Do you see what I see?

We're back from Cradle Mountain.  We had a great time despite almost two days of rain.  Wednesday evening after we got to the lodge we decided to go for a short walk before dinner.  We had been walking maybe 5 minutes when we came upon this pademelon.

Do you see anything interesting in the above picture?  That's right-a joey!

So cute and tiny!  The mama wasn't scared of us at all and we got to watch them eat grass together for a while.

It was such a great start to our trip!

Cradle Mountain Trip

Hi all!

Tomorrow (Wednesday) we are going to Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park until Saturday.  We are staying at the Cradle Mountain Lodge.  Once again we will be without internet while we are gone so look for posts about our trip after we get back Saturday or Sunday.  We are looking forward to lots more hiking and we're hoping to see a wombat!  I know Ben is really looking forward to this trip because it has been a very busy 5 days at work for him. 

Giving Thanks and Caravanning

So we didn't really celebrate Thanksgiving this week since it isn't celebrated in Australia.  It really doesn't feel like the holiday season with it getting to be summer here.  We are very thankful though to get to have this experience in Tasmania and for our friends and family who love and support us.

On a completely different subject, we have been noticing in our travels around Tasmania lately lots of caravans.  Some of them are RV's like we see in the States but lots of them are just big vans that have been outfitted in the back with beds, dining table, etc.  Aussies seem to love their road trips and we've seen all different ages of people out caravanning.  We are starting to plan a trip once Ben is done with his commitment to the hospital to rent a caravan and travel around to the places on mainland Australia that we haven't gotten to go to yet.  Should be exciting and will of course make for some interesting blog posts!

Wetland Wanderin'

We had another good walk, this one was through the Tamar River Conservation Area.  This is an important wetlands reserve about 15 minutes from our house.  The walk comprises a boardwalk over the marsh to Tamar Island.



The boardwalk wanders through the reeds to a paperbark forest where there is a bird blind.  We spooked a pair of ducks and their brood on the way.  The black geese and their goslings were out, and we also saw a Purple Swamphen.

The estuary environment changes with the tides to reveal the mud bottom.  You can see where the birds have walked!

East Coast Slideshow

We downloaded a free program called PhotoScape to help us edit our pictures.  It has a feature to create files called animated .gif which work like slideshows.  Using an online photo-hosting site called Photobucket, we can post these slideshows to our blog.  Hopefully, we'll be able to share more pictures this way (the current total for our trip is around 1200 photos).

Echidna!

During the drive back to Launceston from St. Helens, the A3 takes a winding path through the mountains.  Consequently, you can only travel at about 30mph.  Driving more slowly allowed us to spot this beautiful Short-beaked Echidna.

Like the platypus, the echidna is another Monotreme, an egg-laying mammal.  The Short-beaked Echidna used to be known as the Spiny Anteater, but has little in common with anteaters beyond diet.  This is the only species of echidna in Australia, but there are a three other species in New Guinea.  We've now seen all of the Australian monotremes!

The Grass Tree

Throughout our travels in Australia and Tasmania, we've seen some spectacular tree ferns.  Some of these ferns have been 20-30 feet tall.  This forest near the base of St. Columba falls was particularly impressive (above).  The tree ferns in this area are likely 100-200 years old.  The 'trunks' of these trees are actually dead plant matter left behind by each succession of fronds.  In the center of these trunks, the roots extend from the fronds above to the ground below.  Cutting off the tops of these tree ferns has been used to transplant them.  One nickname of these plants in Tasmania is the "Man Fern."

While we were hiking on the Freycinet peninsula, we came across a related plant called the Grass Tree.  Rather than fronds, this plant has long, thin, spiky leaves.  Like the Tree Fern, the Grass Tree grows very slowly and can be several hundred years old.  This plant often requires fire to stimulate it's reproduction, so it's rarely seen flowering.  Our picture below shows a blackened trunk from previous fires.