Deer Park

The three day track from Canberra to Melbourne, over the Snowy Mountains

And here the 2nd day’s elevation chart over the pass at 4294 feet, 1308 meters. We were riding along, watching the altitude on the GPS go to the 4294, rounded a corner and started going downhill! What the hell? Now that’s a pretty silly number for ‘the highest mountain pass through the Snowies’, it’s like it lost a digit, but we’ll be polite guests and not be rude or make jokes. Although Lucinda made cracks going up like ‘I can’t breath! the air’s too thin! I’m fouling my cylinders! or I’m getting dizzy! I’m going to crash!

This is a road distance/elevation chart, not a elevation profile. Photos to follow

The second day we rode twisties up Alpine Way (!) to the big ski resort, Trembo

Flowers on the way

A typical view

And arrived at Trembo ski resort

And there’s the hill. All of it. It was a bit shocking. It’s like a backyard project. They have a restaurant at the ‘top’ with an epic view, lol. There are chair lifts for this, running just a bit above level for a few hundred yards. 700,000 people came here last year to ski. Hopefully they used inner tubes and didn’t buy gear. Maybe send the dog down on a garbage bag. No need for snow grooming machines here, you can send someone out to buff it up with a rake.

The jokes could go on forever but we said we wouldn’t go there, so we won’t

They had a lodge called ‘schuss’. I thought we had all decided it was a sucky euro word and killed it 40 years ago

Then we rode up a little further to the ‘pass’

A couple were taking jumping selfies, throwing their yellow ball caps, and were good at it

The road down had these mysterious red posts for a few miles

Every few minutes we would catch a blur of vivid red in the trees. Bright red parrots. We stopped a few times but they spooked at the sound of Lucinda and flew off before we could get a good shot. But we took so many photos on the fly we eventually got one

Here it is, a crop 15% from the right, 40% from the bottom, in the above

Not the best bird shot, we admit. So here’s a stolen shot from Wiki. It’s a King parrot

Another great view

Then on to the flats

The next day we rode what we’d heard was the best longish dirt ride in the area, between Carryong and Bairnsdale

Despite having some steep, loose and tights sections at the top, we met this Aussie, Claude on his classic 60-year-old Velocette. A lifetime of riding his beloved bike to every corner of Australia. I wish we’d had more than the 3 minutes he spared for my questions, but he was pretty focused, a huge conversational miss with someone who’s must have seen it all many times over. Oh well

Around a small lake

Up higher, a view down to a river plain

Then down to the flats

Through a perfect small town

And onto Great Alpine Way, the best paved road we ridden in Australia. Very fast, cambered, 3rd and 4th gear long sweeping corners for 100 miles. Stellar

Then on the third day, back to civilization and the haul into Melbourne

Which the next day, in the sun, looked like this