Joe & Karen McDermott - Travels: Canberra and The High Country

This trip was one we had been looking forward to for many years - a trip to the High Country and to Canberra to see the Floriade.

It's probably also the last trip we'll take in our caravan.

26 September

Yelarbon was the first night's stop. It's a familiar place to us now and it's as pleasant as ever.

27 September

Moving on, but taking our time, we stopped at Narrabri and dropped into the Golf club free camp which provided a great area to park the van (no power or water but that wasn't an issue for us) and the club house which had a decent bar and a restaurant area where we enjoyed (hmmm - perhaps that is overstating it a little) a Chinese meal.

28 September

A short day's drive and we stopped at the Canowindra Showgrounds - only $20 for power and water etc and it was a lovely place to stay.

We took a walk into town to lovely pub where we enjoyed a couple of drinks before walking back.

The town had at least three pubs and a pleasant and friendly atmosphere.

29 September

Adelong Showgrounds was selected as our next stop and it was a free camp as well! Bonus :)

Water and toilets were provided, but not power but again, that wasn't an issue for us.

We camped on the edge of the grounds themselves and the pic below shows you the view we had.

We took a walk into town, again a lovely and friendly place, and walked the High Street before selecting a pub for a couple of beers.

I was really happy to find a local brew (TRBC - Tumut River Brewing Company) that was labelled as a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Tasty it was too.

30 September

Arrived at Kosciusko NP and found our spot in the trees. Power and water and a beautiful spot.

The drive there saw us travelling through some beautiful country.

The High Country is famed for its huts - either old cattlemen huts or those (like this one) built to provide travellers with a safe place to stop in the event of bad weather.

There's always the outdoor dunny :)

We reached the National Park and set up in the spot reserved for us. It was a quiet place - not many visitors this time of year.

The view from our site is above.

We then took a drive into Jindabyne to find a pub showing the Grand Final. It was a great pub and it was an exciting and close game, but bloody Collingwood beat the Brisbane Lions. Ah well, they were the best team all year.

We drove home, ate dinner and watched some Bush TV - see below!

1 October

Time for a walk but it’s very very windy. And cold.

So we drove to Perisher and on to Mt Stillwell where we had a short walk to a lookout.

Note that the village is called Stillwell - hmmm

The twisted snow gums were beautiful.

It was so cold and windy we had to keep our hoods up, but it was a lovely spot to be - clean fresh air.

The view. Yes, that’s snow. Brrrr

We drove back from there to get a coffee at Perisher but it was closed. The whole resort was closed! Ah well, we can always get a coffee at "home" which is what we did before taking an afternoon walk on the Waterfall Circuit next to where we were camped. Lovely walk but tiring.

2 October

More walking planned so we took a drive to Thredbo, wandered around the three quarters closed township and then took a ski lift up Kosciusko

Bloody windy day up there. We were warned that it was a 70kph wind that gusted to 90kph.

The snow melt causes lots of small streams to burble down the mountain and, surprisingly to us, the frogs were in full croaking chorus,

We had stayed sheltered from the wind up to the point above, but when we reached the boardwalk below we were regularly nearly blown off out feet as the wind hit us face on.

It is a great boardwalk though and the frogs were deafening.

We eventually hit the snow and Karen took the opportunity to bowl a snowball at me.

We didn't reach the summit - the wind was just great an obstacle but we got to a lookout where we could see the summit so I'm ticking it off as achieved.

We stopped in at the cafe/restaurant at the head of the chairlift and sipped a gluhwein each. It was very welcome and very nice indeed.

The chairlift was a simple exposed seat and all the better an experience for that.

We drove back feeling good and dropped into the Jindabyne Brewery to pick up some sample beers to take home before we settled into camp for the evening where we had some visitors.

3 October

Our time camped out near Jindabyne up, we drove to Canberra today, taking our time and arriving at just after 2pm. The wind made the trip less fun than it might have been but it was incident free.

Set up in the caravan park, ate some lunch and then took a walk to the Duxton pub for happy hour 😁

4 October

Tour around old Parliament House. Interesting

It was a rainy afternoon but we had a date for dinner with Liv and Dean

Liv and Dean took us for a drive to Mt Ainslie where we checked out the night time view over the city.

5 October

Floriade today - it was well done but a bit disappointing compared to Toowoomba.

We were disappointed with Floriade - it was just too manufactured and seemed to major more on the stalls to buy souvenirs or food.

The Australian Mint tour in the afternoon was more interesting, but not something I'd go out of my way to do again.

6 October

You can't go to Canberra without going to see the War Memorial and we went back at the end of the day for the close of day event - the Last Post etc. This was extremely well done.

The Memorial was partly closed due to some expansion building works being done, but it is a still an emotional place to visit.

This is Nike or "Winged Victory"

7 October

Today we visited the Australian National Museum. Disappointing. Very disappointing, but the cafe served a decent lunch.

Afterwards we took a drive to Mt Ainslie to see the day time views over the city.

8 October

Our last full day in Canberra and we met up with Liv again and visited Haig Park markets.

It was a pretty nice market that had more interesting food etc than crappy crystal and candle sellers.

We had breakfast there, seated on some logs provided for the purpose.

Later on we thought we'd take a drive to a “country pub” and googled our desire. This lead us to head off to one that sounded good but which turned out to be in the centre of Queanbeyan. A nice enough pub, and a nice drive, but hardly a country pub.

9 October

Left Canberra in the cold and took a scenic route to Molong.

Beautiful country but twisty roads with steep hills.

Stopped at the Molong Showgrounds overnight. $20 for all services.

10 October

Bellata Golf Club (about half an hour north of Narrabri) provides great camping (including power and water) for a donation.

Drinks in their bar were good too.

11 October

Apple Maps took us down a few rough rocky roads on our way to Girraween National Park.

Nice once we got here though.