 5. (There’s an extra set of bunkbeds in this one.) It’s also the newer unit, which is exactly what we wanted.
And we manage to pick up an extra bottle of wine here – though interestingly, it’s only available to those staying on site.
Off to our new deluxe unit, only to discover that our keycards don’t work. Back to the reception area, new keycards, and back to the deluxe unit – success! We’re in.
Yes, there are a couple of stains on the carpet. (Why would you even put in carpet when you’ve also used nice laminate flooring?) And yes, there is a very large and only somewhat dead fly on the window sill. And the kids do need to make up their own beds.
But everything else?
Perfectly adequate.
I cook dinner for the first time in weeks, and it goes well enough – though it takes me almost twenty minutes to boil water using their gas cooktop. I’ve been spoiled by our induction stove back home. Eventually I manage to get a credible pasta bolognese onto the table.
Time to eat up, though, because we’re due for the Devils@Cradle sunset tour:
Devils@Cradle is a wildlife sanctuary that is part of Australia’s official breeding program for Tasmanian devils. They have many devils on site – I think close to 40? – but are not able to release them into the wild yet because of the Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), which has reduced Tasmanian devil numbers by 85%. Efforts to roll out a vaccine are progressing, and staff are hopeful that they will be able to start reintroducing devils into the wild in roughly two years.
Tasmanian devils were also once subject to government bounties, as there was a misconception that they were killing farmers’ sheep – in reality, sheep were actually dying due to malnutrition as Tasmanian grasses lack many of the nutrients found in European grasses. The Tasmanian devils were only acting as scavengers. The bounty program was lifted, but unfortunately not until after Tasmanian devil numbers were drastically reduced, and the Tasmanian tiger had gone fully extinct.
We start by spending some time out on the observation deck. The devils are already out and about, making some truly wonderful noises and occasionally brawling with one another:
But mostly, they are adorable:
Our guide Rory comes out with desserts for everyone, including caramel corn, raspberry fudge and local honey shortbread. Beers, wine and non-alcoholic beverages are also on offer:
As are marshmallows for roasting:
We also learn that Devils@Cradle also runs breeding programs for spotted-tail quolls and Eastern quolls – which they are able to reintroduce into the wild. Together with Tasmanian devils, these make up the three largest carnivorous marupials in Tasmania.
Once dessert wraps up, we go and have a visit with some of the juvenile devils. Two of them – Narina and Uki – were hand-reared by Rory. He brings Narina out so that we can see her up close, and to give her a gentle pat.
Rory is careful to ensure that Narina is handled gently, and that no one touches her face, ears or shoulders.
As an aside, while researching this post I searched up “Rory Devils@Cradle” and found the following description –
Rory Jr. is a confident little man who loves a good cuddle and face scratch and is regularly found in a pouch snuggling with his brother.
Only after some care re-reading and deep personal reflection did I realize that the website was talking about Rory Jr. the quoll, and not Rory the keeper. Oops!
Rory Jr., who enjoys a good face scratch – I mean, who doesn’t? (Image Credit: Devils@Cradle)
We then continue on to visit a spotted-tail quoll named Leela:
The spotted-tail quoll is actually a better hunter than the Tasmanian devil, which mostly acts as a scavenger. They can hunt prey up to 10 kilograms, which is roughly 4 times their size. They are considered an apex predator in Tasmania! (But not in mainland Australia, which was impacted by the introduction of foxes from Euorpe.)
We then move on to the Eastern quoll, which are particularly shy today.
Eastern quolls tend to rely more on insects, and occasionally on food scavenged from Tasmanian devils. They are unique among the quoll species as their fur comes in two completely different colours, fawn and black.
We return to the Tasmanian devil area, where Rory provides the juveniles with their dinner – a freshly-culled wallaby. The population of wallabies continues to explode without significant natural predators – and as a result of the introduction of European grasses. The Tasmanian devil will eat the entire wallaby, including the bones.
Though occasionally fights break out over who gets what:
It was a really informative visit, and we very much enjoyed seeing the work done by Devils@Cradle up close. While the 8:30 pm feeding tour is less expensive – and the animals are even more active – we found the sunset tour to be a better fit with our early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule.
Back to our Cradle Mountain Wilderness Village – just in time for sunset.
We then promptly crash out after a long and busy day. We’ll need our rest for tomorrow, as we are headed off in search of platypus.