Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair/West Coast

After our awesome Christmas with friends, we were off on a camping adventure...kinda.  Sometimes Tripadvisor can be extremely helpful.  It also helps if you check reviews before rather than after booking your accommodation.  Most of J and my luggage was filled with camping gear - tent, sleeping bags, air mattress, foot pump - for this next stop.  We were going to be staying at the Lake St Clair Lodge as campers.  We checked the weather and were shocked to see that it was going down to 3 degrees overnight - eeek! 

We got the tent up before dark and had dinner in the insanely overpriced and not very impressive lodge restaurant (there wasn't anything else around and we were hungry!)  We sat outside the tent on camping chairs for awhile, but the giant mosquitoes were eating us alive so we retired inside.

Jeremy at the shore of Lake St Clair

The Lake St Clair Lodge

When we woke up, we decided to do one of the walks.  Would have loved to do one of the 6ish hour ones but my destroyed foot wouldn't allow it.  NEXT TIME BRING PROPER FOOTWEAR!!!!  So we did a 1.5 hour one which consisted of three different tracks.

There was a ton of wildlife in Tassie!

An echidna was waddling around on the path and put on a little show for us.

We were supposed to stay for two nights, but we were honestly over it.  We returned from our walk and packed up.  The West Coast wasn't on our original itinerary, but we decided to give it a go so once again we got in the car and went on our way.

I'm actually really glad we did, because we got to see Queenstown, which is one of the most bizarre landscapes I've ever seen.  It has been described as a 'lunar landscape' and I can see why.  Wikipedia says:The mountains surrounding Queenstown have unusual pink and grey hues that come from the conglomerate rocks on the two most adjacent mountains - Mount Lyell and Mount Owen. The mountains surrounding Queenstown are often snowcapped through winter. Snow falls a few days out of the year.

Owing to a combination of tree removal for use in the smelters, the smelter fumes (for about 40 years), and the heavy annual rainfall, the erosion of the shallow horizon topsoil back to the harder rock profile contributed to the stark state of the mountains for many decades.

We stopped in at the West Coast Wilderness Railway.

The view down the main street of Queenstown.

More of that crazy lunar landscape.

We continued to Strahan, which I think is the only town on Tasmania's west coast (?)  Jeremy was really excited to see a sunset here, but it started pouring rain and continued all night.  That made me cranky so I didn't take any pictures.  It is a pretty little town mostly known for tourism now, but there is a lot of amazing history.  I would like to read more about Sarah Island, but here is a brief wikipedia history:

The penal station was established as a place of banishment within the Australian colonies. It took the worst convicts and those who had escaped from other settlements. The isolated land was ideally suited for its purpose. It was separated from the mainland by treacherous seas, surrounded by a mountainous wilderness and was hundreds of miles away from the colony's other settled areas.^[1] The only seaward access was through a treacherous narrow channel known as Hell's Gates.
Strong tidal currents resulted in the deaths of many convicts before they even reached the settlement due to ships foundering in the narrow rocky channel. The surveyor who mapped Sarah Island concluded that the chances of escape were "next to impossible". Neighbouring Grummet Island, a small island to the North west, was used for solitary confinement.
Despite its isolated location, a considerable number of convicts attempted to escape from the island. Bushranger Matthew Brady was among a party that successfully escaped to Hobart in 1824 after tying up their overseer and seizing a boat. James Goodwin was pardoned after his 1828 escape and was subsequently employed to make official surveys of the wilderness he had passed through. Sarah Island's most infamous escapee was Alexander Pearce who managed to get away twice. On both occasions, he cannabalised his fellow escapees.
As Sarah Island could not produce food, malnutrition, dysentery, and scurvy were often rampant among the convict population. The penal colony had to be supplied by sea. Living conditions were particularly bad in the early years of the settlement. Conditions were so crowded, convicts were unable to sleep on their backs in the communal barracks. Punishment involved solitary confinement and regular floggings - 9,100 lashes were given in 1823.
In 1824 a prisoner killed another convict in order to be executed rather than face further imprisonment at Macquarie Harbour Penal Station.
It was finally closed in late 1833. Most of the remaining convicts were then relocated to Port Arthur.^[1]