Tag Archives: emu

Last day & the Alpine Highway

Our short 3 day break was over.  It had flown passed but the final morning was to be a beautiful start to the day.

Another glorious start to the day with the mountains just peaking over the fog/mist and clouds..
Foggy or is it misty? Whatever it was it was slowly clearing, and was also catching the morning sunrise.
Catching the first rays of the sunshine

By this point, Stuart was up and about.  I had knitted some more of his socks and he was to get up and tell me about the wonderful sunrise.  I didn’t point out that he had missed most of it!

The view from the from veranda was wonderful

But I was to capture this image as a result.  Breakfast was a little later than usual but was in front of a fantastic fire.

The slow combustion stove in the kitchen/dinning/sitting room.

We were up and out by 9am.  We had opted to drive the long way home, knowing that we would be getting home around dark by doing so, but the weather was good, some of the tops were clear and there was a chance of seeing something on the Alpine Highway, unlike the day before.  So.…

But just be fore we left, we explored the onsite vintage motor museum…

The on-site vintage car museum. This vehicle was on the road until 10 years ago.
The restoration team need to work a touch harder
And you may have some additional passengers!

And so by 9am we were on the road, ready to climb and hoping for the good weather to last.

First stop was… well a corner on the road. I just had to grab a photo

Sometimes you just have to stop on a bend and get that photo…. there are mountains over there and they have snow on the tops. Is this all we will get to see of them today? You just never know.

And so we hit the Alpine Highway. But before long we were to come across the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric visitors centre.

Yep – that is it. You would have thought that they could have cut back some of the vegetation for us to see it wouldn’t you?
Stuart finding the information board very stimulating

And so we left it to drive into yet more trees and see, well more trees actually.  In fact unless you actually stop at the dedicated viewing points, the likelihood of actually seeing anything is close to nil.  Actually if you are the driver, it really is nil.  Oh and the noticeboard nicely informs you that the road is now entirely sealed.

The top of this particular section of the Alpine Highway. Not a lot to see unless you really like seeing 100’s of kms of Eucalyptus trees.

So when we spotted a rest stop, we knew we had to stop.  If only to rest from the winding nature of this road.  It covers a lot of km’s to go pretty much nowhere.

This is the road. You don’t need to guess what you can see from it!

And at the rest stop there are the obligatory toilets, BBQ point and picnic benches.  And luckily a viewing platform!

We get to see something!
Actually the view was stunning and we were so fortunate with the weather! You are looking at the Kosciuszko National Park and Mount Kosciuszko … is in there somewhere. Just pick what looks like the highest summit.

It was worth it as you can see!  But there are only so many Eucalyptus trees I can show you. Honest.

This is a typical view along lots of roads in most national parks around here!

And so we carried on, winding our way up and down, round and round and round again.  This is one of the few times we do actually find the sat nav and GPS in the car quite useful.  It gives you a heads up of the nature and seriousness of the bend ahead.

And eventually we get to a river crossing, the Swampy Plains Creek in fact.  And there is the nation parks camping site, and a tiny view of something other than eucalyptus trees.

A camping area at the side of the swampy plains creek.
A tiny bit of a view to the left,
and to the right. It reminded us of the river flowering through Pitlochry around the Kinloch Rannoch turn off.

And to the next opportunity for a view… but this is stop in the road job.  However, it was Stuart that chose to stop this time, but he had other ideas on what the stop was for.  Now what was the alternate name for our attempted world cycle tour?  That’s right, scent marking his way around the world…

Byatt’s Camp. A view, and a good one at that. Now there is some history about this area all dating back to summer grazing of cattle and who created the access.

Not a bad view.

From there it was another climb back up and out of the area.

Looking back the way we had come from.
The road ahead and onwards to the ski resorts and the way home
Dead Horse Gap. Now was it the fact that your horse was dead on its feet by the time they got to the top (1,582m or 5,190ft) or was there the skeleton of a dead horse up there? I’ve no idea, but there are plenty of skeletons of dead trees from the deadly forest fires that swept through the area 15 years ago.
The place was eerie with all the dead trees around.

From there it was pretty mundane except for our lunch stop at the side of a lake and for the fact that I alone was to see 4 emu.  Stuart, as the driver, totally failed to see the 2 that were standing less than 10m from the side of the road!  And I can tell you one thing, they are huge!