Saturday...28 February 2015

Oh goodness, she has had another birthday. When will that baby of mine realise that for every birthday she has she makes me way way older????
Up early today to move to Bega.
Not very far up the road, only 140 km. It rained just as we got out to the highway after leaving Mallacoota. It rained just enough to make things really steamy. The road was winding again, I get the feeling this entire Melbourne to Brisbane along the coast is going to be one long winding road and that I will never want to see it ever again! Being giddy all the time is quite unnerving.
Himself has a cousin living here and a couple of phone calls and we were off to visit him and his lovely wife. She poor thing was just getting up after working night shift at the local hospital. They have three dogs, two cows, two alpacas, a few chooks and lots and lots of birds. The cousin breeds some and just plain likes having he others. We have been invited back tomorrow and will enjoy that.
After all the socialising we will find time to visit the famous Bega Cheese Factory and check out the local cheese. Loving the rolling green hills here. The views are fantastic.

Friday...27 February 2015

We have sat and soaked up the atmosphere and the hit and miss sun. Actually the weather has been relatively kind. Even when it was raining it was not too cold, it does get fairly cool in the evenings but by then you are inside and it does not matter. The only negative I can find here is the water supply, it is nearly non existent in the mornings and comes good sometime after lunch each day. Makes showering a challenge.
We walked down to the water, we walked down to the local shops, we walked down to the other local shops at the town wharf area and we have walked to the far end of the caravan park. That was the longest walk! Golly this park is massive, it goes and goes and goes some more.
Most folk here are like us, retirees. There are an occasional young family group but they are heavily outnumbered and I cannot for the life of me think any thing good when I see them trying to travel with two and sometimes three babies or toddlers. The kids are always sooking, crying and unhappy! To me it does not look like they are having a fun time of this travelling stuff.
Tomorrow we move again, this time to a small country town not very far up the road. Himself has a cousin living there and apparently the area is quite well known for its cheese. I do like a bit of cheese.

Tuesday...24 February 2015

Mallacoota.
The trip from Orbost was a pretty drive. Mostly winding roads again but nothing too scary. The scariest thing all trip was two caravans over taking us one after the other on an overtaking lane and then the second caravan attempted to also overtake the first one, but the first one was having a bit of a brain fog and damn near ran the second one off the road. Now that was seriously scary.
Arrival day was warm and soggy. Then it rained. And today it has rained again. Between showers we walked to the local shops. This caravan park is the largest I have ever seen. Over 700 sites and not too many empty ones. As fast as a site vacates another occupant arrives. A very popular spot.

Sunday...22 February 2015

Himself made it to that blasted bridge!

He went up the western side of the mountain via Buchan and after finally reaching the bridge he had to turn around on the other side because of that landslide I mentioned previously and return part of the way back down the road before taking another turn off that took him to Jindabyne on the NSW side of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

The return trip was Jindabyne to Bombala and on to Orbost. The round trip was 561 km and included lots more goat track gravel roads and it took him 11 hours.
He says we have to shave an hour off that time as he lost an hour helping a farmer who had bogged his truck find a neighbour to lend him a tractor to pull it out. The farmer had hoped Himself would use our vehicle to pull the truck from the bog but it was a large truck and good as it is he did not want ours to end up bogged as well.
I stayed back in camp to read a book and fix bits of the blog that I broke some time ago, while he twisted his way up and over the mountain, the scenery is spectacular but once was enough for me. I was not about to rush into a second dose of the giddies.
Today's excitement was a red bellied black snake near the toilet block. That kept the ladies on their toes!

Saturday...21 February 2015

The world is slowly coming back into focus after our aborted trip up the mountain. With all those bends and turns I was quite wobbly for a couple of days. Himself has set off again today to try to make it to the bridge from this side. I have chosen to stay in camp!
As we twisted and turned along the dirt roads up the mountain and down again, I noticed that the letterbox of choice out there was the fridge. An antiques dealer would be in heaven driving along that road. Some of those fridges were seriously old. You can fit quite a lot of mail into an old fridge. One bloke does not seem to have many friends. His mailbox was a small microwave. Cannot fit much in there!
I mentioned the very tall trees the other day, I forgot to say that for a large part of the time both them and us were in cloud. There was misty rain off and on all day but it was rather eerie to be in the clouds. You would come around yet another one of the everlasting bends and there in front of you the view disappeared because of cloud. I won't call it low lying cloud as we were seriously high up ourselves. A few twists and turns later and we would be lower down and the cloud would move up above us for a bit. Added another dimension to the challenge of the drive.
Now this area is wombat territory. We have seen some very large wombats...all dead! How on earth anyone could hit one given they are fairly slow moving and visibly large is beyond me. We did get quite a scare coming back down the mountain, a 4WD nearly collected us on the gravel road, they were really hiking along and we had to veer into the table drain on the high side of the road to avoid a collision, so maybe that could explain the dead wombats!

