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Red Back & Bare Back
G’day from Canberra - yes we have made it to the Australian Capital. Actually it’s night time and we’re parked in a roadside rest stop, so we can’t tell you what it’s like yet but we will be exploring tomorrow.
So what have we been up to this week?? Well, luckily the ferry crossing back to Melbourne was uneventful, other than us buying some souvenir ‘Spirit of Tasmania’ stubby holders which are ridiculously awful, but they’re the biggest, thickest ones we’ve found so far.
Monday found us back at Simon and Danielle’s to see the much loved Auntie Chris and Roy, who had flown in the day before. We had a lovely meal and a very entertaining evening, it was great to see them and we wish them a fantastic stay in Australia.
So then it was off to the “High Country” in North East Victoria, the hilly bit before New South Wales, which is all ski resorts in the Winter and cycling/mountain biking the rest of the year. We stayed in Smoko and spent a few days cycling, driving and walking The Great Alpine Road, exploring the countryside and historic towns.
In Bright there was a fantastic chocolate factory and delightful art-deco style 60-seater cinema (although it only opened 4 months ago), riverside parks and lots of cafes – we even enjoyed a proper cream tea. We drove up to Mount Beauty and walked along the Kiewa River gorge which leads to a beautiful canyon. We say beautiful, we don’t know for sure as we couldn’t see it. If we had read the tourist pamphlet properly, we would have known you have to get into the river and wade waist deep the last 400 metres to see it – needless to say we were not dressed appropriately for such activities! The walk was nice though, and we got to see lots more wombat poo, but still no live, wild wombats!
Perhaps we should talk about the wombat poo. You may have seen from the photo that this is cuboid, this is so they can stack it in little piles (no pun intended) to mark their territory. Very clever, but what isn’t so clear is how they actually managed to “produce” it in such neat little bricks.
We’ve seen our first Red Back spider (not deadly, but a bite requires hospital treatment) which was sharing a public loo with Caroline. She was so excited, she called Bry in to see it, and then a passing couple joined us too! All four of us stood around a public loo looking at a spider (honest officer). We also saw some sort of snake on the road, but didn’t stop to talk, and we found a pretty mean looking spider climbing out from behind the fridge in the van, who was dispatched without identification. We’re now in funnel web country, which is the deadly one, so we must remind ourselves what that one looks like.
Today (Monday) was the Labour Day Public Holiday in Victoria, or “March Long Weekend”, which a lot of towns celebrate with music and arts festivals, most of which seemed to be on Saturday. So Saturday morning we left Smoko and drove back up The Great Alpine Road, stopping along the way to see what was going on at various towns – live music, dancing, arts & crafts, food stores, bike and car rallies – all good family fun. We carried on towards the area around Beechworth, made famous by gold rushes and infamous by the outlaw (and folk hero) Ned Kelly. It is said that Kelly’s last words before being hung were “Such is life” – a quote that we have seen on many “utes” and trucks around here. Beechworth looks just like a frontier town from a Hollywood Western, but with a load of sandstone buildings too, that look very English. So much of this area is a real mix between English and American – or is it English and colonial, we just think of it as American thanks to Hollywood?
On the English/American mixed theme, Sunday found us in Chiltern, but watching their annual Pro-Rodeo. Cowboys and cowgirls had come from all over Australia to compete in bare-back-bucking-bronco, bull-riding, steer wrestling, roping and barrel racing (which is Caroline’s favourite as her Aunty Pat was a big name on the American barrel racing circuit). It was a great day (and night) drinking beer, eating corn dogs and mixing with the locals – they even let us camp on site with the competitors.
To date, we haven’t yet had to pay any actual camping fees, which is great as this was one of our concerns as the campsites here are quite expensive. The most we have had to pay is entrance to National Parks which then provide camping. The rest of the time has been free-sites, most of which have some sort of facilities. OK, sometimes like tonight, these are just roadside stops, but they’re relatively clean and feel very safe – we’ve never been alone, right now there’s a couple sleeping in a tent on the verge next to us, another camper and a couple sleeping in a car. The sites are provided by the councils or community groups and are a great way to get a bit of tourist dollar to the local shop / cafe / petrol station. We find them on the WikiCamps Australia ‘phone app, which so far has been brilliant, loads of other info too.
Another way we have found to save money is buying wine in boxes. Not a new concept we appreciate, but here they do some very cheap – and quite palatable – wine by 5 litre box. Alcohol in general is quite expensive. Initially, it’s not sold in supermarkets, but in dedicated “bottle-shops”, like US and Canadian liquor stores. They also have the drive-thru variety here too. This means the supermarkets don’t do the “sell it cheap to get them in the doors” thing like the UK. A bog standard Aussie wine that may be £4 in UK Tesco may be more like £7 here, and that’s Aussie wine, in Oz. Beer pretty much the same, OK but not UK cheap, and the foreign stuff is cheaper than the local brew.
But then there’s the boxes of “goon”. We’re currently enjoying 5 litres of red and 5 litres of white for the grand sum of $22, about £11. That’s 83p a bottle. We’re sure the fact they have no need for antifreeze here is a pure coincidence. If we come home blind and not just blindo, you’ll know why.
So we are now in Canberra, which also has a Public Holiday today, but here it’s Canberra Day. En route from Victoria we drove through New South Wales, which didn’t have a Public Holiday. We pretty much thought of Australia as one big country split into different regions, we weren’t expecting them to have different laws, holidays and what-not. We also thought we were over the whole quarantine thing once we got Mario in here, but no, they have more quarantine rules between each state. Some you can’t take fresh fruit and veg over, some only certain types of fruit, some salad leaves are OK, some fresh meat is not and honey seems to be a problem everywhere. Then there’s the various “Fruit Fly Exclusion Zones” which protect the fruit growing areas and have similar, but different rules. This is what we have been told and what we have prepared for (eating, cooking or donating various items along the way) but as yet we have seen no evidence of how they actually enforce these rules. No doubt time will tell, and no doubt just when we’re least expecting it!
So tomorrow we’re off to explore Canberra and then it’s Sydney for the weekend. We’ll let you know how we get on!
Hoo roo.