We left Melbourne at about five in the evening for our overnight water crossing to Tasmania, on board the lovely Spirit of Tasmania. I had rented us a private cabin for the trip, which, although tiny, did have one queen sized bed and two bunk beds.
Guess who got the bunk beds. It wasn’t Rob. Although he spent most of the night in the ship bar so it wouldn’t have mattered to him anyway.
We arrived in Devonport at about 8:00 am and headed to our hotel. We had rented a couple of rooms to get ourselves oriented to Tasmania and prepare for our Overland Track backpacking trip.
We headed to our hotel, which was a “4 Star” rated Tasmanian hotel called the Gateway Motor Inn, and supposedly the nicest hotel in Devonport. My room had a double bed and a twin bed, with un-matching bedspreads, a circa 1970’s TV set, and a tiny bathroom with the toilet flushing mechanism mounted on the wall beside the sink. There was a picture of a blue cat in an apron beside the contraption pointing with her paw to the flush button. Quaint.
I tried to talk Rob into renting a car to tour around the island, but he said he wasn’t up for it. Snapped it at me, in fact. He wanted to go to his room and lie down. This initiated a discussion about the backpacking trip. After a very short talk we determined that there was no way Rob would be able to hike for even one day with his roughly 30 pound backpack on his back.
We walked to a local travel agency and made arrangements to rent a cabin at the beautiful Cradle Mountain Lodge, a lovely cabin-based resort in the heart of Tasmania. From the lodge we could do day hikes as Rob felt up to it, and he could rest his back for the next leg of our trip, which was another horseback trip that would be even more demanding than our Australian Pub Crawl.
The Cradle Mountain Lodge was lovely to see.
I was greeted at check in by one of the resident brush-tailed possums. It bit me immediately after Rob took this picture.
We checked into our cabin, which was lovely, with the exception being that it had only one bed.
Guess who got the bed? It wasn’t me.
Rob immediately became enamored of the fireplace in the cabin. He embarked on what would be his obsession for our entire week in the cabin…..building the largest fire possible and keeping it burning at all times, maintaining a room temperature of no less than 120 degrees at all times. It felt that hot, anyway.
I settled my sleeping bag down on the floor next to a window, where I spent every night with the window cracked open to allow enough cool air that I could sleep in the stifling heat.
The resort was very lovely and offered many amenities. It had hiking trails throughout the property and they boasted some absolutely incredible views.
You could hike along this beautiful river on the a walkway right from your cabin door.
It was truly spectacular.
Our first night there we had a visit from one of the resident possums. It came to the window and looked inside, scratching gently on the screen.
Rob opened the window. Our hotel literature told us very clearly not to feed the possums, as they could acquire a fatal disease from human food called “Lumpy Jaw.” (I know…it sounds like they made that up.) Rob apparently did not read that part.
It also told us not to let the animals in the cabins under any circumstances. Rob didn’t read that part either.
We eventually had to chase the possum from our room with sticks from the fireplace. I don’t think that had been his first taste of human food.
The weather took a turn for the worst on our first full day at the resort. We woke to driving rain, which didn’t stop me from embarking on a three-hour horseback trek from the small stables down the road from our cabin. The ride was miserable. The horses were untrained, it was unbelievably muddy, and my mount was noticeably lame.
The weather turned even worse that afternoon, with snow falling through evening and for the next couple of days. It was lovely, but we were so glad we were not in the middle of nowhere, living out of our backpacks as we had planned to do.
Our little cabin was cozy and warm, with the ever-burning fire sending a plume of smoke in the air.
We spent lots of hours in the lodge watering hole, called the Tavern Bar. We played pool and drank and ate the hours away.
A couple of days into the visit we met some new friends.
Penny and Tess were college friends embarking on a one year walk-about of Australia. They were staying in their ancient van, which had the unfortunate feature of a leaky roof. The girls were so sweet that we invited them to stay with us in the cabin for a couple of days. They were happy to pitch their sleeping bags on the floor. We all settled in just fine.
We went on a long day-hike with them, through the spitting sleet and snow, to the top of Cradle Mountain.
Rob calls this my “Admiral Bird” look. I don’t really know what that means, but it sounds funny anyway.
Penny and Tess left to continue their trip a couple of days later, leaving while Rob and I were on a four-wheeler riding escapade. It was really, really fun riding through all the mud.
When we got back to the cabin Penny and Tess had cleaned it all up, their skills putting the hotel maids to shame. And they left us this note.
See, I wasn’t making it up about the fireplace.
Rob spent a couple more days getting massaged at the hotel spa, and we relaxed and got ready for the next leg of our trip. I was rested and ready to go by the time our Cradle Mountain visit came to an end.
Next week we’ll fly to Christchurch, New Zealand, to embark on a ride with the real “Man From Snowy River.”
Chronicles of a Desperate Horsewife 