Thursday, February 23, 2012

16. Cooma, Jindabyne, Bega & Eden

Heading south from Canberra we decided to head up to Jindabyne to take the kids up Mt Kousiozsko. As we got into Cooma there was a big SnowyHydo Discovery Centre which we stopped at. The centre was all about the Snowy Power project which started in the early 1900s. I didn’t realise there were tunnels all under the mountains to power several power stations in the region. However, as we were reading I vaguely remembered that my Uncle Bill had worked in the area. I confirmed this via email that he did in fact work there in 1959 as a face electrician. He took over after another fellow who had been decapitated by a loco.

We sat there for a while, in the carpark, watching the massive storm go over head.

We continued on to Jindabyne hoping for good weather to go up Mt Kousiozsko. Jindabyne was very pretty and the lake was a lot larger than I remember. We pulled up at one park on the lake and there was a No Camping sign. Caravan Parks at Jindabyne were $50+ per night so decided a free camp somewhere would be better; however there were none in Jindabyne!

We moved to the carpark in the heart of town, right in front of the Bowls Clubs. The boys played in the skate park while we got dinner ready. The wind was a tad chilly so out came the jumpers and long pants.

Our plan was to eat there and later that night go to the Bowls Club for cake and coffee and one final pee before bed. Well things didn’t go to plan. They didn’t have coffee. So we wandered along the shops and hunted for coffee. NOWHERE had coffee and cake. We did find a patisserie open and a lovely guy did us a great deal on 4 of anything for $10 – so we got our goods and returned to the van.

After snacks we chickened out on staying right in town so drove out of town a kilometre and parked up on the side of the road.

We left in the morning hoping to get up to Thredbo without too much cloud. We got as far as the National Parks stop and decided that the weather was too crappy to spend $100 to see cloud, so we turned around. L

We headed off towards Bega and went to the Bega Cheese Factory! There was great old stuff there and information and of course cheese and lots of cow trinkets, but the Kenilworth Cheese Factory is much better. Of course there were the typical Bega cheeses on show but nothing with great flavour.

We left there and poked our heads into Eden wharfs. I found hot showers there so we had a hot shower and headed to a free camp 20km south of Eden.


We left early in the morning with our sights set on Mallacoota for brecky.


PHOTOS: Cooma, Jindabyne, Bega & Eden

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