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Published: February 7th 2008
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Well, finally found a bit of time to finish this off.
From Canberra we drove to the Snowy Mountains - which is a bit of a misnoma really as they are only snowy in winter. En route we stopped for lunch at one of the many picnic spots, and were entertained for half an hour by the cleaner and his dog. I can't really explain what happened, but it was very surreal! We drove on to Jindabyne and then on into the National Park itself to find a campsite. We had a bit of fun getting into the park, all I can say is that the signs lie and the entrance area was not 500, up the road. Eventually we got into the park, and then had just as much trouble, driving up and down various tracks, trying to find the campsite marked on the map. In the end we found it and set up camp for the night, i.e. turned our table into a bed! We were up at 7am the next day, it was a bit of killer and we had to make my tea on the camping stove, but we were soon off to start our ascent
of Australia's highest mountain: Mt Kosciusko. Now it is possible to take a ski lift a good way up this mountain, but as you may recall from our Mt Pucon adventure, Jamie and I are not fans of this cheating method (particularly when it costs you a fortune as it does here). So instead we opted for the 20km round trip which took in a series of glacial lakes on the way. It was actually a really nice walk, particularly the way up by the lakes, the walk back down was ctually along a road, though thankfully they don't let people drive up to the top anymore. I'm sure Jamie would want me to tell you that Mt Kosciuscko was named by the Polish Explorer, and all Australian's pronounce the name completely wrong. The Snowy Mountains are a ski resort in winter, and as we drove through Thredbo we could see all the lifts etc, which looked a bit wrong in the warm sunny weather.
Well we were back down from the Mountain by 3pm and were soon on our way (after a celebratory ice cream in the garage!), driving along the winding roads of the National Park and
out to the other side, where we entered Victoria. That night we stayed in a real rip off campsite. It was full of families with kids, and had a trampoline and swimming pool. Unfortunately adults weren't allowed on the trampoline 😞
but we did make use of the pool and BBQ.
The next couple of days were really great, we explored the Milawa wine and gourmet region the first day (Jamie drove) and the next day we visited wineries in the King River valley and then headed to Melbourne (I drove). As well wine and food we also visited the famous location of the Ned Kelly seige. Ned Kelly is something like the Robin Hood of Australia, a famous bush outlaw, who was popular with the locals but constantly in trouble with the police. He eventually was captured at the location of the siege, after an attempt at derailling and ambushing a police train failed. We spent the night at the best campsite of the whole trip. It was a free one, down by a lovely river which we could swim in. We had a whole area to ourselves, and even lit a campfire. We sat out eating cheese
and biccies from the Milawa cheese factory, and drinking wine from a local winery - what more could you want. All the wineries were pretty great, and it was a real eye-opener for us because it's a very Italian region, so we got to try all sorts of Italian grapes we'd never had before, like Barbera. The best winery had to the King Valley Estate. The owner was so friendly, he plied us with all sorts of wine, as well as complimentary biscuits and cheese and when he discovered that some of his wine wasn't as fresh as he would like (he'd had someone through 3 days previously and opened up all the bottles) he gave us all the opened bottle for free. Finally when we were deliberating about which wine we should buy, he completely out of the blue offered to sell use his prize wine, a Reserve Merlot for $20 instead of the advertised $45... well we couldn't refuse at that price! We went on our way to Melbourne with a box load of wine.
That evening we caught up with Danielle, a friend we'd made on the Inca Trail in Peru. We spent the next three
nights at her lovely house - thanks very much guys! Dan had already been to an Australia Day BBQ that afternoon, and so was quite 'merry' when we got there, but we continued celebrating before taking Benson (their Labradoodle) out for a walk and to buy ice cream for us in nearby St Kilda. The next day it was time for us to say Goodbye to our van, and after dropping it off we headed back into Melbourne to catch up some of my family. We spent a lovely afternoon catching up with my Great Aunt Marjory, and Cousins, Leo, Janet and Ben. That evening Danielle's husband Steve had returned from a sailing weekend, and we all watched the final of the Australian Open on TV whilst having a great BBQ (that started off outside but had to be finished on the grill once the gas had run out!). On our last day in Melbourne, we headed into town to explore. We visited the Art Gallery and Melbourne Gaol (where Ned Kelly was imprisoned and eventually hanged) as well as going up a hotel sky scraper to get a fantastic overview of the city. We both agreed Melbourne is a
really lovely city.
Sadly our fantastic trip was rapidly coming to an end, and the next day we had to fly back to Perth. We had a couple of days of chilling out in Perth, with lots of trips to the beach and then it was time for Jamie to head back to the UK. I'm sure you'll be amused to hear that rather than a tearfull farewell at the airport (I left that to Jamie's Mum), I headed down south for a weekend away with my cousins Carolyn and Lindsay. As Dad said, I needed a holiday!
So whilst Jamie was winging his way to England, sorting out our stuff and driving up to Manchester. Thanks to my Gran, I was staying in a lovely hotel, enjoying champagne in the spa bath, and sunsets over the sea from the balcony with my cousins- thanks Gran!
So I think this will be our last entry - hope you've all enjoyed hearing about our exploits. Remember I'm still in Perth for the rest of February doing some stuff for WaterAid (and hopefully fitting in a bit of exploring too) so feel free to email me.
See you
Sunset over the beach
the view from our balcony! all soon,
Jenny and Jamie
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