Whilst the charms of Walhalla and surrounds didn’t fade, other opportunities still beckoned. 

So, we went south, just below Traralgon, for another preparatory walk in the Tarra-Bulga NP.  The home of the beautiful Mountain Ash, the “tallest flowering hardwood in the world”, which sounds quite a lot like “the highest score by a #6 batsman on a wet Thursday in November”.  Impressively tall, nonetheless. One of those ridiculous tees that needs to be burnt (often to death) before it allows its seeds to germinate for the next generation. The walking was beautiful and there was a lovely rickety suspension bridge with Sue Knox’s name on it. 

On this trip, we passed through Loy Yang, which is where Victoria’s largest power station lies (Australia’s if you count A & B), powered by Gippsland’s rubbish-quality brown coal, for the moment at least.  Apparently, the brown coal is adequate for a power station but when they tried it to run steam engines during the gold rush period, it was rejected as not hot enough and they went back to chopping down trees – yet another factoid that is hard-to-believe.

The Great Alpine Road from Bairnsdale to Wangaratta (we were only going as far as Bright) was waiting for us, but we took a side trip to Metung in the Lakes Entrance region.  A pretty enough lakeside town, useful only as an overnight stop, but now remarkable to us for an unlikely development.  The owners and operators of Peninsular Hot Springs in Mornington have decided to open up something vaguely similar here.  They claim that the Hot Springs are Mornington Peninsular’s most-visited attraction (also file in hard-to-believe)!

At Metung, they too have a natural (drilled!) geo-thermal spring and they are wrapping a golf course (9 holes so far – looked good – didn’t play), accommodation, housing, marina, glamping and a wellness resort and spa around the hot water bathing.  We took the minimum “bathing package” of 60 minutes and were bored rigid after 30! All power to their elbows but I remain sceptical – it’ll probably work for the 3rd owner. 

Enough of this; 233km of Great Alpine Highway, from Bairnsdale to Bright via Omeo and Mt Hotham could be ignored no longer for ATGANI and our faithful truck.  Internet warnings were dire – twists and turns, ups and downs, 1800m elevation change, overheated engines and brakes in their turn. But…no worries!  Drive to the conditions, have good equipment, be lucky – simple!

A couple of nights at the Freeburgh CP were spent doing very little but in a lovely treed area, within 50 m of a babbling brook and good enough to do some laundry.  We were meeting our High Country walking group (Inspirations Outdoors for the Cape-to-Cape veterans) at the Bright Alpine Guesthouse (last renovated when built, circa 1970).  They had arranged for us to park the van in their carpark but it looked way too small – the footpaths were wider than the roads so we knocked on a door and asked to put our van on their front footpath for a week – again, no worries!  “It’s just amazing how fair people can be!” 

The walking was fantastic!  Pretty solid with plenty of altitude change.  First day was 12km straight up Mt Buffalo, climbing 1200m in those 12km – called The Big Walk. 

Second day was The Back Wall walk with a detour to Dixon’s Falls – more of the undulations we know so well and through extraordinary landscape of burnt out snow gum skeletons (circa 2013) with literally hundreds of new trees sprouting at the bottom of the dead ones in a riot of purples and reds and fifty shades of grey…and green. 

Even more of that on the next day’s walk along Razorback Ridge to Mt Feathertop – breathtaking scenery at every step and we were also granted near-perfect weather.  The dead trees are now bleached white and the “elephant’s graveyard” description is apposite.  There’s lots of photos here because it looked so good.  Success!

As always, the people one walks with were “interesting”.  Our entire group was only 4 with 3 guides as well.  Cannot have been a paying proposition but they went ahead anyway. Our fellow walkers were Jim, a 78yo who was once Australian Marathon champion and still runs cross-country races competitively in Masters (whippet thin you’ll be unsurprised to hear).  He was joined by Naomi, a 40-something active Dutch woman in Australia for a holiday and a psychologist back home. Both of them streaked ahead every day (Cheetahs) whilst Lesley and I dragged our feet at the rear (Chillers).   Our guides managed our different speeds pretty well, fed us a couple of nights, took us to the pub a couple of other nights and generally looked after us.  They introduced us to “Sally from Happy Valley” as a long-running riddle, so perhaps I can start you off:  Sally loves balloons but hates air; Sally loves butter but hates bread etc etc.  Feel free to tell us anything else you know about Sally, in a similar format, and we’ll let you know if you really know her.

A final High Country story to finish with.  At the top of our first day Big Walk, we arrived at the Mt Buffalo Chalet, built by the State government in 1910.  Incredibly, it was built and run by the government as a posh lodge up in the cool, clean mountain air, catering almost exclusively for rich Victorian tourists.  Naturally, it always ran at a loss and in fact, for the last decade has been closed and languishing unused on the hill as various government agencies squabble about what to do with it.  Seems an extraordinary project for any government to have ever even thought about funding? 

But consider. With a NSW election in the offing, which pollie will be visionary enough to promise to build a luxury hotel in (say) the Royal National Park, preferably with green credentials, offering subsidised sojourns for people with enough money and clout?  I know there are plenty of other nutso schemes already in place, but this one has a lot of potential – what could possibly go wrong?