Tuesday, April 10th, 2012: Echuca to Corryong along the upper Murray
Bob: I had to decide if I wanted to visit the official Holden automobile museum in Echuca or forge ahead to the headwaters of the Murray River in the Snowy Mountains and spend any extra time we had looking at the Australian Alps in that region. I was tempted by the collection of Holdens (General Motors' Australian branch), but I had already seen many of them in the three-hour marathon Monika had endured at the National Motor Museum. Added to that, we both had fond memories of our brief brush with the Australian Alps during Wanderung 22, so finally I decided to forge ahead and see if we could make it to Corryong, a larger town in the center of the mountains that according to our tourist maps had several motels and hotels. But we did not give up on our major goal of following the Murray River. First we wound our way along just south of it in the state of Victoria. After winding our way along and missing a cow on the road (who looked decidedly guilty when we stopped to take pictures of her!), we stopped for lunch at Yarrawonga . Yarrawonga turned out to be a bustling medium-sized town with many shops and cafes, as well as several of the late 1800s buildings that I find so pretty. |
Monika: Bob noticed that this town did have an automobile museum. Luckily I could talk him out of visiting it - after all it only held Holden cars (or did it hold Helden cars?)- and we were once again on our way, going East along the Murray River. Along the way we encountered the typical Australian wildlife, a cow wandering around the road side. Of course, we stopped for a picture, after all, we are city bred, and for us a cow is wildlife. Lunch was in a typical Australian town of Yarrawonga, a medium-sized town with a pretty hotel that had a nice wrought iron balcony and a rather cute sign of a pelican hanging above it. |
Bob: Lake Mulwala, one of the many lakes formed by damming the Murray River, lay just to the North of Yarrawonga. Apparently, steamboats had been active all the way up and down the Murray, because right at the shore of the lake we found the paddle wheel assembly that had been retrieved from a steamer that had sunk early in the 20th Century, as I recall. We crossed the lake into New South Wales to continue our journey up the Murray as the road was closer to the river on that side of the river. |
Monika: Yarrawonga was on Lake Mulwala which was formed by damming the Murray. We stopped in the Visitor Center next to the lake and outside were the paddles of an early paddle wheel steamer, like the one we had been on in Renmark. Since the lake, like most of the Murray River, was the border between Victoria and New South Wales, there even was an old customs house next to the lake. |
Bob: On the way to Albury we stopped for a fruit snack in Howlong, a cute little town with a curious name. We were eating our tomatoes and pears because we knew that upstream we would re-enter Victoria and they were trying to stop the spread of fruit flies by banning the importation of fruit. As it turned out, of course, we guessed completely wrong: the border restriction was just against the importation of grapes and not other fruit! Arrgh! We started to see the first foothills of the mountains when we re-crossed the Murray between Albury, New South Wales, and Wodonga, Victoria. As we turned again to the East, we found ourselves passing some sort of Army installation with high fences and fortified gates. But suddenly Monika shouted, "Kangaroos!", and I pulled over and stopped the car. A whole mob of kangaroos were lounging about 30 yards inside the tall cyclone fence. Fortunately the camera lens just fit through the gaps in the fence wire, so we could take decent photographs of them. Ultimately, however, just standing there taking pictures seemed to spook them a bit and they started to hop off. Satisfied to at last have kangaroo pictures, we continued East skirting the southern shore of Lake Hume, a huge artificial lake that leads right into the mountains. Then we continued along the Murray Valley Highway as it twisted and turned through the gentle, wooded mountains up to the town of Corryong. It was 3:55 p.m. by that time and I was getting tired of driving, so I was very relieved when Monika reported seeing "Vacancy" signs at the hotel in the center of town and a motel. |
Monika: Back on the road we kept driving East. We finally did see a few mountains in the distance and knew we were getting closer to Australian Alps. I, of course, kept a kangaroo lookout on the both sides of the road. And finally a was rewarded seeing a whole mob behind a fence. Hearing my yell, Bob stopped the car and we got out to take pictures. It seemed to be a mixed mob of kangaroos, with mostly smaller greys. But right in the middle was a big red male. He did seem to give us a beady eye and finally moved his mob along. But we had finally gotten our Skippy pictures. We stopped at another lake along the Murray and this time there were already some mountains in the background. |
Bob: We finally stopped at the Mountain View Hotel on the far side of town, which, true to its name, had a grand view out across a valley to the mountains looming across the way. After finally figuring out how to get the heat pump to put out heat (we were confused by a 5 minute delay between pushing a button and actually seeing an effect!), we planned our drive for the next day and then settled in for a quiet, comfortable evening. |
Monika: Our stopping point was the little town of Corryong, best known for being the setting for the book and movie "The Man from Snowy River". We found a small hotel at the outskirts with a beautiful view of the mountains and some chairs, so we could settle down and watch the sun go down. |
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