To the mountains!

From the Dandenongs we made our way north to the Alpine region. The roads were twisty and turny and I started feeling like we were in Tassie again (aka carsick). We had to stop a few times on our way up just so I could get a bit of fresh air before we started the road-a-coaster again. We hopped back into the car after one such stop and as we were about to leave, Rein yelped in surprise and threw something toward me. I rolled my eyes assuming he was just being silly until I saw the fear in his eyes. My mind was reeling at the possibilities but my first thought was, giant spider. “What was it!?!?” I yelled at Rein and with the same fearful look in his eye he said “….leech”. “YOU THREW A LEECH AT ME WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!”  But I saw the panicked expression in his eyes. “I didn’t mean to, it was just a reaction.” So we spent the next few minutes looking for the blood sucker until we spotted it and yeeted it from the car. Every itch or tickle after that for the rest of the drive had us jumping and squealing.

Our first stop in the Alpine region was Lake Mountain as we wanted to do the summit there. We were delighted as we pulled up to see a small patch of snow on the ground and in true Perthian fashion, we hurled balls of ice at each other.

As we trekked to the summit, we started to see more and more snow. We took some snap with it at the summit and Rein bought a snowball back down to put in the freezer.

From here we headed to the Mt Baw Baw ski resort, also to do the Mt Baw Baw summit. Again as we trekked higher and higher, we started seeing more patches of snow on the ground, except this time, we were in for a treat. It started snowing!!!! Light at first but then developing into a large dumping. We were smiling ear to ear but Rein especially as it was his first time seeing snowfall.

From Baw Baw we went to the historic gold mining town of Walhalla. It was a beautiful town with a rich history and many of the original buildings intact. We did an underground gold mine tour here (you literally cannot keep Rein away from the mines lol) which was very interesting.

We made our way north to Mansfield on route to Mt Buller to buy Rein some hiking pants (more cold weather was forecast and Rein had been hiking in shorts up until then). You wouldn’t believe it but the ski town had no pants for sale anywhere!

We checked out Mt Buller and ticked off the summit there too as well as Mt Stirling nearby. This was pretty cool as we stayed at a campsite that was being shared by a ground of trail riders!

We pulled through the town of Glenrowan to take a picture with the Big Ned Kelly and ended up doing an animatronic reenactment of the Kelly gangs last stand. It was really good complete with jumpscares that had my heart nearly exploding with fear.

We finally managed to pick up some pants for Rein at Wangaratta before making our way to Hotham. It has been over 10 years since being at Hotham for my year 11 ski trip and it brought back so many happy memories. While here we didn’t Mt Feathertop summit which was a nice hike but we had white out conditions the whole time so no view unfortunately.

We came down to the coast via the Dargo pub on route to Jindabyne stopping in at Mallacoota, Eden and Bega. When we got to Jindabyne we treated ourselves to a caravan park stay and found the caravan park to be only $9 a night. To top it off the park was very nice with two indoor spas and a sauna - score!

We used our time in Jindabyne to catch up on some washing but we also had some fun, trying out e foiling for the first time on the lake. It was so much fun and very similar to surfing so we both picked it up very quick.

The main reason we were in Jindabyne though was to tackle Mt Kosciusko. We did the hike starting from Charlotte’s Pass and we decided to add on Mt Townsend (Australia’s second tallest peak). We ended up hiking 29 km in just over six hours so it was a long day, but very rewarding. We were treated with clear blue skies all day but still some lingering patches of snow.

Next we are headed towards Canberra to see a high school friend of mine!