Dave & Tee in front of Kosciusko

After farewelling Bernie once leaving the Deua National Park and a quick stop at Cooma to pick up some thermals for me and a flanno each from Target Country, we pointed the Prado towards Jindabyne to begin the journey down through the Snowy Mountains and Victorian High Country. We decided night 1 should be at Sawpit creek, which was an old haunt back in the day when we would head to the snow and camp rather than staying in a cabin, we knew it had a decent shower block which by now we were definitely in need of! The camp site was virtually empty and apparently we missed the early snow fall by a few days so I didn’t get the chance to throw a snow ball at Tee’s head (spewing!!). Even without snow, it was still pretty cold so we cooked up an early dinner and retreated up to bed to watch “The Man From Snowy River”.

The next morning after a nice hot shower (well Tee’s maybe not so hot but that’s another story!) we drove up to Charlottes Pass to take a look at Mt Kosciuszko. We were planning to do a quick walk up to Blue Lake but the weather was closing in and we weren’t hugely prepared for it so after a quick walk to the lookout we decided to head back into town for a  shop at Woolies. We were about to be out of range for quite a few days so it was essential we heading into the High Country prepared with all the food we needed. We also stopped into Gloria Jeans at Jindabyne for a coffee and some free WiFi to catchup on things before going off the grid.

Leaving Jindabyne we went down the scenic Alpine Way to Thredbo and stopped in for a quick lunch before continuing on to the end of the sealed road at Tom Groggin. The camp site was a great find as it’s right on the Murray River with loads of space and grassy private spots with virtually no one around but hundreds of roos! The Murray River also forms the border between NSW and VIC so the next morning our introduction to the next leg of the trip was a fast flowing deep river crossing. Of course with no one else around and having no idea how deep it was, I had to strip off and walk across it to test the depth and current flow. The water was absolutely FREEZING so I beat a hasty retreat out of there and started jogging up and down the dirt road to get warm (still with no trousers on) thanks for the tip Bear Grylls!! The good part is that the water wasn’t too deep so we jumped in the Prado and made it across easily.

Next stop was to air down the tyres as the trail was getting increasingly worse (or better, however you want to look at it). While doing so a farmer from the Tom Groggin station saw us and thought we needed help so came over for a chat, which was good as he gave us some good local information about trickier sections of the track and the best trails to take to get us where we wanted to be. I don’t think Tara was too keen on him telling us about a Prado in here a couple of weeks back which got stuck with a broken axle but anyway, we soldiered on and quickly found the rutted out steep part he was talking about which was a great chance to test out the diff lock in the Prado. Tee had her eyes shut for the fun bits – I have to admit it got me going for a minute or two also…the heart rate was definitely up!

The road then eased up a bit and eventually met with a logging road which was quite a boring section of the trip as there was no scenery (other than fallen dead burnt out trees). It did lead us into a cute little town of Benambra though and then onto Omeo for lunch where we tucked into some really average meat pies before continuing onto our camp for the night at Victoria Falls. I’d accidentally left a bottle of Moet in the car and today was 8 years since Tara and I started going out so we cracked the bubbly and sat around the fire star gazing and chatting for the night.

An early start the next morning and we bid farewell to the new friends we’d made at the Victoria Falls campsite and head up to Mount Hotham which was a great vantage point for checking out the mountains without snow on them. We followed some iconic 4×4 tracks through the high country heading for Dargo with a stop off at an old town from the gold rush days called “Grant”. Apparently Grant is the best preserved of all of the Victorian Goldfields due to it’s remoteness and we managed to find a few old mines to venture into.

The Union Mine in Grant

We then pointed towards Dargo Pub, another iconic destination and got the mandatory photo with our rig in front of it. Fortunately or unfortunately, we arrived just after a bus load of oldies from the Bairnsdale retirement home so we had a fair wait before our lunch would arrive, which was a great chance to sit in the front bar and catch up on some stories of the local area with the barman Dave, and publican Darryl. They let us know some good local camp sites so we headed off up to Black Flat and set up camp for our last night of roughing it in the High Country – next stop Wilson’s Promontory!

Photos for this section have been added to Snowy & Vic High Country

Dave