Off to the high country

Monday, we welcomed the new year in, on the balcony of our friend’s flat, watching the Melbourne fireworks! Then walked back to our motel.

Tuesday, Nic returned to the art gallery, to see the aboriginal artwork, Rog went for a wander around the New Year sales!

Wednesday, we did some washing at our friend’s flat, then headed to the Museum of Moving Image in Federal Square and interesting museum despite us not knowing some of the Australian film and TV references.

At dinner that evening, we manage a small tribute to the annual “cold table”, but with vodka rather than traditional schnapps, to go with some herring in mustard sauce.

Thursday, we collected a hire car from near the airport for the weekend, we managed to get a good deal on a large 4×4, as 4 of us were going to the high country for the weekend, it was massive! As we had the car we drove west of Melbourne to Melton, had a walk around the Park and the Botanical Gardens, did some shopping for provisions for the weekend!

Friday, we checked out of our motel, collected our friends and drove to Mount Beauty. We decided to avoid the main highway and drive cross country, we stopped at the Yarck hotel in Yarck for lunch. Then continued the drive, following a Google maps route, which included about 20kms on unmade dirty roads, glad we had the 4×4.

Our accommodation in Mount Beauty was lovely and it had a hot tub, so spent some time in there before dinner.

Saturday, we decided it was a little hot for a walk, so instead went for a drive into the hills, before returning to Mt Beauty for lunch at the Annaperna estate vineyard. A really good meal and some wine! Starting the celebrations for Rog’s ‘big’ birthday. Back to the accommodation for some more hot tub action. We were given a complimentary half bottle of late harvest Pinot Gris by the winery, it went very nicely with some cheese and charcuterie!

Sunday, we checked out of our accommodation and headed to Seymour, via road to Bright, and lunch at a Chinese in Benalla, a really good freshly cooked Chinese meal! Some of the best prawn toast we’ve ever had.

We checked in to the New Crossing Motel in Seymour, a two bedroom apartment, the only problem when we got to the room was it only had one single bed in the second bedroom and there are four of us, then the manager turned up at the room and he’d worked out he had given us the wrong room, however instead of moving us, he just gave us a second room!

Overnight was an amazing storm, lots and lots of rain, so much so that in the middle of the night our friend received an amber alert via text, so they monitored the situation but the alert level was not raised.

We usually finish our blogs on Sunday evenings, however this week we need to complete the weather story, so Monday morning we rose to even more heavy rains, we left Seymour to drive back to Melbourne, a horrible drive, heavy rain, lots of standing water, lanes closed on the freeway. We managed to get back to Melbourne in time to drop the hire car back at the airport, we then heard that a full civilian evacuation of Seymour had been ordered, due to the risk to life from increasing flood waters, a lucky escape for us!