According to the story boards we have read around this area, it is also home to lyrebirds. We have not seen any of them but we have seen lots of kookaburras, black cockatoos and several species of colourful parrots along with the usual assortment of magpies, crows, native pigeons and sparrows. East Gippsland must have a good annual rainfall, every thing is very green. No dried out paddocks here. Just lots of lush green grass with contented cattle sitting under the shade of a tree watching the demented tourists go past.

Thursday...19 February 2015

Up early yesterday for a big road trip.
We decided to drive the loop that leaves Orbost through Goongerah and Bonang and Tubbut to McKillop's Bridge and then return to base in Orbost via Walgulmerang, Seldom Seen, Gelantipy, Buchan  and Bete Bolong. All up a round trip of 286 km into and through parts of Snowy River National Park.
McKillops Bridge is one of only two bridges that cross the Snowy River in Victoria and is an engineering feat in its own right. Himself wanted to see this bridge so off we went.

The road was mostly bitumen, with about a third gravel, but good gravel. It was also mostly a good road with occasional parts being a little narrow. So far so good!
Then the bends started and for the next 140 km there were no straight stretches at all. The entire thing was one bend after another and most of them were quite tight. All this in the most magnificent mountain forest we have seen. There were so many trees you really could not see very deep into the bush beside the road because of the thick growth. These trees were so tall, they started somewhere way down that I could not see from the road and they were way higher than I could see above the road. And the other noticeable thing was how straight they were growing. I suppose when there are that many in the ground they would have to grow straight up to reach the sunlight as I doubt much of it reaches the forest floor. We passed signs warning that logging trucks use the road, I am not surprised, these trees would be a saw millers delight, no wastage.
So anyway, after about 100 km of non stop winding road I was pretty much over the trip, my old balance problem does not like winding roads and I was beginning to feel quite queasy. Still only another 50 km to go to reach the Bridge and I would get a break and maybe the road may not be so winding for the return run on the other side.
WRONG!
After 140 km of bend me shake me that took three hours at an average speed of 50 kph, we were stopped by DEPI personnel (Department of Environment and Primary Industries) who informed us that after some seriously heavy rain the night before, a landslide had not only blocked the road, it had taken a whole section of the road off the map and down the mountain. This road was closed and was going to stay closed for weeks if not months! Very disappointing.  We were within 10 km of our target,  McKillops Bridge. So near...
The only choice was to turn around and retrace our way back over the mountains the way we had come! There are no alternative roads up there.

 We turned around, carefully, and a couple of km back we found a picnic spot beside a creek and stopped there to eat our packed lunch and to give my head a chance to settle again before we wound our way home.
There was an old original settlers bridge next to our picnic area that has been restored and heritage listed which Himself found quite interesting.

And then we did it all over again!
After a round trip of 7 hours we had travelled 280 km and had not reached our destination. It really was a bridge too far.
It is still possible to reach the bridge from 'the other side'. Perhaps Himself is eager enough to try that. I think I will stay in camp and read a book if he does!

Tuesday...17 February 2015

Well blow me down with a feather!
Here we are miles away from any known friends or family and we get a knock on the door this afternoon and in walks Himself's brother and sister in law from Bendigo. Big surprise.
Apparently they have been to visit friends in NSW and decided to come home a different way and realised from this blog that they would be going past us, so they came to see if we would like to join them for dinner at the local club. We are both still buzzing from the surprise and know we will have a great night out. Thank you, you certainly went the extra mile and it is very much appreciated.
The interesting thing is that we left camp this morning to take a 6 hour trip up the mountains to follow the Snowy River to its source, but when we checked in at the local Information Centre we found out that with a bit more planning we could cover a whole lot more ground and see so much more than we originally thought, so we cancelled today's trip and came back to camp to plan a bigger and better trip for tomorrow. If we had gone today we would have missed our very pleasant surprise visitors.

Monday...16 February 2015

We are making progress people. I am with it enough to be able to say.......
Today, we travelled to Orbost. Loved the caravan park at Bairnsdale and ditto for Orbost.  Nice big grassy parks, lots of room for us. Makes life so much easier.
The caravan park is across the road from the famous Snowy River. Now that is special.

After lunch at the local bakery we travelled 15 km down the road to Marlo to see the Snowy reach the ocean.

