Since we're still officially ruled by the English monarch here in Australia, we have traditionally had a Queen's Birthday long weekend in June, which is now, of course, the King's Birthday weekend. Most of us don't really care whose birthday it is, so long as we have a cheeky day off!
We'd been invited to a 4WD long weekend in the Victorian High Country, a beautiful area north of Melbourne and a five hour drive through Friday arvo traffic for us. Even though the traffic was rough, by the time you get there, you've got the whole weekend stretching out in front of you.
Sounds good, right? But it's even wilder - beautiful views, huge forests and mountains, snow, ski resorts - it's truly spectacular.
We didn't get there until dark, where our friends Murray and Bruce were already set up by the just-flooded King River. They had a huge fire going already to keep us warm so we chatted for a while and then went to bed.
What was really bloody great about this is that I could finally use my diesel heater! Whilst it was 5 degrees outside, it was a toasty 18 degrees inside before I turned it off because I felt so hot. Still - what luxury! We can camp anywhere now!
For the morning we checked out river rushing through a dam, and admired the beautiful houses and farms in the area - it's vineyard country so very posh.
We followed the two cars ahead of us somewhere into the bush. I have no real concept of 'where', save the tracks were very greasy-muddy and it was a little nervewracking. We ended up at a river where we were meant to head up toward a hut. However, the river had flooded all the way down the road and we didn't want to risk driving Wally through there. I went as a passenger with Bruce to check it out - pretty scary as we scraped along all kinds of things invisible in the water and the river was rushing over the bonnet! When we got to the end there was a rock wall that I couldn't imagine climbing with the Land Rover from the river itself so we headed back and found another track.
We headed along a really muddy, precarious ridgeway in the fog before finally finding a camp about 4pm, where the boys set to making a fire and I made dinner and cracked a wine. It was very lovely in the bush all on our own. It was also good to get to know Bruce, who is a little bit crazy and hyperactive, but fun to talk to.
The next day we planned to head deeper into the bush, but we were to encounter an adventure no one had really planned for! But that's for another story.
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