Cradle Mountain - Tasmania

Cradle Mountain is one of those iconic images of Australia along with Uluru, the Harbour Bridge and the 12 Apostles. It truly is breathtakingly beautiful and within reach of virtually anyone. There is accommodation to suit all budgets but a word for the wary - there are places with names like cradle view or similar that may be as far as 40 or 50 kilometers away from the Park boundary. We stayed at Cosy Cabins literally a five minute slow drive from the park gates. The cabins were comfortable and warm when they needed to be and the general store in the camping ground catered for most things. It was considerably cheaper to stay their than somewhere like cradle mountain lodge - not that I am criticising that place because it's fantastic.

I recommend purchasing a Tasmanian National Parks car-pass which is good for two months, costs around $50 and gets you into all of the parks in the state as many times as you want to go. If you have one of those tickets you can catch a free bus all the way into Dove Lake car park although, when we were there it wasn't quite the peak season so it was just as easy for us to drive ourselves in each day. Buses leave every 20 minutes from the Cradle information centre and stop at several places along the road in to pick up and drop of passengers.

On a trip in November 2007 here are some images of Cradle Mountain.

Brighton Beach 1

I have played around with some photoshop filters on these ones.

Narooma New South Wales

Sherbrooke Forest

These were all taken about a 10 minute drive from where I live on the outskirts of Melbourne on the Sherbrooke Falls Track near Ferny Creek.

Glen Helen Gorge

Sydney

Walhalla 6