Marion's Lookout
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Sunday 7th February 2016 Water, snacks and picnic lunches packed, along with
sunscreen and mossie spray, we set off on foot for the bus stop at the Visitors’
Centre. On the way we discussed whether we would be too tired later to do
the evening wildlife spotting tour and visit to ‘Devils@Cradle’,
the Tasmanian Devil sanctuary. We thought that neither would probably be
too physically taxing, and as it was highly unlikely that we would see a Tassie
Devil in the wild as their numbers have been depleted by 80% in recent years, we
decided to stop in at the Visitors’ Centre and book our places for later. That done, we hopped on a bus and were shortly stepping off
at Ronny Creek bus stop. We wrote our walking plan in the register, and
set off on the very easy walking of the boardwalk at the beginning of the
Overland Track.
The Overland Track is a 5-7 day walk through the Cradle
Mountain-Lake St Clair NP from here to Lake St Clair. We just did a tiny
section!
The boardwalk made for easy walking through button grass. We
started at the purple arrow and planned to end at the red. The plan was to follow the Overland track past Crater Lake
and up to Marion’s Lookout where we would have lunch. Then we would
return along the same path before turning off on the track past the Wombat Pool
and Lake Lilla to join the Dove Lake circuit down to the boat shed, and then along
to the car park where we would sign off our arrival in the register and catch
the bus back. We could not have asked for better weather - the sun was
shining and the sky a beautiful blue. We were surrounded by vast expanses of
open space, with all the shades of green, yellow and brown you could possibly
imagine. Wonderful. This is the true meaning of the word ‘awesome’
– so jaw-droppingly beautiful one literally stands and stares in awe. Created
entirely by the earth and its natural forces, it truly puts people in their
place and reminds us we can manipulate our environment only to the extent that
Mother Nature allows us, and we would be foolish to think otherwise.
The tracks were clear and well-signed, making it easy to
find our way once the boardwalk ended.
Crater Falls, from bottom...
...to top.
Well-maintained tracks.
Crater Lake
Looking down on Crater Lake as the track went along its
edge and up to the top of the crater.
The sign said 25 minutes to Marion’s Lookout at the
top of this rock. Well, there are two people in this picture to give
scale...see below.
Someone taking in the view at the top, and someone
half-way up (or down?) on the path where it widens above the orange post. As we looked up, we realised that 25 minutes might be a
little optimistic...
These steps were fairly easy to climb.
Frequent rest stops were called for. And
of course photo stops – looking down on Crater Lake.
Looking back down the track. The
start of the tricky bit – hold on to the chain!
Come on slow-coach! Not
much of a track here!
Are we there yet? No
people-made steps here, just natural rock steps. Bit of a scramble.
Made it! Cradle Mountain from Marion’s
Lookout. Views from Marion’s Lookout:
Awesome indeed! We sat and took in the views as we ate our picnic lunch and
had a rest. It had taken us two hours to get to this spot from the
beginning of the Overland Track, and we had risen from 870 metres above sea
level at Ronny Creek to 1035m at Crater Lake and finally to 1223m here at
Marion’s Lookout. The next leg would take us back down to 920m at
Dove Lake, so hopefully not too much uphill, and lots more stunning views to
look forward to on the way. |
