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.
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.
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.
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.
Continuing inland the route takes us through winding roads of beautiful countryside dotted with tiny villages. Canbewarra Mountain lookout (see leg 1) provides amazing though rather hazy views of the countryside for miles and here we met our first wild wallaby in the aptly named Kangaroo Valley - unfortunately too shy to wait for his picture to be taken.
Further north the landscape was no less dramatic at Fitzroy Falls, claimed to be one of the most spectacular waterfalls in Australia with a drop of 81m and well served with walkways and viewing points. Unfortunately the falls were in shade at the time of our visit and despite the walkways, clear views of the falls themselves were limited.
Turning south west along the M31 road towards Canberra, the landscape turned flatter and drier with fewer features worth stopping for, though we did stop along the way at a town called Goulburn - just to see what small rural towns were like. One main high street with heritage buildings seemed to be the answer!
Canberra itself is a planned city with the main axis following the line from the Mount Ainslie lookout through the Australian War Memorial, and down Anzac Parade. The axis continues straight up through Old Parliament House to New Parliament House, through the middle of the Prime Minister’s Office, and then on beyond into the mountains. It was designed by the city’s founders, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Griffin in 1911.
The scale of the design and it's focus on roads rather then walkways makes it very pedestrian unfriendly. One certainly needs a car to visit all the attractions and the need to find parking at each location was time consuming and off-putting. Nevertheless, the sunset and blue-hour views of the city from Mount Ainslie were blessed with good light.
The images from this leg can be seen here
Our 8 day driving trip from Sydney to Melbourne is under way with the first leg taking the coast road for some dramatic sea views along the Grand Pacific Drive from the Royal National Park, over the iconic Sea Cliff Bridge and then turning inland to stop the first night at Bomaderry. Total driving distance was about 170km. Once out of Sydney, roads were not too busy by UK standards though there are many changes in speed limits which require constant attention including mobile and fixed speed cameras and time-specific limits of 40km/hr around all schools.
The map of the whole route can be seen here
Day 1 images can be seen here