Historic Bridges – Gundagai – Hume Highway

First stop on the snowy mountains road trip, gundagai

This weeks episode:
“The 1000km drive”
(in colour)

I took it upon myself to reccy the snowy mountains in preparation for
winter (and perhaps also some autumn walking, this was back in April
before it snowed)

Due to an oversight on my part I discovered that my ‘nobirds.com.au‘
hire car was not insured to drive outside of NSW, the most direct
route to the snowies (which should be about 5 hours drive) goes via
Canberra and that would mean going over the boarder into the ACT….
so i took a more scenic route:

Saturday
7:45am, about 40km from home, I come to the conclusion that I must be
mad, I feel tired, I have hardly gone anywhere, and the scenery is the
same lines of gum trees i have seen before… a good start.

9:30 ish I reach Goulburn and fill the car up which has gone from 3/4
full to 1/4 full in about 90km… now its fill it will read full for
the next 400km

10am ish I stop of a mc coffee and other mc comestibles at a place
called Yass (signs just screaming out for an apostrophe)

11:00am pass a curiously named service centre (as they call motorway
services) the ‘dog sat on the tucker box’, i later understand that the
correct Aussie folk law from which the line is taken is ‘the dog shat
in the tucker box’ – nice. for those interested the poem is:

‘Twas gettin’ dark, the team got bogged,
The axle snapped in two
I lost me matches and me pipe,
Now what was I to do?
The rains come down, ’twas bitter cold,
And hungry too was I
And the dog shat in the tuckerbox
Nine miles from Gundagai …

(and there was a hit song too…. I think it’s the sun? it does
something to people down here)

late morning: I reach the picturesque town of Gundagai (gun da guy)
and it felt more than 9 miles(?). It was an unplanned stop, but from a
lookout (which all Australian country towns have at least one of) I
spot what is probably the towns only tourist attraction, two historic
bridges. Closer inspection reveals that these are two rickety old
bridges c/w plaques (and a bus load of old people with a guide who is
desperately trying to drag them off the bus to look the spectacle of
‘the 2 bridges’ (this all reminded me of stoneybridge from naked
video) after marveling at the bridges for some seconds I come to the
conclusion that they must both have been rail bridges used a long time
ago (look at the pretty pics 3 and 4 now), after reading of the plaque
I find one was actually the road bridge on the main road between
Sydney and Melbourne… I picture a horse and cart in my head crossing
the bridge. Further reading reveals that the bridge was closed to
traffic in 1974 when the town was bypassed, and I start trying to
imagine lorries and American cars from the 70’s passing each other on
said rickety bridge!

early afternoon: continuing on through ever changing rolling yellow
hills, and autumnal colours, Corolla and I reach Tumut (chew met)
where the scenery changes, as it has done every 2 hours on my journey
so far, to more mountainy hilly things.

2:30pm: after driving up hill after hill up, each with amazing ‘keep
your eyes on the road its a long way down’ views, I end up in the
clouds. I turn off the main road onto a ’scenic drive’ only an
Australia could the scenic drive be 250km long.

2:40pm: the is very umm ‘atmospeheric’ up here, I reduce speed because
I can’t see what’s ahead of me. Great roads to drive on, (in the
cloudless bits where you can see) across the tops of dams (which was
why the road was built) and round hairpins – but i hadn’t bargained on
the average speed being around 40kph, I thought I was going to be in
Thredbo by early afternoon.

4:50pm oooh! 2 emus, the first ones I’ve seen while I’ve been here.

5ish pm deciding I would not reach Thredbo before dark I stop and camp
in a rest area called tom groggin, which in hindsight I’m glad i did.
Unloading the car in the completly empty camp ground (just me all
night) I get an audience of menacing kangaroos. I know you all might
not think that they are menacing, but when a crowd of them just sit
there looking at you pitching a tent it’s all quite unnerving -
specially when they turn one ear around to listen to you. They flee as
I put the tent up (think there are scared of all things silver in
colour)

8pm, its been dark for 2 hours. Beautifully calm and quiet, also means
there is no pub and nothing to do after eating.

Sunday
A bright early start, complete with kangaroo audience again after the
tent came down, lots more windey twisty mountain roads and lot of dead
looking trees I arrive at Thredbo, a bizarre little alpine ski resort
complete with log cabins and steeply sloped rofes. the mountain bike
track is closed because of ice and the top of the hill is shrouded in
fog.

Late morning: jindabyne, after looking everywhere for a map in Sydney
I buy nice detailed maps of the area, and pay after my ‘reminder’
notice for not paying my park entrance fees (not my fault I arrived
via a deserted 200km long road with no one at the pay station when I
passed) – I tought I had got away with it but they got me when i
parked up in Thredbo for all of 20mins!

early afternoon: yet more scenic drive, I get dizzy in a mix of little
hills with round boulders: more sweeping corners: no cars for about
30mins: cows, and then gravestones from a long abandoned gold mining
settlement.

5pm: I’m back in Gundagi after completing the ‘loop’ and stopping of
at yet another dam wall and peering over the edge into another a 3/4
empty reservoir.

7pm more mc coffee to keep me going

9pm home, wasn’t quite the weekend I had planned, (I had envisaged
more walking and less driving time) trip odo read something like
1139km when I dropped the car off the next day.

The Hume highway – main route beween sydney and melbourne (for those who don’t fly)

Details

I walked quite a long way for this ‘treat’!

There was yet more dirt roading to get to these, the guide book talked about interesting caves reached by an even more interesting road, it didn’t tell me it took more than 1 hour of driving round tight corners on a singe lane road on the side of cliff. set off at 7:30 and got there for 10:30…. then had it all to do again in the dark on the way back.

that said the caves were ‘interesting’ just as the guide book said, optimistically decribing one cavern after another as the fairy grotto, the operahouse, the cathedral, a lump of rock as the chandeler… a little stroll at the end of the day to the most amazing waterfall I has seen, worth every minute of the walk up there see above!