Blowering Dam/Bago State Forest – Jan 2011

A late minute decision, a quick pack and we hit the road by 1800h. The run up the highway was helped by tailing a semi-trailer — made the fuel consumption in the Prado a lot healthier than normal!

Turn of onto the Snowy Mountains Hwy followed by a quick stop at Tumut for supplies, tucker and fuel. The run had been good but it does take time – it was just after 2000h by now.

We continued on to the dam and started trying to find JT. Due to no phone reception and a lack of UHF it took us bloody ages to find them. Ended up being around 2130h by the time we pulled in and started to set up. A very quick set up it was too!

Next morning we awoke to the view:

Makes the travelling and setting up after sunset all worth it!

The day was basically spent relaxing, enjoying the water, fishing, playing with the kids and generally (I think I mentioned it) relaxing!

A bit of tucker

And the day finished the way it started

Sunday started much the same as the day before. A nice relaxing start with no motivation to do anything other than rest. However the water was again a focus for young and old.

By now lunch had come and gone and unfortunately I did have to work the next day, so we had to pack up as per normal. Two options – the bitumen highway or the dirt…..

Yeah right – what decision!!!

Bading goodbye we did a quick run into Talbingo to empty the toilet. Crossing over the dam wall we started climbing through the Bago State Forest. They’ve certainly had some rain of late, and there was plenty of evidence on the road – a couple of drains etc were washed out and there were a few rough areas.

However none of it necessitated low range and the Prado and Trak Shak handled it very easily. It is well worth it when you have a view like this:

and this:

Pulling into Batlow I took the opportunity to fill up the LPG tank – actually I was surprised they had LPG at the servo. Goes to show that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. I’d certainly like to revisit Batlow at some stage, especially if they have a market in the area.

The countryside is covered in orchids and it certainly appears that apples are the flavour of the area, that’s for sure.

An ice-cream each later and we headed on a bit of a maze of roads – I had clicked on the ‘shortest route’ on the GPS and it did exactly that!

We went through the Green Hills State Forest across to Rosewood, then it was on into the Carabost State Forest to Jingellic Rd.

Cutting across onto Annandale Rd we popped out on the Hume Hwy just south of Holbrook. Effectively we didn’t save anytime at all, but the countryside we travelled through was spectacular. We hardly met anyone the whole afternoon – and we spent at least 50% of the time on gravel roads/tracks.

The run home on the highway was as boring as studying bat shit – but needed to be done. We got home pretty much smack on tucker time and packing up didn’t take very long at all.

Overall a very enjoyable weekend with a mix of everything thrown in.

Cheers
Chris

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