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We traveled through 3 states in a relatively quick period of time - given that it took us three months to make it out of Victoria. Having said that, it must be noted that Victoria is the same size as England, so to see as much of it as we did in three months was a pretty good achievement!

Driving in our 4WD Pajero, we thought we’d head from Melbourne up towards Canberra and Sydney through the Victorian Alpine region (aka the High Country) rather than taking the standard route along the freeways. It is definitely the way to travel, though I would not recommend taking our route in anything other than a robust car - we did 90 kilometers on an “unsurfaced road” (which translates roughly as gravel and loose stones, with much corrugation and littered with pot-holes).

We found this petrol station, which has got to be the very strangest and most remote place I have ever visited, and I’m sure I could hear, in the distance, the faint sound of furious banjo playing…

The Alpine National Park has been particularly hard hit by the bush fires of December and January, and, while the bush fires were pretty bad, and destroyed some property (albeit that the “firies” did a good job of saving many houses), there is something beautiful in the scene that is created following the fires. For example, it is almost as if autumn and winter are combined - there is no undergrowth at all and the trees have only brown and shriveled leaves on them. In the Alpine region, the bush is fairly thick, lush and green, so to have it all unmasked is actually worth seeing in itself as you can see all the rock etc in these mountains.

We got absolutely loads of pictures of the fires effects on the landscape, on both human property and the surrounding bush. I’ll get the entire albums put online and post a link to here, as all the pictures will wipe out my remaining storage pretty quickly.

One of the nicest things about visiting after a fire is seeing just how quickly the bush can regenerate - you’ll notice in the picture above that even less than a month after the fire passed, there are still some green ferns and other plants beginning to push up into the blackened scene. You can also see, at the left of the frame, where the eucalypt has begun to regrow too - they have an ability to do this from underlying areas of the bark, so they are particularly well adjusted to coping with fire. Indeed, it is argued that the fire is good for them as it returns many nutrients quickly to the soil, allows regrowth, promotes strength in the forest as well as burning away any wood. Plants such as kangaroo grass only seed after the effects of fire, therefore they can only really thrive if there are sporadic fires.

Indeed, it was nice o see some flowers growing from the ashes:

Especially, when one considers, that, just up the road, there was what appeared to be the local scrap yard… right at the side of the road!

We eventually came to rest in Jamieson, having passed a good deal of burnt out campgrounds and not having much we could eat without cooking (no fires of any sort allowed), where we went to the local pub/restaurant/bottle shop/hotel and had dinner (very cheap) and stayed the night (extremely cheap - $60 for the double room including breakfast) so everything worked out pretty well!

I’ll do some more on this epic journey soon, but for now, I’m still paying for internet access, and must watch the old bank balance until I get some more dollars…