Reasonable night\’s kip, not helped by the drumming of the rain on the roof overnight……

We awoke, not to put too fine a point on it, to pissing rain and temperatures of around 10 degrees, both of which remained more or less constant all day. So – a day for some necessary admin. Oh, and the washing. These things are important, you know!

Part of the hotel complex is given over to a Wilderness Centre, so we had a look round there. Quite a bit about the now extinct Tasmanian tiger, plus lots of arty-farty stuff. However, there was a really quite interesting video on permanent roll about two wildlife photographers who, in their time, had a major impact on the public perception of Tasmania and influenced the environmental lobby against further deprivation of Tasmania\’s resources by hydroelectric projects. They were Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis, both of whom, ironically, were war refugees. Again, far too much detail to go into here, but more can be found at http://www.peterdombrovskis.com and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olegas_Truchanas.

Dombrovskis, in particular, was instrumental in stopping the damming of the Gordon River in 1983, which was a huge victory for environmentalists around the world. Almost overnight, the attitude to conservation changed, not just in Tasmania, but the whole of Australia. Thought-provoking and interesting.

Managed to make it out later for a couple of short walks up near the actual entrance to Cradle Mountain National Park. This whole area is dominated by rainforest, and makes for some decent pictures:

Back again to the hotel for another good meal. Still not decided upon a plan for tomorrow, but much depends on the weather. Anyhow, next stop is Launceston, the second largest town on Tasmania after Hobart. We move on once again…..