Leaving Strahan we headed north east into the central highlands of Tasmania to Cradle Mountain National Park. It rained steadily all morning during the 2.5hr drive and continued to rain as we arrived at our accomodation at the park. Although it was Summer, someone must have forgotten to tell Tasmania, as the day reached only a chilly 8 degrees celsius (46F). We spent a couple of hours in the warmth of our room at the lodge hoping the rain would ease and debating whether it was worthwhile to venture out in the rain. Given the high rainfall of the area we decided we may never get a better chance to see things so we purchased a rain jacket at the parks office and headed off on a hike to a couple of waterfalls, which, thanks to the rain, were in full splendor. The first stop was Pencil Pine Falls, named for the surrounding abudent pencil pines.
The ground here is perpetually wet, soft and spongy, so much of the trail was "protected" by a wooden plank walkway.
Interestingly, the walkways were all covered by chickenwire to give added traction to the otherwise slippery, wet wood.
The abundent moss made us feel like we were in an enchanted forest from some fairytale.
As we passed out of the "rainforest" into the open eucalypt forest we came to Knyvet Falls. 
Then on the trail Heather saw a small, round, brown rock... but wait, the rock moves... it was a little echidna! Echidna's, along with platypus are monotremes or egg-laying mammals. They are similar in appearance to hedgehogs and are sometimes called spiny ant-eaters using their long snouts to feed on ants and termites.
Further along the trail we came across the smallest relative of the kangaroo - a pademelon. Pademelons average 30cm-60cm (1-2ft) in height and live in dense forest or scrubland feeding on grasses, leaves and small shoots.
As we headed back to our lodging we caught sight of wombat that had just crossed the road. (If you look carefully in the middle of the pic below you'll see him). We were glad that we had decided to do our hike in the rain. We had encountered three shy native animals that are rare to see in the wild, probably thanks to the dim light and heavy rain keeping other hikers off the trails.
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