We came back to base via Cape Conran (sorry no lighthouse!) and Cabbage Tree. Here they have the only naturally occurring patch of Cabbage Tree Palms in Victoria. It was a bit of a trek down a dirt road and over a basic rail free bridge on Cabbage Tree Creek to get there.

Saturday...14 February 2015

Valentines Day. No bunches of red roses at the door of my caravan, no breakfast in bed, no chocolates. Oh well I guess that Himself is just not into it!! To be honest neither am I. I think we should be making sure our special someone knows how much they are cherished all the time, not just on one very public occasion. Having said that, I am sure I could always find somewhere to drape an extra diamond or two if they came my way..........
It is raining today, it has been raining off and on all night. Apparently there may even be a thunder storm or two before the day is done. That could ruin a couple of romantic picnics!
Himself found a Dometic dealer in town so decided to order a new cover for our air conditioner. He discovered that the current one was cracked and broken when he went up on the roof to sweep the top of the slides before we left the last stop. The dealer insisted that it would only take a couple of days to have the cover couriered from Melbourne. What a joke!
After waiting all week, Himself drove the three hours each way to Melbourne yesterday and collected the part himself! Now we need to wait for the rain to stop so that he can get up on the roof again and change the cover.
Something is very wrong when we can buy stuff online from overseas and have it delivered in three days and yet the local industries still cannot get their A into G and provide something as basic as good customer service.

Monday...9 February 2015

I know I keep saying we did this or that "yesterday", but all this touristing is very tiring and I find that I am often just too weary to write this blog at the end of a long day of travel and energetic site seeing!
So.......yesterday we were up early again to travel to Buchan. That is Buchan with B people although Himself has been having some fun with how he says it. I have yet to tell him that one particular arm of my extended family may take it on themselves to seek him out and give him a jolly good thrashing with their sporrans for his disrespect!
Anyway way back when there was still dinosaurs in our back paddocks, and Australian stuff was still taught in our schools, we learnt about the Buchan (Vic) and Jenolan (NSW) caves.
Having arrived in Bairnsdale and looked at the local signposts it quickly became clear that we were somewhere near Buchan. Turns out it is just about an hour away so of course we had to have a look.
There are four caves in this particular system but only two are currently open to the general public, access to the others is only for members of caving clubs as they require some experience to negotiate.
We toured both caves, and really how many times can you say "wow" or gasp in delight as each new section of the cave is revealed when the guide turns on the lighting as we reach different sections of the system.
Caves are awesome stuff. Mother Nature makes great things with her "playdough". She is a bit slow, often taking thousands or millions of years to finish a project but we all love her work. This shot is in Royal Cave.

The second cave is called Fairy Cave. Both were spectacular. Fairy cave had some low level areas that required a bit of waddling like a duck to negotiate but I think this cave was more interesting than the Royal cave.

After lunch at the Buchan Roadhouse we headed back to base but took the scenic route and came back via the town of Lakes Entrance. Although there are 19 caravan parks listed for this beach side town, a quick look yesterday had us crossing most of them off as too small for our big rig!
When we got back to Bairnsdale we visited again with our North West neighbours and bless them, we had afternoon tea with home made scones and home made jams. Wonderful. I drank the teapot dry. I find tourist stuff thirsty work! Sad to leave them but no doubt we will catch up again, hopefully it will not be so long this time.
We have added extra time to our stay here to rest and recover from all our recent activity. I felt OK when I got up this morning but the more I move the more my legs protest. There are an awful lot of stairs and steps in caves!!

Sunday...8 February 2015

Well our quick hello to friends in Sale turned into a chatfest of more than two hours. How wonderful to see these people. We made a cuppa in their caravan and sat at a table outside the local Information Centre and talked our heads off.  We both reluctantly hit the road again at lunch time instead of morning tea time! I took away fond memories of our time together AND.....a badly sunburnt face and neck. I do hope no one else got burnt too. Two days later I still cannot touch my nose. Serves me right for being such a chatterbox!

When we got to Bairnsdale we made camp and headed out to the local RSL club to catch up with neighbours from our time in the North West. To quote someone else, Mr D was a top supervisor and Mrs D was the "ants pants" at the kindergarten. She was the Pied Piper of Para. Children followed her where ever she went and mine still have fond memories of their time with her at kindy and Brownies.
We had a wonderful dinner with them and talked and talked! The meals and service at the club were very good.
Yesterday they collected us from our caravan park and took us up into Victoria's high country. What a drive. We travelled on the Great Alpine Road all the way to the other side of Mt Hotham. We turned around at a place called Mt Blowhard. My comment when I got out of the car was to say that I was on top of the world. What a stunning view.

