Today started out sunny but cold. We packed the car and drove to Lake St. Claire National Park. Neither of the kids seem to be in a good mood today, after a late night last night and an early morning this morning. Nathan, in particular, was being very difficult and easily upset, so our planned short walk was aborted not far in and we walked back to the start along the edge of the lake. He did, however, have fun throwing stones (which were abundant at the edge of the lake) into the lake. So did Toby, for that matter.
The drive from Lake St. Claire was through a drier-looking forest than what we had previously driven through. We stopped at Tarraleah to look at the hydro-electricity water pipes, and because Toby woke up from a short nap we decided to get some lunch from a cafe in ‘town’. I use inverted commas because the whole place is a resort with conference centre on 300 acres of land.
We soon left the National Park/State Forests behind and entered hilly farm land. We finally made it to Hobart and Andrew decided to drive up Mt, Wellington. He said we might even see snow up there. I didn’t think there was any chance of any decent snow, though perhaps there might be some in shadowed crevices. I voiced my opinion, and Andrew informed me that Mt, Wellington is around 1300 metres high and the temperature drops dramatically on the way up the mountain. Our car was showing an outside temperature of 11 degrees, and that dropped pretty quickly to 5 degrees and we weren’t at the top yet.
When we finally got to the top it was really cold and windy. We rugged the kids up as much as we possibly could. Nathan wore his beanie, hooded jumper with hood on, and raincoat. In addition to what Nathan was wearing, Toby wore a wool jumper of Nathan’s and had the sleeves of both the jumper and raincoat covering us hands. Nathan took great delight in knocking the chunky ice off posts and fence wire, while I froze in my thin jumper, raincoat and scarf.
We raced to an observation building that gave us some protection from the bone-numbing cold. The kids ran around and around a raised platform and had a lot of fun. We braced ourselves for the outside again and walked to the lookout platforms. Somehow it didn’t feel quite as cold as when we had first got out of the car, but it was still bitterly cold…except if you could get get of the wind and the sun was shining, which didn’t last long when it did happen.
And yes, in addition to the the thick ice coating everything, there was also snow! It was soft and powdery, like tiny cold polystyrene beads. Andrew and Nathan tried to make it into snow balls and throw it at each other, and Toby just stomped on it. Then both kids decided to climb rocks and were upset when we said it was time to get back into the car.
The car showed the temperature as -1 degree celsius. Andrew had checked the Mt. Wellington weather station online and found that the temperature was -0.7 degrees with a feels-like temperature of -5 degrees. No wonder it felt cold! Mind you, Andrew was wearing shorts….with his really warm jumper, raincoat and beanie. I had felt like my hands were literally freezing, so I don’t know what bare legs would have felt like! Eh, I’m not complaining about the weather, we all had a ball in it.
We eventually made it to our accommodation for the next 4 nights. We are staying in a cabin in a caravan park some 8 km from the city.
