One Of Terry's Corners Of the Online World

queen_nephthys and I decided to drive the scenic route home from Canberra. We were originally going to go to the coast and have lunch at Bermagui, where the fish co-op has the best fish and chips shop anywhere. It backs onto the docks. But that would mean taking the coast road back to Melbourne and the floods prevented that.



So we drove south to Cooma where we ate an enormous late breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausages, chips, tomato and toast. Just outside town where we stopped for petrol, we found a petrol place that was more like a lolly shop that happened to sell fuel. So grabbed a couple of strawberry chocolate bars and fuelled up, then drove toward Adaminaby. Halfway there the road signs said "snow chains must be carried" which was a bit of an uh-oh moment for us. queen_nephthys wanted to drive back to Canberra and go back through Yass, a two hundred odd kilometre detour. I convinced her that we could hire chains in Adaminaby and hand them back in at Tumut and that driving the Snowy Mountain Highway would be the kind of cool adventure I needed after the whole funeral/family thing.

At Adaminaby the snow chains are hired from a BP service station. The guy there showed me how to put them on, advised that they weren't needed unless I couldn't see the bitumen and then cut us a deal for free chain hire. If we were willing to carry five sets of chains up to Tumut (100+ kilometres away) we'd get our set for free. Of course I agreed, we loaded all six sets of chains into the back seat of the Corolla and motored on up the mountains.



Halfway up, it began to snow and the road was lined with bright pink poles so the snow plough could see where the road was during blizzards. By the time we reached the high plains at Kiandra, we were in another world of limited visibility, snowfalls and bright white landscapes totally alien to the vistas we'd been driving through minutes before.

The road down to the Blowering Reservoir is hairy. Eight kilometres of steep switchback curves which take total concentration to navigate. I loved it and the view of the admittedly depleted reservoir is spectacular as the road uncurls into gentler curves and rolling hills at the bottom.

At Tumut we handed in the chains - which we never needed but were obliged by law to carry and drove through Adelong back to the Hume Highway. Stopped for dinner at a reasonable Italian place in Wangaratta and were home by nine, tired but glad to be in our own space again.




queen_nephthys about to throw a snowball at me.