Candlelight Lodge Thredbo Village

These were the biggest and most beautiful caves I have been in. The stalactites and stalagmites were enormous. There were 4 caves which could be visited we managed two of them. The first had only recently been opened to the public and you could walk through at your own pace, ours had to be pretty quick to fit in the guided tour in the next cave and a swim in the thermal pool. The caves were quite different due to their age. I hope the photos show how wonderful they were.

... the way was the deserted gold rush town of Kiandra, which also had Australia's first ski field, and The masses of dead looking ghostly white trees.

We stayed in the national park at a campsite near Sawpit creek. It was very quiet and much colder than we packed for! But we were allowed to light a fire so we sat around it until we took to bed still in our warmest clothes.





The following day we set out to climb Mt Kosciuszko. We ...

... island that is not sandstone as everywhere you looked huge granite tors rose out of the ground. This did remind me a little of Dartmoor but the fauna seemed more vibrant up here. As I approached Rawson's pass I looked back to see, well, no one – the race was being won – hurrah for me! Until I looked the other way to Mt K itself and saw that two people were already at the top and another was about to cross the last snowfield. What ...

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That being said when I stopped at the national parks office to get some info and pay my park fees and whilst running through the directions on how to get the top of Mt Kozy-whatsit she told me I could find the way to top by following the footsteps in the snow. Snow! Really? At the resort the temperature was 26c – can it really be cold enough just 1000m higher up to still have snow? Well, I guess I will find out tomorrow.
Thredbo, New South Wales, Australia doctormick

... the typical Australian bloke, course and dry sense of humor and either has a very rehearsed tour spiel or more probable, was very quick witted and seem to have a funny phrase for most things we saw or situations we encountered. Apparently all drivers had a 'tour guide name' based on what happened to them on the training course, this guy was called 'Bogan' which i was told by the other Brits who had clearly been in Oz longer than me is like a cross between a chav ...

... our lesson and after an hour or so we'd picked up quite a bit. we had about 2 hours before heading up a lift and trying a bit more of a slope. was really good fun. few little tumbles, but even after just a couple of hours it was coming together. was a bit annoying that we didnt have long after the lesson to carry on ourselves, but i proper loved the experience, and may well try snowboarding again, maybe in new zealand.

We are back on the road again...... we left Robinvale early Saturday morning 4th April after having a wonderful barbecue dinner on Friday night with new friends. We were excited to be on the move again after spending about 6 weeks picking grapes and fishing the Murray river. We arrived in Corryong ("Man from Snow River" Country) in time for their annual "Man from Snowy River Bush Festival". The festival is a gathering of ...

*** Pictures will follow later*** Mount Kosciuscko, Australia's highest mountain with a shameful height of 2228m is probably the only mountain which can be climbed all the way to the top whilst holding hands. A true walk in the park! We started early and ascended 550m to the top of the chairlift on a reasonably nice trail - and from there it was another 300m ascent (read: stroll) gently spread ...

... to belt out a great tune to their grey haired audience. After the concert and in desperate need of our beds, Gary and I headed back up the hill to our apartment. We got so engrossed in chatting we didn't notice that we had taken a wrong turn - we had climbed much higher than we needed to and ended up on the top road overlooking the entire valley. There were no lights and no clouds and the stars were shining bright - a sight you cannot get in a city - and one you cannot begin to describe.

Our first full day of skiing was great. We all had a good breakfast. Everyone wanted to get going so we left at 8:30am. We skied to school and had a great time doing it. We got to watch eachother and Josh. We got to ski school a little early so we had a warm up run on Friday Flat. We skied into ...