Snowy Mountains - 4th Feb – 7th Feb
So… away from the heat eh? NOPE!
Ok it in not quite as hot as it was in Canberra but it is far from the relief we had hoped for!! We decided to stay on an un-powered site at Kosciuszko Mountain Retreat in Kosciuszko National Park (The NSW park portion of the Snowy’s, The Victoria part is called Alpine National Park)
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The park is nice, filled with trees and back to nature. The flies are a little annoying but we are learning to live with them after the walk we did on our first day. We decided we would do a 10km return walk to a place called Bob’s Ridge. Apparently from the top you could see views across the Murray river into Victoria. Great we thought, we took the camera, the wide angle lens and plenty of food and water.
We arrived around 11ish and the first thing I noticed was the scenery. Really nice mountain views, streams (Creeks for you ozzies! Creek isn’t as nice a word as stream!). We hopped out and there were a lot of flies about. I just thought that they were in the parking area for the walk and that when we got off into the wilderness there wouldn’t be too many about. I was sooo wrong it’s not even funny! The flies were everywhere and for some reason they wanted to be in your face and in your ears. They are not content with sitting on your bag or hat for long. They NEED to be in your face. We spent more energy in the first 2ks trying to swat flies than we did walking. They are just SOO annoying! After a while the swatting became less vigorous and we just gently wafted our hands. Only swatting them off of us when 5 kills at once were guaranteed!! (Yes there were that many!!)
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I don’t know how we did I but we managed to carry on for the whole 5ks (We believe – there are no signs in a Wilderness Area you see). We saw a lovely view from the top of our steady 5km climb but somehow it didn’t feel worth it, plus we didn’t know if we had the right spot. Every time we checked to see we would be swarmed by all of the flies that were hitching a lift! So no time to take a pic, we hurried off down the mountain, flies swarming everywhere still. Shame because it could have been a really nice walk, instead it was like a slow torture. We laugh about it now, but it wasn’t fun at the time. I am amazed at how far we went considering.
After getting back to the car and getting the last of the flies out, we continued down the Alpine Way stopping at points of interest. This included Thredbo, where we paid $1.60 a litre for petrol!!! Better get used to it I spose. Thredbo is a nice little ski resort but as you can imagine at around 28C it was a little short on visitors! Tho cycling appeared to big round here. Imagine all of the flies you could get lodged in your teeth – awesome!
Then onto the best part of the day for us, we drove to a place called Tom Groggin. It is right on the NSW/Victoria border on the banks of the Murray river. There is no road into Victoria from here, however we were intrigued when we heard that there was a ford to get across. This could be the 1st chance to put OJ into 4wd I thought. So off we went driving near the river looking for this crossing point. We tried a few spots and had no luck and just as we were about to give up we saw a sign “Caution deep ford” COOL I thought. We drove down the embankment and sure enough there was a river bed that was covered in pebbles and looked suitable for crossing. We walked to the edge and it didn’t look to deep. I remembered training where the instructor said that water looks shallower than what it is and threw in a rock. Sure enough it was deeper than we thought. Heidi put on her rock shoes and proceeded to wade across the river thigh deep at one point! I thought “hmm I am sure OJ can handle this” plus I wanted to say that we had crossed the Murray in to Victoria.
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Heidi got to the other side and pointed out that there was one large boulder to go around. I beckoned her back across and asked if she would like a lift! She hopped in, I locked the hubs and put OJ in 4L (4wd Low Range). Then I rumbled across the river avoiding the rock and scrambled up the opposite embankment. Wahoo our first river crossing of the trip and all went smoothly. They were no roads from here back to camp so a quick pic of the “Welcome to Alpine National Park” sign and a 3 point turn. Back across the river I went. This time more relaxed I looked out of the side window and realised how deep the water actually was. (3 inches up the drivers door!) Out I came the other side and I watched the water drain out from OJ – cool! We headed off back to camp exhausted after a long day walking and driving. Couple of glasses of wine and some cheese and biscuits! Sweet day after all.
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Today was a bit of a nothing day as we set off for the caves but decided to turn around as the car seemed to be having a bit of trouble, after a call to the very nice mechanic in Canberra it seems the fuel was vaporising due to the high temperatures and was having trouble getting through. So we headed back to camp to get organised for leaving tomorrow and updated our blog.
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We are heading for the coast tomorrow for some sand and cooling surf, I think we are just going to take a couple of days chilling on the beach as we make our way down to Melbourne. NSW is in for a heat wave over the weekend so we are running from the sun (47C is predicted for some parts!!)
