Here’s wishing all of our family and friends a very Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and safe and enjoyable 2012! This week we are staying in a beautiful 1821 colonial stone cottage in the historic Georgian village of Richmond near Hobart Tasmania. We’re just about to head out to Hatchers Manor for Christmas lunch. Next week we’ll celebrate New Years in a 1835 stone cottage in picturesque Stanley on the north coast of Tasmania.

The boys are very excited to be spending Christmas with Grandma. They love all of their little presents. The theme for this year was Kombi vans and Lightning ‘El Rayo’ McQueen and his friends from the Disney movie Cars. Thank you very much for all of your Christmas wishes. We look forward to seeing you sometime during our travels in 2012.

Lotsa Love Tim Bec Erik & Oscar

We have a very nice campsite by the edge of Lake Parangana. There were a few other caravans around and they all looked like they were there for the long haul. Just like we saw at Arthur River, they enclose their campsites with six foot high hessian screens – it is very odd. During a walk with Erik he pointed to the ground and asked ‘whats that’? I looked down and it was a baby snake slithering between our feet! Yikes!

Love Bec

We did a pretty drive from Sheffield to Chudleigh where we had lunch in a little park and then checked out the honey museum/store. The store had about 40 different types of honey including honey ice-cream. After we had an ice-cream we headed to the Alum Cliffs. It’s a short hike that takes you to a stunning lookout over a ravine. Thankfully Erik walked the whole way. We then headed down to Lake Parangana for a few days.

Love Bec

Today Tim needed to ride into town in the afternoon to pick up a prescription. I knew one of the bikes had a flat tyre so we got the bikes off the rack in the morning. We found that the tyre wasn’t just flat it was melted! It turns out that the exhaust is too close to the bikes. As the damage was already done we returned the damaged bike to the rack. Erik and Oscar enjoyed the beautiful sunny weather playing on the grass for the day. After Tim returned from town he took Erik for a ride around the velodrome that was around the outside of the cricket ground.

Love Bec

We left the highlands today and headed to Sheffield. We ate lunch in a lovely park where Erik got to play on the biggest slide we had ever seen and Oscar got to eat numerous daisies. Sheffield is the town of murals so we spent the afternoon doing a walking tour and checking them all out. Erik and Oscar also got to pat an Alpaca that roams around town with his owner. Towards the end of the day we were stopped by two different groups of people from the same office who were doing a scavenger hunt. The first time Tim was asked for his shirt so someone could pose in it and the second time (as we were getting in our van) we were asked if they could take a photo of our shower (with all four people in it).

Sheffield is an RV friendly town and this means there is a designated free camping area, water available and black water disposal. The camping area was at the local cricket ground and had a 96 hour limit. There were about ten vans there and everyone was very friendly so we spent the afternoon chatting to our neighbours. We also bought a cool retro 1970s coffee table to use inside and outside our van.

Love Bec

We spent the morning doing clothes washing and playing outside. In the afternoon we went on two short walks, the Enchanted Walk and Knyvet Falls. Both walks follow the river that marks the National Park’s boundary. They went through moss covered forest that looked like something out of Lord of the Rings. They were both very peaceful walks and in between the walks we came across a wombat munching on some grass outside the Cradle Mountain Lodge.

Love Bec

Today our hike started from the Ronny Creek car park and went to Crater Falls, Crater Lake, Marion’s Lookout, Wombat Pool, Lake Lilla and back to Dove Lake. If you think that sounds far then you would be right! Unfortunately Erik was tired at the start of the hike and fell asleep in the Ergo Pack (on my back). Oscar was happy and awake for most of the morning. But again a walk that should be 2.5 hours took us 5 hours (including stopping of lunch).

The hike was lovely, hands down the best we have ever done. The walk started on a boardwalk across a beautiful valley and then crossed a creek to join the overland track. It was steep going up to Crater Falls but past them the track levelled out and we enjoyed a fabulous view back down to the valley we had started the walk from. The lake was surrounded by steep cliffs and the track followed the western side of Crater Lake and then climbed up the to the ridge where the track split. As it was still early in the day we decided to go the extra distance and climb up to Marion’s Lookout. The Lookout is reached by VERY steep steps which at one point has a chain to assist you to climb. Luckily Erik was asleep for the ascent but he has a built in sensor and woke up just as we reached the top.

It was a 360 degree view from the top and we stopped to have lunch to enjoy the stunning Cradle Mountain from yet another angle. The climb down Marion’s Lookout was hard on the knees, at the bottom we got Erik out of the ergo pack and let him walk. It was slow going but Erik walked the last three kilometres on his own. It was mostly downhill with some steps and plank crossings over muddy patches. Erik enjoyed the walk and we were all buggered by the end of it.

Love Bec

Yay! We are finally at Cradle Mountain. We are staying in the van park right across from the visitor info centre where the free shuttle buses run into the National Park. We spent an hour checking out the hikes and deciding on which ones to do on what days. It was a pretty cold day today, so we decided to do the hike around Dove Lake which is at the base of Cradle Mountain.

The road within the park is very narrow and the park encourages people to catch the shuttle buses instead of driving. However, some people do drive and it made for some hairy moments when the bus met on coming cars during the single lane parts. The shuttle buses didn’t have the same problem as they keep in radio contact.

It was cold and windy at the start of the hike so we rugged up the boys in beanies and gloves. The hike followed the edge of the lake and had spectacular views of the mountain and a few waterfalls. We ate lunch on a small beach and at one point there were flourishes of snow. Unfortunately Erik was tired and cracked the sads and refused to walk so I ended up carrying him in the Ergo Pack. After a while he fell asleep and spent the majority of the hike snoring. About half way around the lake the clouds thinned out and the sun appeared and it became quite warm after that. We enjoyed our hike immensely but were sore and tired by the time we got back to the van park.

Love Bec

We headed to Rosebery this morning to visit one of Tim’s old school friends who we had heard was in Tasmania somewhere. Tim had sent him and email a couple of days before and when we got a reply, were very surprised to find out that Tim’s friend, Tim Brettell, was living only 30 minutes away from where we were camped. We dropped in for a visit. Erik had a lot of fun playing with Tim and Alison’s two children Jack (almost four) and Hannah (20 months). We stayed for lunch and then continued our journey to Cradle Mountain. Where we will be spending four or five nights.

Love Bec

Tim needed to do work so I took the kids for a walk. Erik stopped every few minutes to have a go at peeing on a tree (unsuccessfully). A fisherman camping nearby told us about a tiger snake he saw not far from our campsite.

Love Bec