From Jindabyne we took the scenic route to Adaminaby though Middingbank (ya gotta love the names of places here!) and from there on into the northern reaches of the Kosciuszko National Park. The rolling hills of the lowlands gave way to more dense forests and mountainous country as we climbed into the park. It was our plan to camp near the Yarrangobilly Caves, but we couldn’t find a campsite attractive to us so we pushed on through to the far edge of the park and found a delightful campground on the banks of a little creek called Jounama.
We pulled the trailer under a nice spreading tree for shade and settled in.
The closest place for groceries is a little village called Talbingo which was established to support the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme and was constructed near the homestead of the famous Australian writer, Miles (female) Franklin. It’s a delightful little town with a well stocked store and, even more importantly, a well stocked bottle shop (liquor store)! The wonderful lady at the local library allowed me to connect the computer so that we could collect our email and publish the last two page updates. We made a trip into the nearest "major" town, Tumut, just 65 km away, to clarify a few issues regarding fishing regulations and pick up some supplies not available in Talbingo. My back was still bothering me a bit and the stream reminded us so much of our favorite places in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that we resolved to stay awhile.
The Yarrangobilly Caves were the attraction that brought us to the area, so we backtracked into the park and spent a day going through them. These are several limestone caves of different ages so it is possible to witness the development of limestone caves over time by touring several caves. We chose a very old cave and a very young one for our trip and were not disappointed. This is Karen at the entrance to the younger cave.
In the "mature" cave, the formations were smooth and fully developed with lots of colors while in the younger cave everything is rough and grey. Both of the tours that we took were guided so we got lots of detailed information along the way. This is Karen in a particularly spectacular chamber called the Queen’s Chamber - note the stalactites in the background.
In some locations pools have formed within the cave.
The lighting was white only so that the real colors of the limestone formations and trace elements could be seen. This is a "must see" for anyone passing through the area. The guided tours were a bit pricey, but well worth it.
Back at the camp along the Jounama Creek, I did some scouting for fish while Karen walked the old mountain road which was developed by early settlers to climb the escarpment near our camp which marks the parks boundary. The water line for Talbingo runs up along the edge of Jounama Creek and we followed it up to the point where it draws the town’s water supply. Access to the creek for fishing was difficult, but the fishing was good. Like the trout at home, they were suckers for a well presented worm and we had several good trout dinners from the stream.
Now, of course, these fish didn’t really "count" since I hadn’t caught them using the fly fishing equipment that I brought from home, but they did taste great!! The size ranged from 25 cm to 35cm (10" to 16") and they were good old rainbows. The narrow stream banks were choked with blackberry bushes (my excuse for not trying out the fly fishing gear). The berries were ripe and the area hadn’t been sprayed so we collected a bucketful to have over vanilla custard for desert after the fishies - yummers!! Fresh trout, a good Australian wine, rice, garlic salad, and blackberry custard for desert - doesn’t get much better than that!
Near Talbingo is one of the power stations of the "Snowy Scheme", as it’s known here. The station is called Tumut 3 (quite an imaginative name, eh?). We went on a guided tour of the place and learned all about the Snowy Scheme in the process. This is a "state of the art" hydroelectric dam with computerized control systems and mostly automated operation. The Snowy Scheme involves a dozen or so reservoirs, dams, and power stations in the Snowy Mountains which are connected together by miles of underground tunnels and pumping stations so that the water can be diverted between storage facilities to control flooding and generate power for this part of the country. It was a massive engineering project that included the construction of several towns, the relocation of several more towns, and most of roads in the area. Several major rivers, including the famous Snowy River, were dammed in the process and huge reservoirs produced. This is what the headrace piping looks like where it comes down to the Tumut 3 power station from the Talbingo Dam.
The pipes are several meters in diameter and can move an enormous amount of water. The tour of the power station is well presented and nominally priced - we’d recommend it. There are several power stations with similar tours in the "Scheme" and I’d suspect that they’re all worthwhile.
While I was off fishing and lazing around, Karen was busy watching the local bird life, of which there was lots. Of particular note was an exquisite little blue wren called the Superb Fairy Wren. And it was. Small, delicate, and furnished with almost neon blue markings, it was nearly impossible to photograph because it was constantly on the move. Despite considerable efforts on her part we are unable to show you here what it looks like, but perhaps I can scan a photo from her bird book later. However, we were able to catch this guy who took a liking to my boot.
Caterpillars of this size are quite impressive in the flesh and I’m glad that he didn’t crawl inside my boot before I’d put my foot into it - yeech!
One of our neighbors in the campground turned out to be another set of wandering ‘Mericans, Jim and Joyce from Florida and Seattle respectively.
They’ve been yachting around the pacific for the past 18 years and land lubbering it around Oz for past 2 years! And we thought that we were long term travelers! We spent several delightful evenings with them relating our relative travels and sharing information about places that each of us had yet to see. We hope to run into them again somewhere along the line.
Finally, it was time to pack up and head down the hill to Melbourne. On the way, we stopped off in Tumut to see a "Camp Draft" competition. This is a working horse and rider competition that doesn’t attract a large audience like the rodeos, but means a lot to the local stockmen. It involves cutting a steer out of a group and then herding it through an obstacle course. It simulates the kind of day to day stock work that horses and riders are required to do on a daily basis on cattle stations and takes a great deal of horsemanship. The steers are ornery, contrary, and don’t cooperate with the stockmen at all. No wonder they eat so many of them! With all the horse smells, cattle odors, Wranglers, Levies, Resistols, Justins, and Stetsons around we felt right at home!
We took the Hume Highway on down to Melbourne town to save time and met Heather Jekel at her home there. She had graciously offered to put us up while we were in town and her son, Gareth, had generously arranged for a place that we could store our trailer at his business. The next several days were spent organizing equipment and shopping for supplies in support of our trip to Tasmania. Heather was our expert guide for a bit of sight seeing around Melbourne and invaluable in navigating for our shopping trips.
We got to watch the Nevada boy, Andre Agasshie, win the Australian Open there in Melbourne. We watched it on the telly (getting those Australianisms down!), of course, as the stadium was filled to overflowing, but it was great none-the-less! We also got to watch the Superbowl game, live, after calling our friends JJ and Valerie and Carol and Al who we traditionally spend Super Bowl Sunday with. It was a real touch of home and we throughly enjoyed it, even if they did block out all those great commercials. Heather, however, was confused. "Why do they call it football?" she asked. "They hardly ever touch the ball with their feet." Well, compared to Australian Footy, she’s right. In Aussieland, the ball’s kicked all over the place. Everyone’s running around almost continuously so that it’s difficult to tell exactly what’s going on, and the rules are as incomprehensible to us as American football must be to them. I will say, however, that their game is tougher, as they get little time to rest and wear hardly any protective equipment despite the fact that they’re constantly running into each other and kicking each other’s shins. Make no mistake - the Aussies love their footy every bit as much as we do ours, maybe more!!
The big day finally came and we bid Heather a temporary farewell as we headed off to the harbor to put the Troopy and ourselves on the ferry to Tazzie.