Great Aussie Roads 2

After passing through Melbourne we stopped for the night at Walhalla, a place chosen because it promised to be in the hills and had a free camp site. It was a brilliant find, a quirky old gold rush town in a steep, wooded valley. We had more stove problems but luckily the fire extinguisher was very effective. A storm raged as we ate tea but then cleared to leave a fiery sunset and strange marshmallow like clouds, after an unrelaxing evening we went to the local pub, unfortunately it was run by a rather unfriendly man but the beer was good.

In the morning we walked around the remains of the village, population 150, down from 2000 in 1900 when the mine was working and looked around a small museum set in the back of the post office.

We carried on driving to Lakes Entrance, as recommended by Austrian Chris. The drive seemed to take a very long time but when we arrived we found a nice seaside and lake side holiday town. We bought yummy juicy prawns for tea from a boat and tried a 'bug'. It looked like a cross between a prawn and a trilobite and was slightly smaller than a saucer. We think it is from the prawn lobster family and you only eat the tail which was very tasty.

In the morning we set off on an epic driving day over the Great Alpine Road. This runs north over the Australian Alps which are to the east of Melbourne. We started on the south coast and the road climbed gradually, following the Tamba river. We kept reaching plateaus which had lots of cattle and sheep farming. At one point Anna commented that it felt like driving in Britain, as she did so a herd (?) of kangaroos bounded across the hillside above the road, we'd not seen them in a group like that before, it was nice.

We reached Omeo, altitude 750m ish, where we stopped to buy some food for lunch. This was another gold mining town with a few shops and hotels remaining. From here the road climbed quite steeply but was relatively straight and easy driving.

The next 'settlement' along the road was Dinner Plain. This was a weird chalet village that was almost deserted as it was not the winter season. While we were turning around here we spotted a patch of SNOW by the side of the road. We carried on driving, still up hill and started to get some spectacular views and we pulled into a car park near the top, with a great view of wooded mountains, to eat our lunch.

We carried on driving to the high point of the road just below the peak of Mt Hotham at an altitude of 1800m (my new land based altitude record). We stopped here to get some photos and the thermometer on the ski resort building was showing 9°!

From here it was downhill the rest of the way. We had to keep stopping to get photos of the views, on the north side they were much more expansive and the mountains went on into the distance. The road also got much twistier and steeper and rougher.

After dropping down from the peak we started to notice that there were signs of a recent forest fire in the area. Further on it was clear that it had been a big one (we later found out that 3600 hectares were burnt and it had started in February). The burnt trees still smelt resiny and the contrast between the black charred wood and the uncharred, silver wood of the eucalyptus trees was very dramatic. Road signs and snow poles had also been burned and there was a lot of repair work going on to get the road back to a fully working state.
Although very destructive it was oddly beautiful and a real contrast to the green meadows that we had been driving through earlier in the day.

After a very steep and twisty descent the road levelled off through a flood hit village (caused by recent rain not being absorbed by dead, burnt trees) and the scenery became very lush and green. There were lots of fruit farms and cyclists and we stopped to buy boysenberries and bottled beer from a brewery at a pleasant town called Bright.

We turned off the Great Alpine Road shortly before its official end because it would have added unnecessary distance to our day and drove through Beechwood, another 1800's gold rush town. We then stopped at a picturesque water fall before hitting the highway and heading as close to Canberra as possible. The road went past a 'big submarine' (Aussies like putting 'big' things by roads) and eventually we found ourselves at a nice camp ground in Jugiong, about 1hr from Canberra and tired from a long days drive.

It was really interesting day. We've done lots of coast driving and seen some stunning coastal scenery but this was the first time we've really been far inland and the mountains and gold rush era places were a really enjoyable contrast to what we have seen previously.

Josh and Anna x