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.