Mountain Country

We stayed for five days in my favourite part of Victoria; the stunning and mountainous Alpine Shire.  This part of our journey was made even more enjoyable because we spent it staying with our good friends Jade and Adam.  In a house.  With sofa’s and TV’s and real beds and walls and a ceiling and everything! 

The weather was perfect and we spend our time here catching up, lazing by the pool, and visiting some of the surrounding gourmet attractions such as a local olive grower where we sampled olives, olive oil and olive jam (!). 

Ready to get some air...

One day we headed up to Lake Buffalo for a spot of waterskiing.  Things didn’t quite go to plan because on the first run (with the kids trailing behind in an inflatable tube, the speedboat’s engine began to quickly overheat.  We returned to shore where Adam and I looked knowledgably over the engine for some time before completely failing to fix it. We still managed to eke out a few more rides by giving the engine long cooling down periods in between, which did mean that Daniel got to show off his knee-boarding technique.  Later Jules was offered a tow from another boat and showed her natural athleticism by skiing an entire lap of the lake without a dramatic face-plant.  A shame really as it would have made for some humorous blog content.  Unfortunately, due to the boat problems, I wasn’t able to impress the judges with my skiing prowess, which was probably just as well. Didn’t want to show everyone up.

Natural finesse!

On another day we drove to a nearby trout farm where we had a go at catching our dinner.  It has to be the easiest meal we have ever caught because within half an hour, using nothing more sophisticated than a hook and line with a bamboo pole for a rod, the kids had snagged us six plump rainbow trout for the barbeque.  That’s my sort of fishing expedition.

Mmm. Dinner.

One of the downsides to spending time with great friends is that that time always passes very quickly and this visit was no exception.  Before we knew it, it was time to move on.  There was a bit of a grey mood in the car as we headed off.  We all agreed that we were sad to be saying goodbye and equally sad because it really did now feel like we were on our way home.  As if to mimic our mood, the sky turned dark and cloudy and it started to rain.

A mountain stream with rocks in it.

However, once we found ourselves winding our way up into the stunning high country of Kosciusko National Park, we soon cheered up.  We found ourselves a fantastic little camp spot by a mountain stream, got some food cooking over the campfire and reminded ourselves that the trip is not over just yet!