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.