Mount Kosciuszko National Park - Day 1

Despite my own preconceptions about Australia, it does have mountains, and fairly sizeable ones too. Mount Kosciuszko is the highest part of the Australian mainland at somewhere around 7000 ft, it's nearly twice as high as Ben Nevis, so no mean mountain.

The national park that it's part of is Australia's snowboarding and skiing country, so most of the villages and towns are geared up for the winter. This means that at the moment they are very quiet, and its hard to imagine in 30 degree heat what they would look like under 8 feet of snow.

Mt. Kosciuszko Range

Our initial plan is to head to Thredbo and take a ski lift part way up the mountain then hike for a bit, but, because it's so hot, we think that's probably not a good idea and drive through the National Park to Khancoban.

At Khancoban it is even hotter, and we have some juice before deciding on heading towards Tumut at the northern end of the park. Maybe its the heat, or maybe my 'spidey' sense is confused by being in the southern hemisphere, but both our senses of direction take a turn for the worst from this point in. First of all we pause after entering Victoria, west instead of north, then turn back and find the road to Cabramurra, the right way.

After over an hour of twisty declines and inclines we end up in Cabramurra, Australia's highest town around a mile up. And a suitably quiet little place it is too. All of the buildings have steep sloped roofs and face away from the spectacular view, which suggests that the winters here are pretty fierce.

We leave Cabramurra, but unfortunately in entirely the wrong direction, nearly 2 hours of winding, twisting roads later we end up back in Khancoban. By now it's getting too late to think about finding the right road, so we backtrack and spend another night in Jindabyne.

Sydney to Kangaroo Valley

Mandy had a week off so we headed out today for a bit of a driving tour of the bottom half of New South Wales.

Not a great start though as some muppet reversed into our hire car in the local supermarket car park. Then drove away. I raced across the car park shouting in my broadest scottish accent, and eventually she stopped. She thought she had only hit a shopping trolley, so it didn't matter.

She was, of course, driving a 4x4 to drive to the super market. Nuff said.

Eventually we got on the road as there was no major damage to the car, and I took out full insurance as well, luckily enough.

We drove through Kangaroo Valley, and after 'researching' a few campsites, we ended up pitching in the village campground. The weather was pretty toasty and it was nice to camp without having to worry about freezin to death halfway through the night.

The only small worry was some very strange noises in the night, but I satisfied myself with the knowledge that Australia doesn't have large predators, unless you're near the water. Turns out it was half a dozen wombats fighting over fruit. At least we know what that sounds like now.