Snowy Mountains and end of Canberra

  Jindabyne, New South Wales, Australia
Saturday, May 2, 2009

02.05.09:   We continued our second day of visiting Canberra. We started with the war memorial, a museum dedicated to all the Australian who fought during the Gillepie battle during WWII and other wars. The museum is large and very interesting..and again free! We had a tour guide and she was really good. You were hanging on her every word. There was a wall with all the dead Aussie soldiers names. The walls were covered with poppies. We even found the name Corkery.

Corkery

After the new parliament, we checked the new one. Not as good as the old one and its funky 70s look. We got the chance to see the original copy of the Magna Carta, though. After this, we drove to the Snowy Mountains. We opted for the hostel option because it was really cold up there!! We were two couple in the whole place (it is still low season in Jindabyne..winter starts on June 1st!) We did not see the other couple so had the place for ourselves. Sean took the magic box he bought in Kuala Lumpur and we were able to watch a few episodes of the new season of Dexter (prononcer "Dexta" à la Layla, hein Marjo??)! Thank you Adrien and Norman for all the movies and series!!

we climbed it!

03.05.09:  After breakfast, we went to Kosccuuzko National Park. We were a bit annoyed to have to pay to get in there but it was worth it at the end because today was one of my favourite days in Australia! We entered the ski station of Thredbo, quite empty and headed to the chairlifts. It is weird to get on those without your skis on! (J'ai pas pu m'empécher de chanter "étoile des neiges", forcément) It was amazing to see all this snow. I really did not expect to see any coming here but the top of the mountain was covered. None of the slope was open, although we saw some skiers and surfer bringing their gear and walking up the mountain for a few seconds of adrenaline! 

Boys game

We started our walk towards the lookout and finally decided to do THE big walk, climbing Mt Kosciuzko, Australia's highest summit (2228m). Walking uphill in the deep snow is not east but it was an amazing 13km walk!. After this, we were completely dead! On our drive back to the hostel at dusk, we saw like 50 kangaroos. They were everywhere. We also saw a few deers. One nearly jumped in front the car that was in front of us but decided otherwise! Aussies say you have the most chance to see wildlife at dusk or dawn. We managed to get back to Jindabyne lake for sunset. That was lovely. Sean decided he wanted to make mulled wine (has to be drank when you are in a ski station) so bought all the ingredients for it!! Yummy in front of Heroes!!