Jindabayne and Cooma
Trip Start
Nov 28, 2004
1
47
57
Trip End
Jun 11, 2005
Cooma,
New South Wales,
Australia
Monday, February 7, 2005
Breakfast at a small bakery consists of a thick apple cake and a nuclear strength coffee. It's become real driving country and I make the most of the car's powerful engine and try to overcome the see-saw handling. Hurling the Falcon into long corners and stretching my luck to the limit. A short detour takes me down into thick forest where there's an ancient buttress style bridge, disused and not recommended for anything except a photograph, so the warning signs say. I begin to follow the steeply ascending road into the Snowy Mountains - the Alpine Highway. I'm crossing the Great Dividing Range looking for signs to Jindabayne where I plan to stop and investigate what's on offer.
At Dead Horse Creek, the altitude is 1,800m. Percy is threatening to become another dead horse. The temperature gauge is creeping into the red and the power steering's gone stiff. For the first time I see snow in Australia. Ski slopes and groups of visitors clad in outfits by Wankhaus or Wank Face. I stop in a rest area to let the motor cool down a bit and take in a far reaching view over stands of pine. Several gleaming Harley Davidson's come roaring in ridden by grinning Canadians. They must feel right at home. It's noticeably colder and I am pleased to get going an hour or so later.
Tearing down long stretches of road on the descent towards Cooma. I cross over a dam and have passed through Jindabayne before having time to dab the brakes. Squeezing the power down, hearing the glorious pitch of the engine note, smelling the gasoline. This car is an indestructible bloody hooligan. Finally, I must slow down to enter a caravan park. Otherwise I shall plough through it like a runaway train. Sending flimsy caravans into the sky, demolishing everything around me. I take a plot on the site near to the camper's kitchen and fire up a spaghetti bolognaise with cold VB in hand. There are two couples here, one Dutch and one German and a sweet old lady who locks herself out of her car.
Luckily she's already got her tent set up and can deal with the car in the morning. But I lend her a torch ( since I now seem to have several ) and make her a cup of tea on the stove. I try the old wire-over-door-knob trick to try to open her car door, but I'm not much of a car thief. It doesn't work. My audacious hitch-hiking rodent has survived the journey and thanks me by rummaging for crumbs during the night. Perhaps he'll freeze tomorrow because we are both going mountaineering.
Next ; Mount K
