Ray and Jeanne in Oz
Episode 7: Alps To The Sea
Walking on Mt Kuscuiszko Boardwalk
View of War Memorial from Parliament Building in Canberra
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Farewell to Oz
Monday 23 February
2004, Canberra ACT, AustraliaHello once again from
mostly sunny Oz. We hear part of Canada have been
experiencing super snow dumps. We have had some heat
waves instead, but we are coping well by hiking in the
Australian Alps and then hitting the seashore for some
prime beach time.
Before we left
Melbourne we stocked up on food at the fabulous Queen
Victoria market. It runs about five days a week with
hundreds of booths selling fresh fruits and veggies,
meat, fish, cheese and snacks as well as clothing and
household articles. You name it, you can probably find it
at one of the booths and the prices were the best in Oz.
We got a big kick out of listening to the competition for
customers as the vendors called out their specialties to
the crowds.
We hurried back to the hostel with our purchases and
took the streetcar downtown to do a self-guided walking
tour of the city. It started to rain lightly, so we hit
the sporting goods stores instead, coming away with a new
set of walking poles, our version of a souvenir. The
continuing rain sent us onto the free inner city trolley
for an indoor tour of the downtown core. Every city would
do well with this type of free inner city transportation.
Like Adelaide, it includes a commentary promoting all the
hot tourist attractions.
Our route out of Melbourne led us to Mt Buffalo, the
first of three stops in the Australian Alps. The Alps are
prime skiing areas in the winter and perfect for hiking
in the summer. We stopped for a coffee break on the way
Mt Buffalo and met up with a bus tour returning to Sydney
from Tasmania. Guess what, they had ten, glorious sun
filled days! Some people have all the luck.
Mt Buffalo is a small ski area, set near the top of a
craggy granite peak. Because the skies looked grey and
threatening when we arrived in the area, we stayed in a
comfy cabin in a caravan park at the small village of
Porepunkah, near the base of Mt Buffalo. The next day we
drove up the mountain to the Park Warden’s office to
inquire about walking trails. We passed the usual caution
signs for wildlife on the road, but this time we were in
luck. Two lyrebirds crossed in front of the car. We
managed to avoid hitting them, but considered ourselves
lucky to see these elusive birds.
We had to change our original hiking. The park warden
told us the trails we had picked were still closed to the
public after the disastrous bushfires of Jan – Feb 2003.
We knew conditions were bad as the road up to the
mountain was lined with blackened and leafless trees.
Some of the eucalypts had started to regenerate by
sending leafy shoots up from the roots, but the damage
was extensive. We took the shorter Southern Buffalo trail
to a rocky outlook instead. It would have been a lot more
enjoyable if every fly within 10 km hadn’t descended on
us. My Aussie Salute was on automatic for that walk.
Our map
indicated a picnic area at the end of a road built in
1908 to the Horn, the highest point in the area. This was
a favourite outing for locals and included a path to a
lookout with a panoramic view of the area. We walked up
at the same time as a Melbourne family vacationing with
their daughters. They invited us to join them for coffee
at the historic Mt Buffalo Chalet where they were staying.
It gave us a good opportunity to see this old style
resort built in 1910, and to get views from there of
rocky gorges and more alpine mountains in the distance.
We ended our visit to the Mt Buffalo area with an
afternoon dip in the river at Porepunkah. One end of the
river has been dammed, creating a clean and refreshing
swimming hole for the townspeople.
Falls Creek, on the next mountain ridge from Mt
Buffalo, was our next stop. The village is a booming ski
resort in the winter, but seemed almost deserted when we
arrived on a summer afternoon. We did find an excellent
place to stay. The whole town is perched on the lower
slopes of the ski mountain. The streets are so steep that
in the winter people must leave their cars in a car park
at the base and take a snowmobile to their lodge. We
understood why after we just managed to drive up the
steep narrow road to our choice, Alpha Lodge.
We dropped our
belongings and took off the follow a suggested route hike
to Tim’s Lookout. We finally were rewarded with a great
view but the six long hours along a rather boring fire
road was more than we had anticipated. The alpine flowers
were lovely but the same bush fires that affected Mt
Buffalo had razed the surrounding hills. Back at the
lodge, the manager Maureen Jones, told us of her
harrowing six weeks in 2003 keeping the encroaching fires
from enveloping the lodge. Some days she would wake to
find three feet of ash on the balcony and shovel it off
only to find another three feet of ash there again the
next day. She told us that 17 lightening strikes had hit
the highest peaks in the Alps causing some of the worst
bush fires in years. Usually eucalypts are fire resistant
and regenerate quickly, but these fires were so hot that
the killed many of the tree roots as well.
