New South Wales tour - the final episode!!!

So, about 10 days after it finished I am intending to recount the final day of the tour. It was a great tour and an opportunity to see bits of the country that most travellers would not get to see. I am so glad that Wendi suggested it and that I took her up on her offer. Thanks Wendi - and Derek - for all of your hospitality. I'm not sure what my expectations where - but the reality far exceeded them!

So, anyway, where were we. Ah yes, we left Gemma and Tony's house in Cootemundra and headed for Tumut, via Gundegai. We camped beside the Snowy River, on a site there. I got badly bitten by mozzies that night. I also had a middle-of-the night encounter with a possum when I got up to go to the toilet. I came back to find a possum sitting a few feet from the camper van. It watched me carefully as I approached, only making a run for it when I got within about a metre.

The next day was a long day's driving through the Snowy Mountains on narrow roads that wound around up hill and down hill.

On leaving Tumut, the first notable landmark was the Blowering Reservoir - between Tumut and Talbingo - where I saw my first emus, several pairs grazing (if that's what emus do). [And no, Paul, before you ask, there was no sign of Rod Hull]. I managed to get quite close to one pair and took a couple of photos, but the emus just look like greyish blobs. We went on through the Old Kiandra goldfields, where we stopped to look at the display of historical mining machinery at the roadside. There were signs on this stretch of road warning of wild horses (brumbies) but I didn't see any. We went through Cabramurra - Australia's highest town , at 1488m - stopping briefly on a hill to look at the view.

It was somewhere around Kiandra that we became aware of of the vast stretches of burned forest up there. AS far as the eye could see there were swathes of bare grey trees in amongst the green. At one time we were driving through dead trees on either side of the road. We both thought it was eerie. There was some new green growth coming up, but the trees themselves were completely dead. Wendi said she hadn't realised how extensive the fires had been. In amongst all the dead bare trees, there were beautiful white daisies carpeting the ground - takling advantage of the light that was now reaching the forest floor.

When we stopped in Khancoban to refuel and to buy a pass to stay overnight in the National Park, I asked the woman in the information centre when the fires were. She said 2003. She told us that the campsite in Thredbo had been badly hit by the fires and that there was now no shade there. This was one of the places we had thought of stopping overnight, before climbing Mt Kosciuszko next day.

After Khancoban we continued on. It was now late afternoon. After another climb, we stopped at Scammell's Spur Lookout (which the information board said was in Tumbarumba Shire!) to look at the views. When we got back in the van it wouldn't start. The battery was flat! Now this is not a good thing to happen on a mountain road in the middle of Australia - well, ok, not exactly the middle, but you get my drift. Fortunately, just then a car pulled up and Wendi asked the couple in it if they had any jump leads. They didn't, so we tried - with their help - to turn the van around so it was facing downhill in order to bump start it. It was too heavy. Just then a second car pulled up (this was very lucky because it's not exactly a busy road) and with the help of another two people we did manage to turn the van around and to bump start it. Great! The only problem now was that we couldn't stop anywhere unless we could find someone who had some jump leads in order to get us going again.

We got to the rest place at Geehi just at dusk. At first it seemed that there was no-one there. But there were several vans in amongst the bush beside the river. The third or fourth people we asked actually had some jump leads and were happy to help us to get going again in the morning. Their names were John and Lorna and they came from Bateman's Bay (though she was originally from Aberdeenshire).

It was at Geehi that I saw my first wild (live) kangaroos. There are mobs of them there and I got some great photos. I also saw several Kookaburras close up.

We stopped at Geehi that night. Geehi is beside the Swampy Plains River, on the Alpine Highway between Khancoban and Jindebyne, before Thredbo.