Over Christmas I spent about a week in the Victorian Alps with Lachy, framed on either side by a night spent in the skiing town of Mt Buller, and filled in the middle with trail riding through the mountains. I haven't got round to writing a blog post about that yet but safe to say it was one of the best adventures of my life.
Anyway, on Friday we drove up there again for a 'mental health weekend', since Lachy's about to start exam revision and I've been stressing about various things I probably don't need to stress about. We set off through Friday-evening-heading-out-of-the-city traffic which wasn't our best idea but soon enough we were driving on open highways, surrounded by grass and gum trees and grazing animals. It was a breath of fresh air. There are many things I love about living in the city (never having to order things off the internet because I can find them on my street, someone qualified to teach me anything I want to know within a short range of my home...) but sometimes that feeling of 'it never stops' can be exhausting.
Darkness fell as we drove past Mansfield and up to the mountain, and the headlights illuminated a kangaroo standing stock-still by the side of the road. It was the first wild kangaroo I'd seen that wasn't dead at the side of the highway, and I was transfixed. Ten minutes later Lachy braked when he spotted a wombat on the verge, and we reversed to get a better look at it. It stood there hyperventilating for a few seconds before sprinting back the way it had come.
The following morning we set off on our 'hike'. Since it was our mental health weekend, we didn't want to push ourselves particularly hard, so we aimed for the summit of Mt Buller. Since Buller is a very popular ski resort in Victoria there are slopes and buildings and ski lifts all the way to the top, but a path took us off around the side of the mountain so we could forget about civilisation for a little while.
As I write this, the next in a series of thunderstorms is passing over us in Melbourne. It has been roaring thunder and end-of-the-world rain all night long. Apparently, this is spring in Victoria. It was 22 degrees and gloriously sunny when we set off up Mt Buller; the chairlifts were stopped and the place was a ghost town. It was the same the last time I visited. When I finally do see the town packed with skiiers in winter it will be a real shock.
I have been becoming increasingly interested in birds, living in the city, since they're the only wildlife I really get to see on a regular basis. We saw a laughing kookaburra perched on a powerline on the drive up, and as we walked to the summit we heard the strange call of a pied currawong, and caught a raven in the process of cracking open an egg (a bird's or a snake's, we aren't sure).
Since we were so high before we'd even set off, the views from the summit were incredible. In the lower picture you can see the white of the trees that had been burned in a bushfire years before - I didn't get a decent picture of it, but there are white trees racing all the way up to the edge of the town of Mt Buller. It's frightening how close the flames must have come to destroying the town.
We walked along a bit of a ridge at the summit and Lachy called me over to look at something - a snowdrift. I scrambled down to it and made a snowball. It was 22 degrees - that's British summer! I was pouring sweat and yet here was a big ol' pile of snow, cold to the touch, the real deal.
In the evening we went 'possum hunting' - we took torches and walked out around the mountain a little way, searching the trees for the rare pygmy possum which survives in only a few locations in Australia (and most probably the world). Needless to say we didn't find any, but it was both frightening and exciting to feel like we were the only people on the mountain. (We weren't, quite.)
More adventures coming up soon!
Anyway, on Friday we drove up there again for a 'mental health weekend', since Lachy's about to start exam revision and I've been stressing about various things I probably don't need to stress about. We set off through Friday-evening-heading-out-of-the-city traffic which wasn't our best idea but soon enough we were driving on open highways, surrounded by grass and gum trees and grazing animals. It was a breath of fresh air. There are many things I love about living in the city (never having to order things off the internet because I can find them on my street, someone qualified to teach me anything I want to know within a short range of my home...) but sometimes that feeling of 'it never stops' can be exhausting.
Darkness fell as we drove past Mansfield and up to the mountain, and the headlights illuminated a kangaroo standing stock-still by the side of the road. It was the first wild kangaroo I'd seen that wasn't dead at the side of the highway, and I was transfixed. Ten minutes later Lachy braked when he spotted a wombat on the verge, and we reversed to get a better look at it. It stood there hyperventilating for a few seconds before sprinting back the way it had come.
The following morning we set off on our 'hike'. Since it was our mental health weekend, we didn't want to push ourselves particularly hard, so we aimed for the summit of Mt Buller. Since Buller is a very popular ski resort in Victoria there are slopes and buildings and ski lifts all the way to the top, but a path took us off around the side of the mountain so we could forget about civilisation for a little while.
As I write this, the next in a series of thunderstorms is passing over us in Melbourne. It has been roaring thunder and end-of-the-world rain all night long. Apparently, this is spring in Victoria. It was 22 degrees and gloriously sunny when we set off up Mt Buller; the chairlifts were stopped and the place was a ghost town. It was the same the last time I visited. When I finally do see the town packed with skiiers in winter it will be a real shock.
I have been becoming increasingly interested in birds, living in the city, since they're the only wildlife I really get to see on a regular basis. We saw a laughing kookaburra perched on a powerline on the drive up, and as we walked to the summit we heard the strange call of a pied currawong, and caught a raven in the process of cracking open an egg (a bird's or a snake's, we aren't sure).
Since we were so high before we'd even set off, the views from the summit were incredible. In the lower picture you can see the white of the trees that had been burned in a bushfire years before - I didn't get a decent picture of it, but there are white trees racing all the way up to the edge of the town of Mt Buller. It's frightening how close the flames must have come to destroying the town.
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| Mt Buller fire tower and summit |
In the evening we went 'possum hunting' - we took torches and walked out around the mountain a little way, searching the trees for the rare pygmy possum which survives in only a few locations in Australia (and most probably the world). Needless to say we didn't find any, but it was both frightening and exciting to feel like we were the only people on the mountain. (We weren't, quite.)
More adventures coming up soon!
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