This is the place to find the updates on our travels: where we've been and (in due course) a little bit about the places.
Sydney to Melbourne - Leg 7: Fish Creek to Flinders
Leg 7 could have been a relatively short leg on our way to stay with friends at Flinders on the way to Melbourne but we took a detour to visit Cape Woolamai on Phillip Island, making the route overall a little over 200km. There were no cafes for breakfast open in the sleepy town of Fish Creek so we pressed on to the larger town of Inverloch for breakfast and on further to Wonthaggi where shops and supermarkets were plentiful. The learning point is that it is very difficult to tell which towns have which facilities in advance of a visit.
After Wonthaggi, our waypoint was Cape Woolamai on Phillip Island. The weather wasn't great so landscape images were not ideal but we did get to see some of the coastline and the Island's chocolate factory. Pressing on to Flinders, we were able to take views looking back across the bay towards Phillip Island.
Images from leg 7 can be viewed here.
Sydney to Melbourne - Leg 6: Lakes Entrance to Fish Creek
Leg 6 started with finding a car wash in Lakes Entrance to remove the red dust after the 85km of gravel track through the south part of the Alpine National Park. A most impressive jet wash with individual selections of pre-wash, main wash, foaming brush, rinse and wax was located, for AUD8 (£4). The first port of call was the beginning of some pristine sand called 90 mile beach. Despite being the height of summer, it was almost deserted. One fisherman demonstrarted innovative skills using a drone to deliver bait over the sea.
Stop no. 2 was Port Albert, a very small but historic port and fishing village with buildings dating back to 1856. On a coastline with few attractions, this was a hive of activity by comparison.
Not too far from Port Albert was Agnes Falls, a surprisingly large waterfall with just a handful of visitors despite being Sunday afternoon.
From Agnes falls, we took a decision to visit Wilsons Promontary - a large peninsula at the southern end of Australia, pointing towards Tasmania. This added 2 hours and some 130km to the trip but 'as we were there', decided it needed a visit. The weather worsened a little during this part of the trip resulting in some rather flat landscapes, but the penultimate beach at the end of the road (Squeaky Beach - so named because of the sound made by the sand underfoot) was voted Australia's best beach in 2024 and a top beach in 2025 globally.
The final destination for this leg was back inland at Fish Creek, one of the larger towns in the area with a pub/hotel and a small number of shops. Total length was 412km.
Leg 6 images can be seen here.
Sydney to Melbourne - Leg 5: Thredbo to Lakes Entrance
According to Google Maps, the Thredbo to Lakes Entrance leg (yes 'Lakes Entrance' is the place name) travelling south back to the coast (initially trough the Kosciuszko National Park) was 340km and almost 6 hours. With such a long run, we started early at 8am. Even so, with a few photo stops, this leg ended up taking nearly 10 hours! The main issue was that the route passed through another national park along the way and we only discovered on arrival that the road was a gravel track wit steep inclines where speeds much above 30km/hr were impossible. This part of the route was 135km long.
To add to the tension, although we had planned to refuel at a town on the other side of the park, the 2 petrol stations there were a) closed at 1pm and b) broken. The next nearest fuel was 30km away but arriving there we discovered that it too closed at midday on a Saturday. The next nearest station was another 75km away and we arrived there with the car fuel gauge announcing only 30km remaining. Very much a lesson in not making assumptions.
The highlight of the day however was encountering 2 kangaroo families in the wild, one crossing the road directly in front of us. They are timid creatures but the second group stayed around at a distance long enough to get a few photographs.
Images from this leg can be found here.
Sydney to Melbourne - Leg 4: Thredbo and Kosciuszko National Park
During the summer, only 3-4 of Thredbo's ski lifts are operating and these cater to hikers and mountain bikers with bike trails replacing the snow pistes. The longest ski lift at 1.8km is the Kosciuszko Chairlift which takes visitors from Thredbo town at 1365m to the Eagle's Nest restaurant at 1930 metres. From there, it is a 2km hike over steel walkways to Mt Kosciuszko Lookout and a further 4.5km to Mt Kosciuszko summit. In the 30C temperatures, we settled for the lower lookout.
The vista at the top of the chairlift is relatively flat compared with mountain ranges elsewhere, even if it does rise to 2228m at Mt. Kosciuszko summit and the views are less dramatic. On descent, we then took a second gondola, the Merritt's Gondola which deposits riders in the middle of a forest with even fewer views. The day's pass however includes all lifts.
Incidentally, for those wondering why the National Park has a Polish name, Kosciuszko National Park is named after the Polish freedom fighter Tadeusz Kościuszko to honour his legacy with the name given to Australia's highest peak in 1840 by Polish explorer Paweł Edmund Strzelecki. Strzelecki believed the mountain's shape resembled the Kościuszko Mound in Kraków, which was built to honor the patriot.
Views of and from the mountain and the surrounding Park can be seen here.
Sydney to Melbourne - Leg 3: Canberra to Thredbo
After unsuccessfully trying some further sightseeing of Canberra in the morning (it's just too spread out to walk to the main sites), we refuelled and set out south to Cooma, a waypoint town on the route to Jindabyne and Thredbo. En-route we we unfortunately able to see what the Australians mean by roadkill with numerous kangaroos and an occasional wombat lying along the highways.
Thredbo claims to be Australia's best winter and summer Alpine resort attracting 700,000 visitors annually. Set in the Kosciuszko National Park at a relatively low height of 1365m, it nevertheless boasts 14 lifts with shopping, restaurants, tours and nightlife. The town is built on a steep mountainside so you need a degree of stamina and fitness to get around and from what we could see, summer visitors were far fewer with many of the restaurants closed.
Leg 3 images are here.