Throwback Thursday

This is Cradle Mountain in Tasmania. Staying with an outdoors-y sort of a person, as I did in 2000, means being taken on trips I wouldn't have imagined for myself - in this case, not only a long walk around the lake from left to right and across the open ground beyond, but also up to the top of the right-hand peak.

Yes, that's right - right up there.

It's not as alarming as it looks - at the back of the peak, the way up is clearly marked - not so much a path as a route for scrambling over the boulders, but none the less, no special equipment required beyond boots with a good grip, and some sense of balance.

Even for someone with no great head for heights, like me, it felt perfectly safe - though with one final moment where the route narrows between two very steep declines to either side.

Even there, however, there are some boulders to use as a screen from the view immediately down, and to snatch a photo of the more distant panorama.













From the top, the views are spectacular:

Time, before starting the clamber down (somehow harder than the climb up), to look back at where we came from.

 

And for a touch of cute (and a rare occasion where the wildlife comes out to present itself for photos in the daylight), here's a visitor that stopped to investigate our rucksacks in the hut where we rested our (by now, jelly) legs on the way back. If memory serves, it's a spotted quoll:

Another view of Sydney Harbour Bridge

It turns out that my family has a connection to the famous kerfuffle at the opening of the Bridge in 1932. In the heated politics of the day, with the Premier of New South Wales in fiscal and constitutional conflict with the national government and the State Governor (the Crown's local representative), the right took exception to the Premier's decision (in a spirit of egalitarianism, or egomania, depending on your point of view) to perform the formal opening himself rather than leave it to the Governor. Francis de Groot, the leader of a right-wing paramilitary group, managed to gatecrash the ceremony and charge past the Premier on horseback to slash the ribbon with his sword before the Premier got there.

One of my mother's cousins told me years ago that his brother, who had emigrated to Australia, had been involved in some way. A recent idle search online turned up a biography of de Groot: and, indeed, the brother is mentioned, as a "somewhat mysterious colleague" helping with the preparations, sharpening the sword and driving de Groot to the Bridge. Perhaps I should keep quiet about it if I ever go back to Sydney.