Snow in August?

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Well for all of those who think Australia is all sunny and warm, I have the pictures to disprove it!

This weekend I ventured about 120k from the city center of Melbourne (about a 2 hour drive) to Lake Mountain. Lake Mountain proudly boats that it is the closest mountain to Melbourne that has snow on it. It is not really that high of a mountain, and the skiing did not look that spectacular, but it was nice to be able to drive there and back in a day. As I feel ill equipped to go skiing without my wardrobe of winter gear, we simply opted to go sledding (or tobogganing as they call it here). There were heaps of different ski shops where you can rent a sled or whatever for the day for about 8 dollars, so it turned out to be not too expensive.

But as I said I was not dressed properly to go out in the snow all day, so I did what I could. I had a cardigan, a hoody, and my northface fleece all on, so I kept warm. The problem was that I had no snow pants so I had to wear jeans, and I wore my tennis shoes as well (so now they are sitting in my apartment drying out). Luckily I thought ahead and brought extra pants and socks to change into on the way home, but still it was rather wet and cold.

Okay seriously how do kids go sledding all day? After about 2 hours I was exhausted and cold. My legs were sore, and all of those little jumps we used to build when we were younger to go off of with our sleds, seriously hurt! I really don't think I am that old, but apparently I am getting old to go sledding!

It was really cool to see snow here, and really funny actually. It started snowing when we were on the mountain and people started like getting really excited, which I found humorous. And let me add that it was not really snowing heavily as we would consider, rather it was more flurries. It snowed for about 10 minutes, stopped, and then started again a bit harder, but it was still not like the snow storm of the century. I think they said they got 1 centimetre of snow, which apparently is 'excellent' snow for them.

I cannot imagine a winter without snow, so it is funny to see a bunch of grown people who have never gotten to experience it before. The real funny part was when we saw the town's 'snow plow.' It was seriously one of those plows that pickup trucks can put on their front to plow parking lots or something for extra money. It was nothing like the big plows that we are used to. People were like 'oohhhh!' Oh I would love to send them all to Minnesota and have them experience a real winter.

It was actually quite chilly it was 0 (32 F) according to the car thermometer, but according to the town it got to be -2.2 C (like 30 F). So all things considering the town is banking on it not getting too much warmer or all of that snow might start to melt.

So all in all it was a good day trip despite the wet and cold. But oh man I slept so well last night after getting back home, I was dead asleep by 9 pm. It is safe to say that I was exhausted!

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