Tasmania 2023 – Week 3 Mole Creek
Day 24
You don’t have to do a lot to have an amazing day and sometimes there are no words to describe the day and today was one of those days – we saw nature in a fabulously different way between the eons old limestone caves of King Solomon’s Cave and the gorgeous creatures, and fabulous guide Taylah, at Trowunna Wildlife Sanctuary.
Overnight, the temperature had dropped quite low and when we set out this morning, after a false start going in the wrong direction (but identifying where we needed to be later), it was 5 degrees – 5.5 degrees colder than the caves we were about to explore. But first, there was fungi to be seen and seen it was – such tiny wee things that you could easily miss, in wonderful yellows and greens.
The caves are a phenomenal creation of nature, tens of millions of years old and discovered by someone’s dog chasing a wallaby, so the story goes, down a hole in the earth. Thanks to recent rains, you can see water dripping down the stalactites and into the pools in the caves. There is the “wishing well” and tubes that have formed down over tree roots, iron deposits which colour the limestone and then there are the slabs of stone from when the earth has moved, millions of years ago. Words fail me as to how you describe such feats from Mother Nature.
Returning from the Caves, we stopped in at Eathwater Café, which will close today for a while. Lovely food and good coffee to be had here. There was a car club out for a spin – Porches, McLaren, Ferrari all current model or looked like it and the egos to go with but we shall leave that point for another day (what I mean is “don’t be a dick” when you have one of these high performance cars which are not designed for these sorts of roads). What was really lovely was the location and the huge bumble bee like creature that was bobbing in and out of what looked like a hollyhock or similar.
For the afternoon, we had a one-on-one tour booked at Trowunna Wildlife Sanctuary. We patted a quoll, a wombat, a Devil and came close to the Wedge-Tail Eagle. You don’t get this in the free tour that is offered. Again, how do you describe nature. What you can describe is the poor behaviour of mankind in not looking after these majestic creatures – creatures that cannot, for the most part, be released into the wild because of man’s behaviour and attitudes e.g. about eagles and sheep. That’s also for another day.
To round out the evening, we head to the nearby Mole Creek Hotel where they are a bit Thylacine mad. Good pub food, and entertainment from the locals watching the AFL. Life is so much simpler in these parts of the world – or at least so it seems as you sit sipping the mainland white wine as the footie plays on the television.
