We woke up to an almost cloud free sky, but none of us were convinced that this would hold all day and certainly didn't trust the weather to be the same over Cradle Mountain where we had planned to drive today. I called a couple of numbers around Cradle Mountain. The first woman I talked to said it was a beautiful day and that we should come down. The next lady I got on the phone said the exact opposite. She said she couldn't see Cradle Mountain because it was covered in clouds. The ranger mentioned something about 95% cloud coverage over the airstrip, but only about 5% over Cradle Mountain. We didn't really know what to use all this contradicting information for and decided to go there anyway - by car though. GOOD that we did so! By the time we arrived at Cradle Mountain the sky was COMPLETELY clear of clouds. Not ONE single spot on the horizon - zip, nil, nothing at all.

First we went to see Waldheim, a hut that the Austrian Gustav Weindorfer had built in 1912. Weindorfer's mission in life was to make this area a national park and luckily he succeeded. Walking through the adjacent rainforest was, as Chez put it, like walking through a scene from "The Lord of the Rings" - moss all over the place.

There is lot of wildlife in this area - even in the middle of the day, which is a bit unusual. First Chez spotted a wombat (the first one we've seen outside captivity) and shortly after a couple of wallabies (kind of small kangaroos) that were more than happy to be handfed with an apple.

Everybody at the Dove Lake car park was talking about the magnificent weather and that you only get a very few days like this a year. We heard the ranger saying, "It won't get better than this". Chez and Paul couldn't believe our luck when it comes to weather.

After a great (I'm about to run low on superlatives by now) lunch that Chez had brought, we started to hike up to Marions Lookout. Breathtaking views! To bad we didn't have the equipment (warm clothes and sleeping bags) and time (about five days - preferably in summer) to continue to Lake St. Clair on the "Overland Track" - one of Australia's finest bushwalks.

By now we had taken over 100 pictures with the digital camera and had to delete some of them to get space for more pictures - which we undoubtful would take on the way back to the car. We choose a different route and passed Wombat Pool and Lake Lilla - beautiful reflections of the grey-green surroundings in the last daylight.

Before heading back home we made a short stop at the Cradle Mountain Lodge to see some possums that go there every night to get fed. Tasmanian Devils do show up once in while, but unfortunately not while we were there.

We're sure that Grummy was disappointed that we didn't fly on this wonderful day, but flying would also have ment that we would have had to leave Cradle Mountain fairly early that afternoon to be able to get home before last light. There wouldn't have been time to do the hikes we did, to see the sun set and watch the animals coming out after dark. Taking the car was a good decision after all.