Tasmania – Cradle Mountain

Last week we went to Tasmania.  Nick had never been there, and in a week off he wanted to go walking in the Cradle Mountain area.  His girlfriend was working and so Sue and I were able to take advantage of his organisational ability: he booked the flights to Hobart, the car hire and the accommodation!  All we had to do was turn up.

This is the sort of scenery we could anticipate

The Cradle Mountain Nation Park is a wonderful area: beautiful scenery, very few people, wonderful food available.

Even the wildlife is easy to find and see.  As you can tell, the wombats are not afraid of humans – somewhat to their detriment as there are many seen dead by the roadside.

Actually the park authorities do well to protect them.  Although cars are not prohibited, there is a free bus service to and from Dove Lake, and the cars cost extra to get into the park, so many people leave them at the park entrance.

We hoped to get to the summit of Cradle Mountain (although both Sue and I have been there before).

It is a very tough climb, especially the last section.

There are well-constructed boardwalks over much of the trails, to minimise tourist- mediated erosion.

 

Nick gave an excellent lesson to me in how good it is to be tall – he could reach relatively easily from one enormous boulder to the next, whereas for me it was a real struggle.

Sue had to wait for us about 80% of the way up, above the snow-line (it had snowed the previous weekend).

 

 

This is us on the way down, and Nick throwing a snowball!

 

 

 

 

 

Overall Tasmania was just wonderful – clean environment, beautiful country, wonderful walks and lovely food: we had no less than three memorable degustation-style meals whilst we were there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[double-click on any image to enlarge]

Mudgee

We have just spent the weekend in Mudgee, a little town about 3 hours drive from Glenbrook – over 200km. The above was the view from the house we shared with three other couples – local friends from home. The reason for this particular weekend was a sculpture exhibition at one of the Mudgee wineries.

It was very good, too, with several very impressive or amusing sculptures (or both, as you can possibly see).

Very good

The house we stayed in was very nice, and Mudgee has a lot to recommend it. Very prosperous in the times of a local gold-rush, it has a seriously impressive railway station, alas no longer in use.

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Furthermore, it has an opera house !

For country NSW, this is quite something.

Cricket

Nick and I had a really good afternoon playing cricket today.

Nick is a much better batsman than I am of course, but we asked that we could open the innings for our team – that is to go in as the first two batsmen.

From my point of view it worked well

Nick and I scored 51 between us, in pursuit of the oppositions score of 78.  So far, so good.  At that point I had only scored 2, and Nick 45, but we seemed to be going well.  For me this is excellent.  I can hold one end whilst Nick gets on with what he’s good at: scoring runs.  The bowling was good, but clearly not that good – we were more than 15 overs in at this point.  

Then Nick was out: he cut behind square, a full-blooded meat-of-the-bat shot, but it went straight to a fielder and he was caught out.  I was out two overs later, unfortunately, and my team was all out for 73 !!!

So we lost.  Not what you would have expected at the point where we were 0-51. I think we are a good opening pair – it would be much better if I scored like Nick can do, but then we would be playing in a higher grade anyway.  I get to have a very good view of Nick’s batting and I can tell you it’s a pleasure to watch.  If we had just scored half-a-dozen more …. That’s cricket, at anyway that’s what it is in Ninth Grade!