Tasmanian devil

Today I feel quite achey from walking in various body parts! Jai and Larry took turns to drive along the very winding roads. We made lots of stops to do short walks. The weather was like April showers or worse! Snd v it was cold!
Highlights along the way included spotting a huge wedge tailed eagle on the bend of the road attacking road kill. It’s the largest bird of prey in Australia with an impressive wingspan of over 9 feet.
There were lots of ‘bee boxes’ on the side of road, and the bees collect nectar from the many leatherwood trees which flower from Spring to early summer (so they have now finished). The first walk was at Franklin river, a walk through a wood with a lot of moss, and lichen, the next was Nelson Falls, then we stopped at a mining town of Queens town, then drove through Linda, Rosebury, and tullah. All the other place names had Creek in title but did not have any infrastructure.
We reached the beautiful Cradle Mountain world heritage national park at 1545 metres, area of dramatic mountains, glacier lakes, rainforests and grasslands. Bus is the main transport with bus drivers using walkie talkies to ensure giving way happened at wider parts of the road. Any other vehicles are required to follow a bus. So we got the bus to the start of a walk where we saw wombats snd then wallabies grazing. We learned about the really interesting story of Gustav Weinberger and his Kate, whose vision back in 1910 was to protect this area and create a national park. We saw the Waldheim chalet he built by himself before a road was built. It was a really interesting and sad story.
We checked into our chalet and had dinner in the restaurant just re-opened at the resort.
Tasmanian devils are not really seen in the wild so being here we took the opportunity to visit Devils at Cradle, wildlife sanctuary and breeding program and research into DFTD which is cancerous facial tumour which is transmissible. 80 % of devils were killed and it was caused by lack of genetic diversity in the population.
Quolls are rarer than devils and there were, eastern quoll ( small) black or tan, and spotted quoll much larger. Both quolls and devils are very rare to see in the wild, it was a great experience to see these animals at feeding time, and hear about them from a very knowledgeable lady keeper who hand reared some of these animals.