Mar 10,11 southeast coast, Australian Alps

Mar 10

We drove through the most beautiful dairy country this morning. More vast hills, this time luscious green hills with farms and herds of cows all over the place. Our first stop was Bega, the dairy capital of Australia. The info centre was in a cheese production museum and they sold cheese there. After sampling many types, we opted for the premium reserve cheddar, absolutely wonderful.
Then on to the coast, still on the east side of the country, but at the far south, through Tathra, Merimbula, Pambula and Eden. At places the beach was unbroken miles of sand.
After Eden, the road turned inland again and we droves miles through eucalyptus forests. Along the road there were huge ant hills, 2 to 3 feet tall, but mostly eucalyptus.
We entered Victoria. The first thing that struck us were the signs warning about sleepy drivers, like 'Droopy eyes? Power nap now.' or 'Open your eyes fatigue kills'. It must be a problem on the long inland mountainous road we took to the southern shore.
We noticed a great number of campers out on the road today, then found out that tomorrow is Labor Day holiday. The coastal towns we came to were teeming with people. We stopped in one and bought some fresh fish; flake, duck fish and elephant fish, all supposed to be mild white fish. We had the elephant fish for dinner and it was mild, firm and very good.
When it was time to find a campsite we were in Bairnsdale and we spotted a likely looking park by the river. We pulled and then saw the no camping sign. We asked a man who was parked nearby and he said there was a better place down the road, just follow him. So we did and he led us a few kilometers down a road, then turned off. He was going home, but he pointed out s road where we could find a spot by the Mitchell River. Wetland an idyllic spot, on the bank. Just a boat on the river a little way down, but no other people anywhere nearby.

Mar 11
First we visited St Mary's Catholic Church in Bairnsdale. It was covered in paintings, ceiling, walls, behind the altar. All of it painted by an Italian artist over several years during the 20's and 30's.
There were fires in the high country in the north of Victoria a few weeks ago, then it rained and land slides closed the Alpine Hwy. That's the way we planned to go today. So we checked with the trusty info centre and found out that the road was open from 7 to 7 for the holiday weekend. Tomorrow it's closed for several hours for repair. We headed north on the Alpine. We didn't stop very often as we wanted to be out of the area in time, but we went to Omeo to see the Oriental Claims. A lot of this part of Victoria was part of the gold rush in the 1850s and at the Claims we took a trail where we could see the effects of the hydraulic hoses they used to get the gold. Hills were washed away leaving cliffs on the sides and mounds of rock all over.
The road took us up into the Australian Alps, lots of mountain driving, but the road was not as narrow for the most part. For several kms the road followed a rushing river and reminded us of colorado.
They get snow there in the winter and at Mt Hotham there was a ski resort with several lifts. The landscape did look alpine, plants hugging the ground, no trees and it was cool there. On the way down the mountain we drove through the area where the fires had been. It was close to 20 kilometers of devastation, burned underbrush and eucalyptus as far as we could see.
There were two parts of the road that went down to one lane because the road had washed away, but there wasn't much traffic.
Out of the mountains, we stopped at Bright, another tourist town. The info guy told me about a Chinese Suspension bridge and a hedge maze in nearby Wandiligong,so we drove there, but the maze was closed. We hiked to the Suspension bridge, a tribute to the Chinese gold miners who came to the area.
Back in Bright, we hiked to two other suspension bridges and saw places caleed races where the gold miners had dug into the rock to get water down to their sluices. There were even some people panning for gold in the river and using small sluices.
We're in Myrtleford in a campground tonight. It was 35 degrees, 95 Fahrenheit today and we wanted air conditioning.