Day 2 – Mountains to the Sea – The Path Less Ridden

I’ve decided I’m going to be less verbose in this blog and just let the pictures do the talking.

So this morning I left Cooma reasonably early, stopping briefly at a lookout to see the surrounding alpine farmland:

Then rolled into Jindabyne for a quick breakfast. Sadly the cafe didn’t oblige with the ‘quick’ part, but the food was OK.

My plan was to tackle the Barry Way, a road of some repute that cuts through the Australian Alps from NSW to Victoria. This was the first indication that things were going to be good:

Then I entered the National Park:

Almost immediately the road started to twist its way down the mountainside, meandering back and forth across the landscape – you can see both to the left and the right (in the distance) where it runs.

There were several lookouts which afforded great viewing.

And sometimes I just stopped on the road to capture a quick picture.

Once at the bottom of the valley, the road crossed Jacobs’ River, one of the many tributaries involved in the Snowy River scheme.

Then for a long while the road ran parallel to the river valley.

We Aussies have such original names, sometimes…

More river valley, further along.

Then we came to the border, crossing from the Kozcuisko NP to the Alpine NP in Victoria.

If I had thought the scenery was spectacular before, it was nothing short of amazing now.

Crossing Suggan Buggan Creek (names again!)

Then the road became precipitous, going had to be careful as fixating on the view would make you fall off the edge!

After crossing a number of peaks and valleys, I crested one last ridgeline, and suddenly was back in high-country farmland.

Parts of the area are still recovering from terrible bushfires a few years ago – I only noticed the wallaby after stopping to photograph the burnt trees!

Sweeping country roads through the northern part of Gippsland were fantastic for touring on a bike, alternating between stretches of forest and undulating farmland.