About 30 km westof Adelaide is the small town of Hahndorf which was established by German
immigrants in 1839. These Germans came from Prussia which is now part of Poland.This pleasant town in the Adelaide Hills made a great place to start off the day with a good cup of coffee on our way out of the city. It promised to be a hot day. By the time we reached Bordertown, (aptly named as it is close to the borders of South Australia and Victoria), the temperature had reached the low 30’s . As usual, when it is time to have some breakfast, we looked for a bakery/coffee shop.The local bakery in Bordertown is like a living museum. A large framed building has been built over the old police station and turned into a bakery/restaurant/coffee shop/museum etc. An interesting way to preserve the past. Even the jail is there and has been turned into a toilet block. We needed to make good time as we are now on our way home. Riding east from Adelaide can be a bit boring as most of the land is flat although slightly undulating in places. We passed town after town, easily spotted in the distance as all of them have large grain silos. This is prime grain-growing country. For most of the day, we rode t through yellow fields with ripe wheat, barley and other minor crops. 650 km later we rolled into the city of Bendigo which has many interesting gold rush era sandstone buildings, as are also seen in Melbourne. It had been a long day hot day with a temperature of around 35° most of the afternoon.

Around lunch time the following day we had passed Shepparton and reached Albury-Wodonga on the Murray River which separates the states of Victoria and New South Wales . The twin cities are situated opposite each other on either side of the river. Our plan was to push on towards the Snowy Mountains, but just outside Wodonga we passed a sign with ”Bonagilla Historical Migrant Immigration Centre” written on it. After a short discussion via the intercom wedecided to turn back and have a look. Bonegilla was a large camp where new Immigrants were sent and processed during the fifties to early seventies.At the entrance we were shown a computer linked to the Australian Archives site. (www.aa.gov.au) On entering my name, my details appeared showing the date of my arrival, flight number etc plus the fact that I had been living here this camp. However I had never been there as I had been in a holding camp in west Melbourne. I am glad I checked myself out on the very first day otherwise I would have ended up in Bonegilla and my life may have turned out very differently. We watched some films and observed that some people saw the time in this camps as one of
the most boring 3-5 months of their lives as they had absolutely nothing to do.



North of there
the landscape looks amazing, it resembles the lower parts of Switzerland - lush
green valleys with cows grazing in the fields and thick forest on the mountain
tops. At times we passed large pine plantations and we had to be on the lookout for large timber
trucks in the area. We had booked a hotel for the night in the town of Adelong
at the start of the Snowy Mountains Highway.

At 9.15 the next morning, we met up with Catherine, who is a friend of Paula. By 10.00 we were back on the road and heading for the mountains. Riding here is a lot of fun, but hard work as for several hundred kilometres there are hardly any straight roads. Halfway to Cooma is an Alpine village called Thredbo which has a Swiss/Austrian feel to it. Here we were told that there was still snow along the road in Perisher Blue, which is another skiresort. Glad we had extra time, we headed for Jindabyne and made the left turn up the 1850 meter mountain pass. Meanwhile, the temperature had changed from 34° in the morning to around 12° in the afternoon. Snow was still there (see pictures)

After an overnight in Cooma, we only faced 110 km for the ride to Canberra via a secondary road. We headed straight to the National War Museum and spent most of the afternoon there. All new for Michael and still interesting for me as the exhibits are constantly being enlarged.