Friday started out a beautiful sunny day and we drove back to Porepunkah before turning up the Mount Buffalo National Park road,climbing up through the gum trees with tumbling waterfalls till we got to the Mount Buffalo Chalet which in Winter would be a hive of ski activity. There was a lookout from which we could see a wide vista of mountain ranges including Mt Bogong, Mount Arthur, Mt Hotham and Mt Feathertop, not forgetting Mt Kosciusko (Australia's highest mountain) in the far distance. These mountains are all densely covered in trees which gives of a blue haze. We have a painting of Mt Bogong at home, so we could put the scene into perspective with the painting.
As we got to a higher
altitude, the gums became white and devoid of leaves and looked quite
ghostly. We reached a car park where there were pulleys for the ski
fields and the Horn mountain (1725m). Here, we turned around and
stopped at Lake Catani for lunch before descending to the Ovens
Valley. We then continued through Bright and the roads climbed up
again to Tawonga Gap where we could look down on the town of Mt
Beauty and the Kiewa Dam.
Bright is a beautiful
town with many European firs and broad leaved trees which are very
colourful particularly in Spring and Autumn.
We learned from the
owner of the campsite that back in the 1930s, many Italians came to
the Ovens Valley and bought up 10 acre lots to grow tobacco. Later,
the Australian Government wanted to reduce the number of tobacco
licences and the multiple operators in the Ovens Valley didn't
receive new licences so they diversified and now the crops are
mainly, chestnuts, walnuts, olives and grapes.
Highlight of the day:
Being up amongst the mountains.
No comments:
Post a Comment