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Night Wildlife Tour with McDermott’s at Cradle Mountain Tasmania

20 March 2012 1,716 views 2 Comments

Night Wildlife Tour with McDermott’s at Cradle Mountain Tasmania

It has been an excellent week traveling in Tasmania thanks to Tourism Tasmania and Tourism Australia. The food, the adventure, the nature and the wildlife were simply breathtaking. In one of the little adventure I did in Tasmania was the nightlife wildlife tour with McDermott’s Tour at Cradle Mountain.

Cradle Mountain is a mountain in the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania, Australia. Rising to 1,545 metres above sea level, it is one of the principal tourist sites in Tasmania, owing to its natural beauty. The mountain is composed of dolerite columns, similar to many of the other mountains in the area.

Here is one end of the Overland Track, a world famous multi-day walks starts here.The Track winds through a variety of landscapes to its opposite end 80 km to the south at Lake St Clair, Australia’s deepest lake. - Wikipedia.org

It was a rainy day. We had trouble venturing around the Cradle Mountain due to the heavy rain but it did not stop us for the night wildlife tour.

The night wildlife tour is an amazing night tour with a custom made 4WD coach. The driver would bring us around the Cradle Mountain at night and he will use his orange color spotlight to search for animals. The reason of orange colour is it is least glaring and would not hurt the eyesight of the animals. Hence, as the animals are nocturnal, they are very sensitive with bright lights.

There were 23 of us including bloggers and media from Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China. We were in the coach under a rainy night and looking for nocturnal animals.

Wombat nibbling near the bush..

It didn’t take long when the driver, John spotted a wombat nibbling around the bushes. We were delighted. It took only seconds and the wombat went hiding.

Wombat running away from the light…

These are wild animals, not like the night safari where animals are kept in captivity. The beauty of this is it is all about luck. We spotted wallabies, pademelons and wombats and we wanted to spot a wild Tasmanian Devil.

Pademelon spotted!

A wallaby looking towards us!

We spotted a quite a number of pademelons, wallabies and wombats. Thus, we have no luck on the devils. The population of the Tasmania devils had been decreasing due to the devil facial tumor diseases. It is now become an endangered species. Lots of efforts have been done to research and to save the devils. However, there is no cure to the disease yet. Hope this will give you some insight on the real situation on the Tasmania devils now.

China TV presenter Ling Lee under the rain near the pademelon.

China TV presenter with our coach guide, John…

Overall, it was an amazing 90 minutes night wildlife tour. It was very engaging and fun as we would not know what is next. Everyone enjoyed the tour and this is one heck of experience!

McDermott’s A Night with Animals Contact, Details and Pricing.

McDermott’s A Night with Animals Pricing

Adults: $25 ($40 inc. Devils at Cradle)

Children 5 to 13 years: $12.50 ($25 inc. Devils at Cradle)

Children under 5 years: free

Departure Times

Departs daily at dusk.

Tour duration: 90 minutes.

Bookings

Call the booking office Monday – Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm.

Weekends call 0408 745 523

More info, please visit their website at http://www.mcdermotts.com.au/cradle_mountain.htm