Bits and Pieces

We finished off Tassie with....a late lunch in Gladstone; camping the night under the Batman Bridge; a tour of Beaconsfield gold mine and heritage centre; a food crawl - raspberry farm, cheese factory and chocolate factory; a night in Devonport and another calm crossing on the ferry. I'll be back!

In Melbourne, we enjoyed a visit with long time Litzow family friends. Delicious brunch Sean and Emma and great hospitality Sally - thank-you! We made a quick trip south to Warrnambool and then followed the coastline round to Mount Gambier - their Blue Lake is amazing! and up to Adelaide. Took a  couple of days to do this and stopped in at Tintinara on the way  - where our camper was made. A few running repairs and we bought a fly for the tent and had it fitted. Also learnt how to set the tent up properly....oh the things you can THINK you are doing right. Staying with friends Andrew and Susan in Adelaide for.....???

250kms

March 6^th

Enjoyed a sleep-in before chatting for nearly 2 hours to people camped in the next campground to ours. They had a group of 3 tents / vans and were about 50 metres from us….didn’t hear them at all! They were admiring our Carry Me Camper and plied Jon with heaps of questions then offered us a tour of their set-ups. One has something similar to ours…we just have the poorer cousin. Nice folks though and they gave us lots of survival tips….from how to put out fires, to using Vicks to stop mozzie bites stinging, to how to cook a lamb roast in the camp oven. Very helpful! Started our 2 hours run into Melbourne around 1pm…ahhh….this is holiday life after all, can’t rush things! Big Italian lunch at Traralgon, which I hoped would keep us full all the way thru til bedtime. Nearly – just had Vegemite sandwiches for dinner! Caught up with our friends Sean and Emma on the east side of town and enjoyed afternoon tea with them and picked up our mail. Then, the treacherous journey into the city during peak hour. Saw 1 accident but my excellent driver – helped out by Navigator 1 (me) and Nav 2 (Ms. Sat Nav) – got us to our caravan park in 1 piece. We are one in a big tin of sardines here for the night, 9km north of the city. We’re in the ‘elite’ part of the park I think, surrounded by tourists in big motor homes and Winnebago’s everywhere. My guess is more than half of them will be tussling with us tomorrow as we get onto the ferry to Tasmania. Hope that alarm goes off in the morning!

And the pics keep on coming!

The 'Mountain Man' goes to work...these 2 big trees were no match for JVI or the Navara's Ironman winch. Great mountain adventure!

It's incredibly dry in country Victoria.

The start of Stock Route Spur Track - 3.4 kms d-o-w-n! 

The Dargo River...northern section...was burned in a fire a couple of weeks ago.

Dargo River...southern section.

Creek to Coast

March 3^rd

Adventure plus on the tracks today. More ups and downs and scrambling, but no dust billows as we had some light rain this morning. Came across 2 big trees down across the track and Jon’s ingenuity kicked into top gear. Using our whole arsenal of tricks – the chain, axe, winch and tree trunk protector  - we spent just under an hour moving the trees enough to slide the Navara through. All of this down in the rain! Great work by Jon! The terrain and vegetation changed a lot on the Nunniong Road. Lots of ferns in the understorey of some fairly dense gums. Many cleared areas and we even passed a loaded logging truck on a pretty narrow section of road. Lunched at Moscow Villa – a little wood hut built in 1943 by Bill Achow – a man who was at that time the local bushfire spotter. He used to spend his days up a tower in the forest and his nights in the hut. No fires for us today, although the descent to Omeo revealed very dry farming / grazing areas. We stopped for a look at the Washington Winch – an old steam driven cable winch used in the early logging days. Quite an impressive old girl. So were the spar trees they used to anchor the cable and hooks to. Found a loaded peach tree beside the road and proceeded to load the camper with fresh fruit! Now camped beside the river at Omeo in a caravan park…..and taking time out to do the washing and a few unfinished projects on the camper.

 

March 4 & 5

Great adventures today as we spent more time in 4WD mode. Started the day with a couple of tourist activities…took in the view from the Mt Kosciuszko lookout. Not actually on the mountain, it’s a place kms away where you look back and see the mtn. In all honesty, very unimpressive. Why can’t we have a mtn like…Everest or Cook or Kilimanjaro?? Anyway, what was interesting was the info on the 2003 bushfires that raced through the areas. 80 fires started by lightning, burnt for 2 months. Areas of the alps were decimated, as the no. of dead trees we have seen in the past few days testify. Nature does have an amazing ability to regenerate though. We also popped into Victoria Falls, not to be confused with the African falls of the same name and a totally different magnitude, These tiny little falls were the site of the first hydro power station in Vic. Then onto the good stuff…the 4Wd tracks. The first ones took us through Vic’s largest cattle station…lots of blackberry bushes and lots of cows. As we headed onto the Dargo Track we were amazed to see so much recently burnt out area. Apparently they had a bushfire up this way around the same time as Black Saturday, but this fire was left to burn out itself. Have not seen anything like it, and it gave us some tiny idea of how horrendous things must have been and probably still are, down in the Gippsland area. We had the ride of our lives down the Stock Route Spur Track…..a 3.4 km descent on rough, narrow tracks full of humps. Took nearly an hour…but we had only 1 bottom scrape! Go the Navara! Camped the night at Black Flat and caught up with the only other people we have seen on the tracks in the past couple of days. Quite surprised that there have been so few people….until we came across the ‘Road Closed’ signs today. Oooppppps!  Made our way down through the Dargo Valley on tracks that follow the slow flowing and ash-ridden waters of the river. Once we were in the green bits again, it was a very pleasant drive…past quaint farms, walnut trees and little townships. Couldn’t stay on the bitumen too long though and took a back road through to the highway, before deciding to meander into Melbourne tomorrow. All this off road travel has taken its toll though, as Jon’s wash of the Nav revealed. We have a whole set of scratches down the sides that just weren’t there a few days ago in NSW. Ah well, a small price to pay. We’ve scooted down to the coast south of Sale and have discovered C17…a little campsite right behind the beach dunes in the Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park. Skies are grey and it’s windy, but we’re happy. So we’ve covered the mountains to the sea in 1 day…impressive!