April 25th
The views expressed on this page are those of the author only
Written by Vic Widman (Events Coordinator for clubMINI)
The weekend coincided with ANZAC Day and after gathering at Pheasants Nest on Friday morning at 10 am we endured the long weekend traffic heading south on the Hume Hwy. Double demerit points and a high Police presence ensured that the cruise control was set at the exact speed limit.
We left the busy Hume at Goulburn and escaped to quieter roads on our way to Bungendore via Taralga. We settled into the local Bakery for lunch and as we enjoyed meat pies and lamingtons we noted the town’s ANZAC march was underway. The returned service men and women, the marching band and the bagpipers made a stirring sight as they marched down the main street towards us. But you can imagine our surprise when just metres away from our seated position they turned hard right and marched straight into the local PUB!!! We roared with laughter and thought, only in Australia!
We were back on the road and skirted around Canberra and down the Monaro Hwy to Cooma for another pit stop in the park to stretch the legs and let the kids (Jasmine, Alex and John G) play on the slippery dip in the playground. From here we took that glorious MINI road, the Snowy Mtns Hwy over the Mountain to Kiandra.
Kiandra is now virtually abandoned but in the later 1800’s it was a roaring gold town, then during the mid 1960-70’s it was a major ski field during the Winter months.
We learnt that Ros Merten had spent most of her childhood at Kiandra with a relative that managed the Inn (the only building left at Kiandra these days) so we stopped on top of the mountains whilst Ros reminisced about her childhood skiing days.
The long and winding road led us across the Mountains and down the other side past a very much water depleted Talbingo and Blowering Reservoir. Arriving in Tumut just on dusk, we quickly retreated to our various accommodation (Tumut is very busy during its festival weekend and we were split between 3 different locations in order to get all of us a bed for the night). The great thing about Tumut is that it’s not all that big and you can walk to just about al the points of interest, so we walked down to the Bowling club which Doug Martin had booked for us for dinner.
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