My wife and I live in Noosa Heads Queensland and are very keen bushwalkers. We have a coffee table book called “The 30 Best Walks in the World” We are working our way through it and have completed “The Kokoda Track” (New Guinea) “Thorsbourne Trail” (Hinchenbrook Island QLD) and of course the Cradle Mountain Walk.
The last we did in January 2007 with “Cradle Mountain Huts” it was a fantastic adventure with all sorts of weather thrown at us. We had sleet on the first day followed by a complete white out and snow on the second, from then on it got sunnier every day. We climbed Mt Ossa in perfect sunshine and even took a dip in Lake St Clare at the end. The only regret we had was not climbing Cradle Mountain itself due to bad weather on that day.
This year we took some relatives for a driving trip around Tassie which included a couple of nights at Cradle Mountain so we could do that bit as a day trip. In talking about our upcoming holiday we convinced ten of our keen walking friends that they should do the walk too. They all booked to go a month after us. We thought they needed extra incentive to climb Cradle Mountain as well so took a rock that we found on the beach at Strahan and placed it under the rock cairn on top of the mountain. We took photos of the specially marked rock’s location and told the group that we would like the rock brought back to Noosa as a trophy. It worked a treat, there is no way the group would have done that climb without that goal in front of them and they had to really push the guide to let them go as it made their first day really huge.
They did it and found the sense of achievement well worth it. The view from the top in good weather is sensational.
The rock was presented to us over coffee the week after they returned from what they all felt was the best walk they had ever done. They did have one complaint and that was that 2kg was far too much rock to have to carry for 5 days and fly back with. We might take the rock to Bay of Fires next year.