Australia 2003-4

Hello 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.