Hobart to Cradle Mountain National Park

We spent most of the day on the road, but that was fine – it was windy and raining most of the day. Wayne told us about the slaughter of the aborigines on Tasmania. Even though the island supports over 500,000 people today, when Hobart was founded in 18—only about 5000 Aborigines were on the island, and most of them died soon after of European diseases. There is some speculation that the population may have been higher in the 18^th century, but whalers and sealers accidentally introduced the European diseases. Some of the early settlers actually helped feed the aborigines since they were taking away their land. But as more settlers came, they would kill the natives. Finally, the last 150 were rounded up and sent to a nearby island where the state took care of them, but most died anyway. There are no pure blood aborigines left on Tasmania. We stopped in Ross for some coffee. Here we saw the third oldest bridge in Australia. This town like all Australian towns has a World War I memorial, with a list of the people who died in that war. Remember that World War I was mostly a European war, but the Aussies volunteered to help fight with the British.

Railton World War I Memorial with topiaries

We’re on our way to Cradle Mountain National Park. Each small town along the way tries to attract tourists. For example, in Railton, many of the yards have topiaries: dragons, giraffes, lions, etc. Even the World War I memorial in this town has the usual stone monument, but soldier topiaries next to it.

Reflections of Time mural

Lunch was in Sheffield, a town with murals on the buildings or the best mounted in parks. I particularly enjoyed the park with the theme: Reflections of Time. We arrived at Cradle Mountain about 3 PM. We had planned to take a hike on the Enchanted Walk, but the rain was pouring and the wind blowing, so we cancelled to try tomorrow morning. We still did the animal night tour. It was still raining and it took a while for us to spot anything.  We eventually discovered several wombats, followed by two types of kangaroo like marsupials: the Bennett;s wallaby and Pademelons. It was fun to see them, particularly the little ones hopping away from our spotting lights. 

Pademelon