191 Saturdays: The not-yet-snowy Snowy Mountains (Apr. 23/09

A red smoky haze hung in the air as we packed up this morning, driving west along the eastern end of Ninety Mile Beach and then north along the lowest reaches of the Snowy River (yes, as in "The Man From Snowy River"). At the town of Orbost, we returned to the highway and looped back towards Cann River, which we passed through yesterday. There, we turned north onto a road that passes through the Snowy Mountains en route to Canberra. The country scenery made for a lovely drive, with little old single room schoolhouses still in use just off the road and groups of emus and kangaroos grazing in the fields. After a while, we crossed out of Victoria and back into New South Wales, where the country soon opened up into wide rolling hills dotted with little more than grazing sheep and golden poplar trees.

Near the town of Bombala, we followed the signs to a platypus reserve, which turned out to be a stretch of the Bombala River with a purpose-built viewing platform surrounded by grazing sheep. If it weren't for the sign on the road, nobody would ever find it since it was on a rough gravel road down the hill behind a dirt bike track and the local jockey club's horse racing track. It was a pretty little spot, with sunshine, colourful fall trees, and ducks splashing around in the river. We watched for quite a while to spot a platypus, but it was midday and they just didn't seem to be too active. So we had lunch and carried on, stopping again in the town of Bombala, where the same river meanders along the main drag. Apparently, platypus are seen there regularly, but again we weren't so lucky. We were lucky enough to get some great shots of a couple cockatoos that were playing around in the trees above us though!

We drove for an hour or so across the hills with views of the not-yet-snowy Snowy Mountains, enjoying the warm sun and the beautiful fall colours. It was starting to get dark as we neared Canberra, but we still had to get ourselves to the other side of the city to where the campgrounds are. Luckily, Canberra isn't a very big city (about 300,000 people), so there was no major rush hour to battle, but with lots of roundabouts and a crappy map, it made getting anywhere tough. It took a couple wrong turns and a couple episodes of bad instruction-giving to even get onto the right side of the lake, which separates the city in two. By the time we got to where our map said there was a campground (and then ten minutes past it...), it was dark and we were starving. Better directions from a gas station got us back to where we should have turned off, and eventually we found the campground. But as our luck would have it, they were full. Ten minutes down the highway though, we found another one and were quite happy to park it for the night knowing that a warm shower and hot supper were in our very near future!