DAY 20
3rd January 2021
Rain, rain, rain. Packed up and left in the rain. We drove up Mount Buffalo in some crazy fog. You couldn’t see anything from up there, but there was hot tea and coffee at the little mobile cafe, which we definitely needed!
The fog cleared a little while we were up there, so the downhill road was nowhere near as sketchy as driving uphill because we could SEE! We visited Ladies Bath Falls on the way down. Oh I wish it was a nicer day and we could swim, the falls were so beautiful. It was very busy though, despite the drizzly weather! I walked up to the other two falls further up, while Josh stayed by the bottom pool.
Our campsite for the night was Oxley recreation area. To get there, we drove through Myrtleford, a lovely little town, where there was a house for sale with a lovely church in the front yard!
The recreation area was a pony club, of sorts. There were rings for horses to be walked around and lots of space. It was also a cow paddock! At several times during the day and night, the cows wandered through the camp! It was funny. The recreation area also had toilets and showers, which was a bargain for $10.
DAY 21
4th January 2021
We drove through wine country. Yesterday, we passed the Brown Brothers winery, and today it was De Bortoli! We drove to the William-Hovell Dam, and following Google’s instructions, started up a 4wd track to get to our next location. We got about 2km into it, and decided to turn around. Google wanted us to go for about 40km or so but neither of us wanted to go along a track that we didn’t really know, with no one else around. We went back to the dam for lunch.
We then drove to the Mount Buller area via Mansfield and visited Craig’s Hut. This hut was rebuilt for the movie “The Man From Snowy River” and was in a lovely location. We looked at camping there, as it would have looked amazing in golden hour, but the people who were already camped at the site had spread out all over the place and there wasn’t really a good spot to camp. There were also no loos so this complicated matters too – it’s alright having no toilets when there’s not too many people around, but when there’s no privacy it gets a bit tricky!
We decided to go to Pineapple Flat to camp instead, which was quite a long way away.