Austrian-born Gustav Weindorfer and his Tasmanian wife, Kate, made their home at Waldheim.
During their many excursions into the Cradle Mountain area to study the botany, both fell in love with the unique landscape and its flora and fauna. It was after their first successful ascent of Cradle Mountain, that Gustav was determined to turn the area into a national park for all to enjoy and experience.
Replica of the original Waldheim
The replica is now a museum with the story of the Weindorfers and the birth of Cradle Mountain National Park
This became his life’s passion and today, Waldheim cabins lie inside Cradle Mountain National Park, not far from the namesake peak that inspired Gustav’s dream. Waldheim was purpose built by Gustav as a mountain chalet for tourists. Today a replica stands in the same place, after the original chalet burned down. It is surrounded by eight purpose built modern cabins, which are maintained by Parks and Wildlife.
Mossy feature of the Weindorfers Forest short walk
This is not an import, it’s the needles from a King Billy pine tree, which the original Waldheim was built of
Enchanted beech forest
Magical beech tree
Signs at Waldheim describe Gustav’s connection with nature and in particular Cradle Mountain, especially the way in which he wanted visitors to experience the area:
“Through his eyes people often saw much more than the beauty of nature. Weindorfer once wrote that …every walk appears to be the contents of a book, which stimulated innumerable thoughts and pictures. …from the rock, whose weather-worn surface is covered with mosses and lichens; from the alpine-flower gardens, where the gentle kangaroo grazes with its young, up to the gnarled and stunted pines and gum-trees and the crystal, glittering snowfields over which the stately eagle soars, are the leaves of this writing of nature to be seen. …one will read out of this book more, the other less; but all the art of reading rests in this: to analyse and recognise out of the superabundance of appearances and the individual occurences the eternal law of the whole and the ingenious arrangement of things.”
View from the shelter at Waldheim of the start of the Overland Track boardwalk
Wombats are everywhere at Ronny Creek
The girls enjoying the setting sun
As they are extremely popular, it is best to book well in advance if you’re planning on staying multiple days, or you can take a punt to secure a single night’s stay. This is what we did. It was the weekend we were to hike up Mt Murchison on the west coast, but the weather turned for the worse and instead we headed to Waldheim for an overnight adventure and hike up the lesser known Hounslow Heath track to view the fagus.
The first green fungi I’ve seen in Tassie
The start of the Hounslow Heath Track
It’s no exaggeration when I say that Hounslow Heath track is one of the best for the turning of the fagus (at least in the north of Tasmania).
What you can expect on Hounslow Heath Track
First fagus sighting!
Shanna among the fagus
Fagus leaf litter, see the unique shape of the leaf
There are two fagus or beech trees native to Tasmania, the first is the myrtle beech (nothofagus cunninghamii) and the second is the deciduous beech (nothofagus gunnii). It is the deciduous beech that tourists and locals alike flock to every autumn, to enjoy the change of colour from green to vibrant hues of yellow, rust and gold.
Sun shining through nothofagus gunnii
Corridor of nothofagus gunnii
The girls enchanted by the nothofagus gunnii
The same amount of admiration and fervour is reserved for this annual event, as is displayed in Japan for the infamous cherry blossom festival. The reason being the nothofagus gunnii is endemic to Tasmania and the only place you can see its amazing transformation.
Amazing hues of the nothofagus gunnii
In the process of turning from green to gold
The exquisite forest beauty of the high country
The fagus is an ancient tree that thrives on high rainfall. It is found in pockets where no fire has ripped through. There are three species at home in Australia - the third being the Antarctic beech. All beech have evolved from the Gondwana supercontinent.
Track negotiation, very slippery when wet
There are very few people who do the Hounslow Heath hike, probably because it is quite technical with a lot of branches, rocks and water to negotiate. It’s steep but nothing dramatic as it rises up through incredible deciduous forest to the spiny ridge at the top (at about 1100 m).
View south looking towards Dove Lake area from the ridge
Cradle Mountain is partially revealed from cloud cover
Right mouse click to open image for the full panorama from the ridge
It was raining horizontally and blowing a gale once we got out of Weindorfers Forest and reached the ridge. The track was pretty boggy and some parts underwater. It had already taken us about 90 minutes to get up, mostly due to taking a prolific amount of photos and fawning over the amazing amount of colour.
As we had another 2-3 hours to go, and we hadn’t packed for lashing rain and wind, we decided to head back down but not before enjoying the incredible views of Cradle Mountain, Hansons Peak and the other natural features of the Overland Track.
We had arrived at our cabin the night before, and had enjoyed an evening walk through the lower section of Weindorfers Forest - an enchanted grove of beech and king billy pine - and then back to the cabin along the Ronny Creek boardwalk to spot the huge amount of wombats out and about eating dinner.
Some wombats were almost blonde, which I suspect may be typical of Tasmanian highland wildlife. I’ve seen very blond wallabies up on the plateau, for example. But I’m not scientist, just an amateur field naturalist. ;)
Our cabin was a cosy four bunk bed room with a small dining table and little kitchenette. It had a small panel heater that gave off an incredible amount of heat. So much so that in the middle of the night, if you happened to be on the top bunk, you had to shuck off your sleeping bag and strip down to your shorts and tee shirt.
Shanna’s friend Nikki served us an incredible veggie lentil stew for dinner and bliss balls for dessert that were, well, deliciously blissful. Our stay was over way too quickly. We all agreed that next time we would be back for a much longer adventure and the completion of Hounslow Heath track, which according to Shanna is one of the best non-touristy hikes you can do at Cradle.