We wake up to a still morning. It’s a bit chilly in the van, but it really nice out in the sun. As we breakfast, we can see at least two other groups are packing up. It’s such a nice spot we decide to stay for another night. After all we trying to slow down the pace a bit on this trip. I suggest we leave the van, and drive up to the dam wall. The wall is about 15-20km back towards Tumut.
The dam wall is nice enough and it’s a pleasant walk across it to the spillway at the other end. There is one small hydro turbine at the base of the dam, and as the roller doors are open you can see it from the road, so I point it out to the kids. Due to work being done on the hydro scheme the normal stations that you can visit are all closed currently, so this might be as good as we get. From here it seems just as easy to do a loop around the lake.
There is a dirt road that cuts across the bottom of the lake that we should be able to take. So, we drive back through Tumut, a quick lunch and then a visit to the local sports store to get a Yabby net.
We then drive around through Batlow (of apple fame). Here I start to follow the road that I hope will take us back to the snowy mountain highway. I’m not sure how bad it will be, but all but one section ends up being timber trucking road, so is in pretty good nick, and the small 4×4 shortcut we take is pretty tame too. It is about this time in our journey, Justine spots an echidna just off to the side of the road. We pull up and kids get a good look before it scampered off into the vegetation. Everyone is pretty chuffed to see one in the wild.
We finally cross the Tumut river at the south side of the lake, we take a short detour south to the nearby town Talbingo, we want to get some bait so the kids can do some fishing, I’m also using every opportunity to keep the car tanks full. A quick drive by of the nearby Tumut 3 Power station and we are on our way back to the van.
A relaxing afternoon as the kids have a go at catching some fish (carp is more likely than anything else). It’s soon obvious that the reals on the kid’s rods (which were pretty cheap) are stuffed, so that’s a premature end to the afternoon’s fishing. We take a short 4×4 drive up a really steep track to the top of the nearby hill, the view from the top is fantastic, Justine and Liam aren’t keen on the steep angles the car gets to, so they’re happy when we get back down. I’m surprised where the MUX can get to, especially given its just got standard road tyres.
Another small group has pulled in this afternoon, but that are on the far side of the other van, so we really feel like we have the place to ourselves now. I start the campfire a bit earlier tonight.
Another dark night and plenty of stars. I go to put the heater on, but I get a low voltage error, while the heater does not need much power to run, it needs about 10amp for 4-5mins to heat the glow plugs, and that appears just to draw too much juice. The night’s not that cold, so we make do.