Ginger and Ed's Excellent Adventures

From Canberra we headed inland on our way to the Nariel Folk Festival. This year’s Festival runs December 27 to January 3. We hoped to catch the last few days. We drove west through two forested national parks to the town of Tumut where we reaupplied. Our camp was along a reservoir about 20km south. While technically inside Kosciusko National Park, the site was very busy with lots of campers and boaters. We opted to set up well above the water away from crowds.

The campground was called “The Pines” even though it took us 24 hours to see the few actual pine trees located up the hill across the highway. After a hot day the clouds rolled.in and the wind kicked up. It was well After midnight when it calmed down enough to sleep.

Our next day we drove back through Tumut and then south towards Corryong. We took a short detour to Pilot Hill arboretum. The site is in a managed forest and has a number of stands of trees from around the world that were planted in the 1920s and 1930s as an experiment. Many still stand today. There is a lovely interpretive walk through the trees and sculptures.

Large bush fires tore through the area nearby in 2019 and 2020. As part of the effort to revitalize tourism in the area, a sculpture trail was created all along the snowy valley highway route.

Onwards through rain and thunderstorms we paused at a viewpoint of the high mountains and a memorial to an early commercial air crash. In 1931 the Southern Cloud was bound for Melbourne from Sydney and disappeared over the snowy mountains. It wasn’t until decades later that the wreck was finally found.

We end the year in Coryong, where we were treated to live music in a local pub.