The mountains go back layer on layer, we counted seven but could see the faint outline of more ranges after that. Hotham is not the highest mountain in Australia but it sure made me feel like it was. At varying places along the way you can also see Mt Feathertop, Mt Bogong, Mt Buffalo and Mt Kosiosko if it is a clear day and you are in just the right place on the Great Dividing Range which these mountains form part of.
We passed lots of push bike riders up there. The lot of them are mad. The roads are steep and winding and the wind blows like a hurricane. Maybe Blowhard is very descriptive of their lungs when they reach the top of Mt Hotham!

The Great Alpine Road is an iconic ride for the motorbike mob. We saw plenty of motorbikes too. Apparently the road is good enough to take a caravan over the mountains but thankfully not too many try it!
At the Mt Hotham village, they have built a rather expensive bridge over the road so that the local mountain pygmy possum can cross the road safely. I would love to have seen the experts teaching them possums to only cross the road there! It would also double as a great place to seek shelter if you were caught outside in a viscous snow storm. I rather likes this bridge. It looks like a work of art.

The markers on the side of the roads up there are over two metres high and are bright red/orange so that they can be seen when it snows. This is a very good idea as the other side of those poles in a very steep drop, broken only by the trees growing on the sides of the mountain. The views are alternate stunning or scary depending on which angle you view them from.

We had a simple lunch at Dinner Plain and watched more push bike riders coming and going, it seems to be a bit of a staging post for them and their support crews. I did not get a photo but was very pleased to see that for now the cattle are back free ranging in the high country. I for one believe they do more good than harm up there in the summer months keeping the undergrowth under control in extremely hard to reach places. The locals were saying that since the government has been shutting the cattle out of the high country, the brumbies and kangaroos have been breeding up and are wrecking the pastures and bush.
We also passed the Alpine School. It provides an intensive leadership program for teams of Year 9 students from around the state.  Lucky kids to go to school way up there with all that gorgeous scenery and flora and fauna.

We had the time of our lives and think ourselves very lucky to have been taken out for the day by such wonderful people who are a walking encyclopaedia of this area. You always learn more when travelling with a born and bred local. They know all the stuff that is not in the tourist literature.

Thursday...5 February 2015

On the road again.
Today, after many fond farewells of our companions in the caravan park we started our travels again.
The folk at that park are really nice and we are especially fond of a couple who have one of those own your own park homes just behind our caravan site. Their little dog, Sam, is such a sweet natured animal, he loves everyone he meets but is not the noisy attention seeker. He accepts as his right all the pats and compliments that come his way without it affecting his sunny disposition.
The people who own the park are fine and their ground staff is second to none. They are tireless workers and are always happy to help the campers. Yesterday I watched them help load two motor bikes onto a trailer for a guest who has a prosthetic leg. Nobody asked, they just saw the need and did the job. Fantastic fellows.
Last night we had a last supper with the daughter and her partner and of course the new grandchild as well as their older furbaby. We already miss our cuddles with the baby and no doubt in time we will miss the daughter too! They are managing their new parent status very well so we are happy to let them get on with it.
This years travel plan is Melbourne to Brisbane up the actual coast roads as much as possible, it is an area we have not travelled yet and there is much we would like to see.
Today's trip was a rocking chair ride from one side of dear old Melbourne town to the other without a single set of traffic lights. Brilliant freeway/motorway system as long as you know where you want to be going early enough for lane changes. Oh and of course so long as your bank account can afford the many road tolls along that particular stretch of road. For the technically inclined it is roughly 75 km from one side of Melbourne to the other, measuring it from the Calder Hwy entry at Keilor to the end of the South East Link at Pakenham.
We have passed through Warragul, Moe and Morwell and tonight we are in Traralgon.  Tomorrow we will meet with friends from Melbourne, in Sale! They have been out this way having a small break and are going home tomorrow so we will meet them in Sale as we continue our trek east.
Next stop after that is Bairnsdale.

1 February 2015

Goodness, February already! Nearly time for us to leave and continue our journey.

The new grand child is making remarkable progress and is just the sweetest little thing. We will miss her as we travel north again, away from the approaching winter.

Yesterday we drove to Horsham to visit another of our children and her family. Her husband is a very tall man and her two sons are both well over six foot already. Long day but we did enjoy the visit.

Today we  have a lunch time BBQ with friends who will meet the grandchild for the first time,  followed in the evening with dinner at the Club with Himself's family. Quite the party people for now. 

Tomorrow we start the sorting, packing and organising to get us on the road again in the middle of the week. Sad to leave but excited to travel again.