Earlier this year, my partner and I booked a middle-of-the-road Airbnb at Bridport for the Tasmanian Scallop Fiesta.
It didn’t break the bank, it was detached – no awkward small talk with the host – and it was conveniently located for our evening stumble home after a long day of slurping scallops and cuvée.
We came armed with a gourmet selection dreaming of our hungover fry-up: fat, glistening snags, smokey bacon, eggs, haloumi.
There was only one problem, we soon discovered.
The entirety of our kitchen equipment in the Airbnb consisted of a toaster, microwave and kettle.
This is not a problem you will come across at Discovery Parks Cradle Mountain’s new crop of 11 premium mountain cabins nestled at the edge of Tasmania’s most famous national park, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair.
The premium cabins, part of a $20m investment by owners G’Day Group that has seen the installation of dozens of additional cabins and campsites, as well as upgrades to the toilet blocks and camp kitchen, have an unparallel level of amenity.
Enormous fridge. Oven and hob. Dishwasher. Crockery, cutlery and utensils. Coffee machine stocked with pods, hot chocolate and tea. Complimentary Ashgrove cheese, water crackers, House of Anvers chocolate, fruit and nut mix, bottled water, and Devil’s Corner cuvée. Television. Bath. Shower. Electric fireplace. Couch. Breakfast table. Deck with outdoor seating. And a kingsize bed that even Henry VIII might have found suitable to his tastes.
A few of these accoutrements deserve further examination.
The electric fireplace is set within a gorgeous exposed stone mantelpiece. A press of the button and within seconds it roars to life. The hum it produces is soothing, like rain on a corrugated iron roof.
The freestanding bath, nestled against a panoramic window which can be shielded by automatic blinds, beckons you in. It is sleek, modern, inviting. It has a handheld shower head, too, which sends hot water cascading over one’s pelt.
The overall effect is as if you are in a village with an unpronounceable name in the Swiss Alps, a tiny speck on the map beneath the looming grandeur of the Matterhorn. Seriously, you will not want to leave this premium mountain cabin.
Of course, one does not go to Cradle to disappear into a bed for days at a time, as irresistible as that sounds for a sluggish man in his late twenties, like myself. Adventure calls.
A two-minute drive took us to the trailhead of a gorgeous walk to Knyvet and Pencil Pines falls.
This 45-minute return walk is Tolkienesque. The dappled sunlight illuminates enormous jutting cauliflowers of vivid green moss, hardy alpine shrubs clinging to the soil, and towering trees leviathan in their proportion.
We were waylaid on the way back by one of the most beautiful Bennett’s wallabies I have ever seen, grazing just 10m from the track.
Wallabies are not in the ‘top tier’ of Australian mammals that excites the soul. Yet we were transfixed by this beautiful girl: the sheen of her luscious fur, her clumsy scratches of her chest, the way her graceful mouth stripped the foliage from branches.
After dinner – my partner made a charcuterie board on par with the roof of the Sistine Chapel, bursting with colour and chiaroscuro contrast – we embarked on a short drive in a bid to sight some ‘top tier’ mammals.
We thought a glimpse of a wombat or two would be pleasing. In the end, we saw seven or eight of the stout creatures, grazing in clearings as obdurate and comfortable as a steer in a well-maintained paddock.
The pademelons and wallabies, meanwhile, were ubiquitous.
Humankind has been divorced from the animal world. We eat the cows, pet the dogs, but we do not inhabit the same plane. But you do at Cradle Mountain.
Better was to come the following day, when in an incredible stretch, we saw no fewer than eight echidnas. In my previous 29 years, I had seen maybe two in the wild.
Our second day was highlighted by a drive to Lake Lea, a shallow limestone bowl within the moonscape Vale of Belvoir.
It was one of the wildest places I had ever been. It was an alien world, like a mixture of Naboo and Hoth from Star Wars.
Needless to say, we only scratched the surface of what the region has to offer. The Dove Lake Circuit. Crater Lake. Marions Lookout. Devils @ Cradle. There is never enough time.
Who is the market for these new premium mountain cabins? It is not the intrepid explorer who spends her tax return each October on Kathmandu or Paddy Pallin.
It is not the harried parents who is forced to shepherd a gaggle of wailing children across the island state, a holiday in name but not in nature.
This is for the time-poor professional. The young couple falling in love. The older couple rekindling the spark.
Holidaying can be messy, stressful. But it doesn’t need to be.
MAKE A NOTE
Discovery Parks Cradle Mountain
3832 Cradle Mountain Rd, Cradle Mountain, TAS 7310.
Reception is open from 8am–6pm in summer, seven days a week, with self check-in available outside these hours.
Premium mountain cabins start at $300/night in the off-season and $500/night in peak season.
Perfect for: Time-poor professionals, young couples, parents on a kid-free weekend.
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