Week 5: Merimbula NSW - Canberra ACT

 Stats Overview

Km's Travelled: 771

Km's Hiked: 18

No. of Camps: 4

The Adventures

Another big week of adventures down!  After proudly announcing "this year is going to be so good because I won't get sick all the time from germy kids", I promptly woke up the next morning with a nasty cold. As luck would have it, just as I was getting over it I passed it onto Will. However, we haven't let my cold, or Will's man-flu, slow us down and have still achieved some pretty awesome adventures this week!

We started the week by finishing off our exploration of the Sapphire Coast. Unfortunately on our final day, the weather was not on our side and we ended up with about 50mm of rain. There was so much water that under the awning of our van flooded, so it was a pretty miserable situation at camp! We still decided to head down to Eden but were unable to enjoy the lookouts or any of the walks in their national parks as it was far too wet. However, we found their Killer Whale Museum which certainly made up for the weather! The museum tells the story of whaling off the shores of Eden, particularly the remarkable story of how a pod of killer whales used to work with the whalers. Apparently the killer whales would go out and hunt a whale and then drive it into the bay. The leader of the pod was a whale they called "Old Tom". He would then go into the bay ahead of the whale and alert the whalers that they had caught a whale for them. The whalers would then leave their station and go and hunt the whale. In return for their work the killer whales would be given what they wanted from the whale to eat (apparently they favoured the whale tongue which can weigh up to 4 tonnes) and then the whalers would bring the whale in and do their gross whale work. The museum also had other stories of how the killer whales helped locate bodies of drowned civilians in the waters, and also provided protection for capsized whalers in the bay until they could be rescued by other crews. The museum also had the skeleton of "Old Tom" on display.  The relationship between killer whales and humans working together off Eden is the only known example in the entire world. 

We also used the poor weather as an excuse to go and explore the shops in the charming little town of Pambula. We had some amazing food there and also enjoyed exploring the goods and produce of the area. We definitely spent way more money than we should have, but it was worth it!

From the coast we headed inland towards the mountains so that we could go to Mount Kosciuszko. Once again, poor old Bertie had to drag our caravan up the mountain range and, once again, we took one of the steepest and windiest ways to ascend. We promised her that it would be the last time she would have to cross the Great Dividing Range, and boy did she have to work hard to get us there! We ended up having to stop a couple of times going up the range to let her cool down. We made it to our campsite which was in Kosciuszko NP, just outside Thredbo. It was a really nice campground which had the Thredbo River running through it. We stayed here for a few days and used the campsite as our base to explore the mountains. The main purpose of our stay here was to complete the Mount Kosciuszko Summit walk. It is actually a pretty easy walk as you can take the chairlift most of the way up the mountain and then it is a 13km return walk to complete the summit. However, we had to choose the windiest day to complete the walk which made the trek an awful lot more challenging. The weather forecast for the day had gusts of wind up to 60km/h which we thought would be ok. However, this was grossly underestimated with the constant wind speed of our ascent around 80km/h with recordings of wind gusts up to 110km/h while we were on the mountain. The wind was that strong at some points that it literally blew me clean off the path! The whole way up the mountain we had to walk into the wind and, for the first half hour, we kept stopping to rest and talked about turning around and attempting the walk the next day. However, after a couple of kms we started to get used to the wind and decided to persevere and see the summit. We also made a friend along the way who had been ditched by her friend, so the conversation with her helped to make the walk a little more enjoyable. As you will be able to see from the photos, we made it to the top of Australia's tallest mountain! 

From Kosciuszko we headed inland to Canberra. The purpose for our trip here was to have some work done to the car and caravan, which ended up being a slightly more expensive detour than what we had hoped for! However, we still found some time to visit the War Memorial and the National Gallery. We both really enjoyed the War Memorial, however, in the two hour allocated time for tickets we barely made it through the exhibits for WWI and WWII. We also discovered that the artwork at the National Gallery was mostly too "highbrow" for our simple tastes. Although, I did enjoy seeing some of Albert Namatjira's works and Will discovered a painting there by Jackson Pollock which is estimated to be worth over $500 million. 

We will now be heading back out west, for some hot summer weather. We are both looking forward to being reminded of what summer in Australia is supposed to be like, after our chilly few days in the south! Hopefully this next week will be our last in New South Wales before we start our adventure into Victoria.

Kodak Moments

The Pinnacles - Beowa NP

Will enjoying the creek at our Kosciuszko Campsite

Still some snow - Mount Kosciuszko

Trying to hide from the wind in the rocks - Mount Kosciuszko Summit

Will trying to touch the clouds - Mount Kosciuszko Summit

So many beautiful flowers - Mount Kosciuszko

View from Charlotte Pass across to Mount Kosciuszko

The Sound of Music may or may not have been sung... - Mount Stilwell

Mount Stilwell Summit

Leaving a poppy for Great Uncle Joe - Canberra