2i8 Weindorfer, The Cradle Mountains, Tasmania, [^"^'a ^^'' 



with some of the camp outfit packed into swags, leaving the 

 Fiery via Hounslow Heath for Crater Lake, from where they 

 returned the same night, agreeably surprised by the appear- 

 ance of the owner of the hut, who, as horses and man had been 

 sent back to the station, was a welcome addition to the party. 

 So, strengthened by one swag-carrying unit, we set out on the 

 morning of the 3rd at 9 a.m., taking with us the most important 

 articles, abruptly rising along the creek until, at the foot of 

 Mount Remus, Hounslow Heath was reached. This heath, 

 about five miles long, and in its widest part three miles wide, 

 is in its greater part covered with button-grass, which, through 

 repeated burning-off by prospectors and hunters, was obliged 

 to abandon its monopoly and to make room for native grasses, 

 among which, here and there, some mountain daisies and 

 Celmisia longijolia struggle for their existence on this desolate, 

 wind-swept, high plateau (3,000 to 3,800 feet). Our direction 

 towards the Dove valley brought us in a south-east course to 

 the cutting of Pencil-pine Creek, which is here and there 

 relieved of the monotonous surroundings by little clusters of 

 the Pencil Pine, Arthrotaxis cupressoides. 



The day being beautiful, and that glorious mountain air, 

 combined with the fact that every step brought us nearer and 

 nearer to the lofty mountains, was decidedly instrumental in 

 helping us along at a fair pace. So it was that we reached, at 

 I p.m., in the Dove valley, the track leading to the Cradle 

 valley, about two miles from its entrance (2,930 feet). The 

 slope of Dove valley, on which we had to descend, is prettily 

 wooded with an open forest of gum-trees, interrupted here and 

 there by stretches of pine forest, beech, and sassafras — as a 

 rule indicating the course of a little creek — open patches in the 

 valley displaying a luxuriant growth of Diplarrhena morcsa. 



At our camp, chosen the day before, at Crater Lake (3,470 

 feet), we arrived at 4 p.m., and soon all hands were busily 

 engaged in pitching the tents and to provide for general comfort 

 in a primeval way. If it had not been for the magnificent 

 sight which the cliffs, towering over the little mountain lake, 

 displayed to us, or the wide view offered in the opposite direc- 

 tion down into the grassy lands of Cradle valley, the place we 

 had selected for a week's stay could hardly be called a good 

 one. Twisted and gnarled gum-trees, their stems and branches 

 seemingly turned round their own axis like the winding stem 

 of some gigantic climber left standing without its support, 

 silently disclosed to us the fact that our place in stormy 

 weather was nothing but a wind-hole, which, luckily for us, 

 preserved its silence during our stay. But two advantages were 

 obvious — the one, that all the surrounding lower scrubs, mostly 

 consisting of Bceckia Gunniana and Epacris lanuginosa, were 



