Australian tropical plants in snow
Yesterday, February 21, wasn’t much of a day to do anything. It was very cold the night before, and when we went over to the visitor information centre (just for something to occupy our time) they had recorded the temperature overnight of 0.8 ºC. For the rest of the day we didn’t do much more than read in our motorhome as it was raining almost continuously. By evening we could see snow on the tops of the mountains across the lake.
It was much better today, and although it wasn’t really warm, at least it was no longer raining. We got an early start to our hike, setting off on the loop circuit to Shadow Lake at just about 9 am. The trail is best if you go the way we did, clockwise, since it is rougher going up that way but easier to come down. The trail is fairly rough with a lot of rocks and roots. Water was running over the track in many places from all of the rain. Near the top of the track we started to see some snow. It wasn’t a lot, but it looked strange to see the green tropical plants standing in snow.
We finished the hike, about 13.5 km round trip by just after 2 pm, and drove to Strahan. The road is another narrow twisting mountain road, so travel wasn’t too fast. All along the way we saw many beehives set up in small turnouts from the highway. Many of them were more than six feet high and there were many bees flying around the hives. At one of them there was a chain across the road and a “Bees” danger sign. The highway is especially narrow and steep around the mining town of Queenstown. Here the road twists and turns around the exposed cliffs where the rocks are many shades of reds and yellows. It is quite pretty.
The caravan park we are in tonight, Strahan Holiday Park, is really full (as is the Big 4 across the road). Both have no vacancy signs out. This one is rather short of toilet facilities. We can find only about four toilets and showers, and there are close to 100 campsites here.