Falls Creek walk
Paul and Judy Galloway in Wagga Wagga
Our friends Jim
and Ginny Galloway who live in Caledon had given us the
name of Jim’s brother, Paul, who lives in Wagga Wagga,
NSW, just called Wagga, with his wife Judy. They kindly
invited us to stay with them when we visited the area and
we were happy to take them up on their offer. We arrived
in a 45C heat wave so were glad to share their
comfortable A/C house and cool off in their pool. They
took time out from their thriving business of providing
retraining and job placements for workers receiving
government aid in six centers in NSW to become tour
guides extraordinaire. We saw Wagga from all the best
angles, visited the city center art gallery, museums at
the old city hall and the botanical gardens and paid a
visit to Charles Sturt University, which three of their
children attended. The Uni has an internationally
recognized Wine science school as well as a cheese making
operation. We visited to sample some of their excellent
wines and cheeses flavoured with native herbs and plants.
We made it to the top of Mt Kusciuszko
After the heat of
Wagga, it was back to the hills. We drove through quiet
country roads and up mountains to Thredbo Village,
another ski resort. Like Falls Creek, it is built on the
side of a hill, but parking is even more limited than
Falls Creek and the YHA lodge we stayed at was accessible
only on a footpath. We took a ten minute ride on a chair
lift above the tree line to the start of a hiking trail
to the summit of Mt Kusciuszko, at 2228M the highest
mountain in Oz. Reaching the summit was a lot easier than
it sounds as metal boardwalks have been laid down on
almost the entire 6.5 km route to protect the environment
from the many visitors. We were still feeling energetic
when we reached the top, so we opted for an extra loop.
We started off on a trail that went downhill and after
about 3 km, we started to look for alternatives route
instead of retracing our steps uphill. There were signs
admonishing everyone to stay on the designated paths, but
we cheated and headed across a valley to a trail on the
other side. We even found an old trail to follow for the
last section so if anyone happened to ask us how we got
across, we were all prepared to tell them we just
followed the path. We were quite pleased with our route
that day.
From Thredbo, it was an easy and scenic drive to the
NSW coast. We picked Merimbula, a small beach resort town
with a good caravan park next to a sandy beach. The skies
were blue and the water refreshing but warm enough for
good swimming. We got our boogie boards out to ride the
waves and had a lot of fun. One evening we went for a
walk along the shore in town to see fishermen catch
prawns. We couldn’t determine what anyone was catching
but we did watch an ocean ray swimming in the shallows.
We had two days in Merimbula,
then we headed further north to try out another beach.
Batehaven is on the southern end of a string of beach
resort towns. A woman in the caravan park we picked
recommended McKenzie beach for the best sand and surf.
The small, protected beach had the warmest waters and the
best surf in a long time. Our boogie boards didn’t need
any encouragement to catch every wave into shore.
Mackenzie Beach
Julia, Jill and Brian Jones in
Canberra
Jill
and Brian Jones, with their daughters Penny and Julia,
lived in the house next door to us in Ottawa for 18
months while Brian was on a job exchange from Canberra.
We had kept in touch with Christmas letters and after
meeting Penny by chance in India three years ago, we
vowed to visit them in Canberra should we make it to Oz,
so here we are now. Penny has recently started working
with the Foreign Affairs department of Oz and Julia is
about to start her second year of medicine at Uni in
Melbourne. Jill and Brian are back at their jobs here in
Canberra so we have spent the last weekend sightseeing
and renewing our friendship.
Canberra, the capital of Oz, is a separate territory
like DC in the USA. It is a planned city spread out over
a large area with lots of green space and surrounded by
hills. Most of the residents live in comfortable suburbs
but the road system makes it easy to get to the business
center.
Parliament Building in Canberra
We
joined a tour of Parliament House and confirmed that
their parliamentary system is very similar to Canada’s,
except that the Senate is elected, a very good idea. We
drove around town and visited the national Museum. We
enjoyed the exhibits depicting life in Australia. For
many it is controversial because of its Aboriginal slant,
but for us it was informative and interesting. The
Telstra Tower at the top of Black Mountain looked out
over the whole of Canberra, enabling us to see how the
grand plan for the city has succeeded.
We leave Canberra tomorrow, Tuesday, to find more
beaches on the coast. We have about a week before we have
to return to Sydney and find Priscilla a new owner. The
time has gone so fast it is hard to believe we have been
in Oz more than four months. We will be home before we
know it and spring will be on its way to Ottawa once more.
For some of you, I know that can’t be too soon.
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