For the previous part of this trip, click here.

Day Seven - Limestone Creek is top left end of track. Snowy River is vertical section of track at right.

Well, the last day and we still have a long way to go before we hit tar. We get up late due to the previous night's celebrations. It is 9 am before I crawl out of bed. When I try to make a cup of tea I find that the Coleman stove is not working. I cannot be bothered fixing it so no tea or coffee today.

We have more to put away this morning due to the tarp we put up last night. I pump up the tyre again to 45 psi (it was 30 psi) and then Kelly announces that she wants to go to the toilet. I am a little annoyed that she has not walked the 100 metres to it while I am doing the tyres. I drive over and while she goes to the toilet I turn the car around. There is a root that I have to drive over and while reversing, the car jumps back a bit over the root and I hear a crash. I get out and see that I have smashed the rear window! Hell!

There is a small branch that protudes out from a tree that I had seen and which only just reaches the car. About 50 mm higher and it would have missed the window and just hit the roof of the car and if it was 50 mm shorter, I would not have hit at all as the spare tyre would have hit the tree first. Not a great way to end the trip, but I suppose that it is better that it happened now.

We get a small tarp and place over the window and close the door. I head off as slow as I can as I do not know how much shaking and vibrations it will take before it falls out totally.

We drive the 2.4 kilometres to the Benambra Black Mountain Road (a continuation of the road to and from Benambra that we were on two days ago). Here we turn left and follow it to Native Dog Flat three kilometres away. This is also a nice camping area, but there are large numbers of horse people here.

We continue on for 2.1 kilometres till we come to the intersection with Cobberas Trail. Our original plan was to take this but as we were far behind that schedule due to the condition of the roads the past couple of days, that plan was abandoned yesterday morning. We keep going on the road we are on.

It is about 39 kilometres to the Snowy River Road. We turn left and head to Jindabyne in NSW. It is about 105 kilometres to Jindabyne from here and it is slow going. The road is gravel and at first hugs the very steep side of the gorge of the Suggan Buggan River and then drops down to the river and the "village" of Suggan Buggan. This was a gold mining town and there are now only a few buildings left. We hit a bit of tar past here but it does not last long.

After a while the road drops down to the Snowy River. This has a good flow in it, amazing considering its fate over the past 50 years since the Snowy Mountains Scheme. The road now follows the western side of the river. We cross into NSW and Kosciuzsko National Park. The road improves a bit but then is worse. This repeats itself for the next 30 or so kilometres. At 12:20 pm we stop at Run o'Waters Camping Area for a break. It is 41.3°C! We stop at a lookout that has a very good dispay on the January 2003 fires. Worth stopping at, although it is now 42°C.

We continue onto Jindabyne and as we go the temperature drops to about 35°C, arriving there at 1:40 pm. We stop for 30 minutes and have lunch. The tyre is still okay today and I have not had to add any air, although it has dropped a few psi.

We then travel via Cooma and Queanbeyan the 453 kilometres back home to Sydney, getting to Tempe at 7:45 pm.

Kilometres: 599 kilometres
Weather: Fine and very hot, over 42°C till just before Jindabyne

SUMMARY:

A great holiday, cheap except for the broken rear windscreen. Our total expenditure was approximately:

COMMENTS:

I would never do this trip again over the Christmas period as it is too hot and there are too many flies. In addition, at some locations there are too many people. If I it again (and I will do parts again), I will go in March or earlier in November (but you have to be careful about this as many tracks are closed till early or mid-November).

Note that many of the tracks we did are closed from about May/June to October/November each year.