Tarago to Walwa
30 January 2019
Master Map
Overnight I'd done some emailing and arranged to visit friends in Melbourne two days hence. I had a rough plan to get there which involved passing through Canberra to visit a virtual reality "Antarctica Experience". My booking allowed me time to take a ride to the Mt Stromlo Observatory for a look. I then planned to get as far through the mountains as time would allow so that I'd be two reasonable days ride from Melbourne.
In the yard at the Loaded Dog ready to roll
The Australian Capital Territory is surrounded by wind farms. I find the huge mills strangely attractive.
Lake Burley Griffin with the National Library in the background
Filling in time with a side trip to the west of Canberra
The Cotter Dam west of Canberra. Harrison Ford's fate would have been quite different had he jumped from this one.
The virtual reality tour of Antarctica was interesting, partly because it was the first VR experience I've had. It was also a pleasant hour and a bit in air conditioning.
Leaving Canberra, I rode to Cooma along a not very exciting road, all the while watching the build up of the afternoon's entertainment.
In Cooma, I ate, hydrated (it was hot again) and then made my way into the mountains.
I stopped at the Sawyers Hill Rest Hut, but I can't remember why.
The Kosciuszko National Park is infested with brumbies (wild horses). They're not native to Australia and cause immense damage. To preserve the natural habitat, they should shoot the lot, but a romantic attachment to horses and a national attachment to the Banjo Patterson poem The Man from Snowy River makes it impossible. The plague of horses in the National Park is quietly being overtaken by a plague of deer, but that's another story.
Signs warn motorists to look out for brumbies.
Blow me down if I didn't get around the next corner and meet this bloke and the 4 or 5 brumbies he was looking out for. First time I've met any.
I stopped to take the photo and, as it was clear he was not going to move, rode quietly past his head. We maintained eye contact until I was safely past. I gave thanks for the gentle burble of the OEM exhaust system wondering what he might have felt about loud pipes.
In winter this would be covered in snow
The Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme is an important source of electricity for mainland Australia. It's currently being expanded to try to reduce the reliance on coal-fired generation. This is the entrance to one of the underground generation stations.
Shortly after leaving the power station, nature delivered a few drops of rain, fulfilling the promise of the earlier build up. It looked as if it would be a light shower, which was not totally unwelcome, so I left my wets off. Bad call. By the time I reached O'Hares Rest Area, I was thoroughly soaked.
Luckily it was a pretty place for a rest.
To digress for a moment, the grammarians amongst you will have noticed the oddity of O'Hares Rest Area. It should be O'Hare's Rest Area, but the correct use of the simple apostrophe has defeated authorities in this country to the point where it's been decreed it will not be used in its possessive sense in public nomenclature. Having, as I do, an apostrophe in my surname, it irritates the crap out of me.
"Out came the sun and dried up all the rain"
By the time I got to the lookout with a view of the Snowy Mountains, I was hot again and largely dry.
A notice at a lookout about Australia's first major civil aviation incident
The Snowy Mountains
One dousing a day is enough, and I was happy to have skipped this one. I stopped for the day at the Walwa Hotel. It did rain, but not much.
