MOT Tour Day 8 - Devonport to Cradle Mountain

Sweet little pademelons joined
us in the maze

 We left behind one of the lesser parks of our experience, this morning. It was certainly clean and the staff were friendly but it was old and a little haphazard and very tired. The power hook up was a good example. Instead of the fairly standard stand alone post with power outlets, our site had to unlocked circuit boards. One had three or four unmarked plug in points. One had a cross ruled through it. Another had come off the board and was hanging by wires. I aske the manager for guidance and she arrived with a small, bedside clock radio, which she proceeded to plug in. "When the radio come on, I know I've got the right one".

Get the idea?

On our way to Cradle Mountain with the news that we can expect single digit temperatures during the day and rain, at least until the third day of a four day stay. We weren't phased. 

We travelled a lot of back roads to get to Tasmazia and the Village of Crackpot, a series of mazes and a miniature village (5:1 scale) set up by local dairy farmer Brian Inder in the early 1980's on his property, Promised Land. Disillusioned with the lot of a cow-puller, he fulfilled a childhood dream of creating a hedge maze. While he waited for it to grow, he developed the Village of Crackpot and opened the doors to the public in 1987. The business boomed and Inder added other mazes and an additional hidden village of quirky buildings which have the hallmarks of a child's imagination. 

Embassy of Cuba

Despite rain and cool temperatures, this was a lot of fun. We are both a bit terrified of mazes but they assured us they’d come looking for us at 4.00pm, when we checked in at 11:00 o’clock! The mazes are well maintain and varied. In the big maze, there are lots of funny dad jokes at dead ends. We especially loved the pademelons who were in from the rain and feeding on the hedges, ensuring us an eventual way out. In fact, I swear one of them led us out. The small villages are full of whimsy and irreverent humour, especially the Embassies of the World. It was only at Crackpot Village I baulked. In among funny touches were a few exhibits which could potential frighten young children or at least give today’s parent a hard time to explain them. Small negative but not enough to diminish the rating. Lovely staff, although once checked in, you are left to your own devices. The Cafe isn’t operating but they still run a limited menu which is both tasty and reasonable.

After lunch, much of the remaining 40 odd kms to Cradle Mountain were over mostly narrow, mostly very winding, very slow roads. Very few speed advisory signs or centrelines and hardly any other vehicles on the road ... except trucks. Big trucks. B double trucks. One white-knuckled moment happened on a hairpin bend on the Cethana Road, not far from the dam. One truck pulled hard into the outside of the bend and signalled me around. As I finished negotiating the tight space and moved away, a truck coming in the opposite direction came around the next bend about half a metre on my side of the centre lines!

Of course, I had been warned about backroads in Tassie. 

When we arrived at Cradle Mountain, we missed the caravan park turn in and headed off down a road we didn't want to go down. This is never a good look because in a van, you can't just "chuck a Uie" and three-point turns don't exist for caravans. Luckily a broad driveway loomed and there was just enough room to make the turn. When we retraced our steps, the signage seemed obvious until I realised there had been a dirt haulage truck in the driveway when we came past and he blocked out the signage which was all at ground level. Are we spotting a recurrent theme here?

Click here for today's photos

It was raining when we arrived so we just did the bare minimum and erected the Avan so we would have a place to sit in the warm. It was about 6C. By studying the BOM live rain charts, we worked out it would stop in about 45 minutes and then give us a one hour window to set up.

Done.

Rain of and on for most of tomorrow and then on Saturday and Sunday we should get a chance to walk. Bucket list place for both of us.