Aussie Roadtrip: Melbourne to the Snowy Mountains

An early start out of Melbourne saw us make great ground on our first day. A good thing as it was a long drive ahead of us.

Aside from a short break in Seymour we didn’t stop until around 11 when we drove straight up to Wodonga’s Memorial service for Remembrance Day. Inside the local shopping centre we found some school kids singing Christmas carols outside Target whilst dancing the Macarena. Strange combination and newsworthy enough for Prime news!

Prior to this was "Jingle Bells" paired with the Macarena dance

Coming up to Lake Hume was a highlight of the day’s roadtrip for me. The contrast of the red dirt with the mountains, lake and its creepy dead trees is somehow captivating. We had lunch on the edge of the lake with the flies trying to eat our food and faces.

Lake Hume

Percy and Rob at Lake Hume

After lunch it wasn't long until we turned off towards Thredbo and crossed the Murray state border into NSW.

Hooray Snow Mountains!

On the road again!

Driving this long in Europe we would have probably made it from Amsterdam to Paris!

Rob’s highlight of the day was the Scammell's lookout.  Walking through the stringybarks to a lookout (which apparently received an upgrade just before the Queen’s visit in 1963 – not sure which queen, as the sign didn’t specify), we should have been able to not see Mt Kosciusko, not because of pending rainclouds (although there were many), but because it’s blocked by another hill.

Scammell's lookout

Oh stringy barks!

It was a good day on the road. Aside from the beautiful countryside we were pretty excited that we made it to Siberia in 2015 after all:

Turned out we didn't need Russian visas after all!

Haunting

We concluded the afternoon settling to hide out of the rain in a cabin in Jindabyne instead of in our tent!

Life as in-betweeners 2

Many moons ago we were living as in-betweeners anticipating our 2015 adventures. Now we are back in that space again, albeit early, and enjoying what it brings! This time we are post-overseas adventures and, unexpectedly, back home in Melbourne. Since our last country (island city-state!), Singapore, we have had a bizarre but enjoyable time back in Australia. After a warm welcome from my Mum and Sarah and a short recovery program, we realised we were in Australia for two important birthdays and hot-footed it to Brisbane.

In Brissy and Toowoomba we caught up with family and friends and attended Tim's ALL-STAR MARIO KART BIRTHDAY BASH at BOUNCE! It was also Rob's great aunt's 95th birthday. On top of all that, we were able to catch Tim's latest play The Odd Couple. Our return home was certainly nicely timed in some ways!

Brothers!

Ahhhh!

Bouncing fun times

Dodgeball

Star of the show! 

Luigi in action

Flying high

It's a me Luigi!

Joining the revolution!

Chasing Cooper Trooper 

Yoshi bouncing along

Scaling new heights!

Jumping for joy

While looking elated, Tim was a little deflated

Moments after this photo was taken, Yoshi lost all his air and Rob took a break from the trampolines

Brothers (x2) on a tight-trope 

Tim & Sal...always performing

Post 30th birthday celebration

Back in Melbourne I soon realised we would be staying in the one spot for more than a week, something that we did infrequently on our overseas adventure. It felt odd not to be on the move and we were (a tad) in denial. It was however fantastic to be catching up with family and friends again. We caught some key events that we would have otherwise missed: David and Kelly's BBQ at their new house, Marita's Halloween party, meeting a special 3 month old, attending my cousin's first solo art exhibition and welcoming visitors we met via Airbnb in Glasgow. 

David in his new home

Kelly in her new home!

Uncle Pete full of advice for our upcoming roadtrip

Favourite sisters

Zip-lady and Drop Bear

Survey says "3 in 4 Australians don't know what a Drop Bear is"

This is what happens when you mix Darth Sidious, a Drop Bear, a Whoopee Cushion and a character from a Tim Burton story

Tim Burton was popular this year

Tony always has the best costumes (he's at the back right)

Catching up with Ben & Jenny

Even with so much going on, it wasn't long before we were plotting an Australian road trip around my health appointments. That's right, we decided Australia, the lovely, amazing country that it is, should certainly be included in our big adventure. After all, plenty of other travellers include it in their Round-The-World trip, Gap year or world jaunt. There sure is a lot of it we haven't seen too. Anyway, we began plotting...WATCH THIS SPACE...