A trip to North Eastern Victoria

Chris asked me to join her in Tallangatta as she was feeling a bit overwhelmed with things, so I drove down on Monday. It's a long drive from Canberra, but the time passed quite painlessly as I listened to a talking book version of Donna Leon's 'Through a glass darkly'. It's an odd thing to be driving through the dry undulating countryside of eucalyptus, wattles, and rolling paddocks of southern NSW while listing to a tale of intrigue and nefariousness in watery Venice.

John is not very well. He has a bad shoulder, is recovering from a cold, and is very troubled by having witnessed a neighbour's signature which allowed her to put her husband Bob into local respite care. He feels he has collaborated in 'putting Bob away', as he puts it. Nothing we can say can shift his anxiety about this.

So it's probably a good thing that C has an appointment in Corryong today as part of a contract she has with ACU - an interview with a beneficiary of a government assistance program. So here I am, at Corryong public library, doing my blog (as opposed to block). We had a very pleasant lunch at a place called the Pepperleaf, and when I finish here I will go for a wander along the town's main street. I've taken a few pix and will upload them when I have time.

Yesterday C and I went for a walk along the old railway track from Tallangatta toward Old Tallangatta ('the town that moved'). C's dad used to be the station master at Tallangatta Station, and she showed me where the station used to be, and the house opposite where she lived as a child.

It was cold but a lovely walk, easy, fine white gravel underfoot and only the gentlest of inclines. The whole railway walk actually stretches a very long distance, but after we'd walked for about 45 mins, we turned back. Such a peaceful place, with beautiful rolling hills, quite green (considering), and so quiet! Just the tsiptsiptsip of little brown birds in the underbrush, the odd moo, the cry of a crow ... The Hume Weir, along one side of which the track runs, is a sad mess of black, dead tree trunks, meandering, thin waterways, erosion and dried bog - a perfectly good valley ruined. One wonders if, in the end, the weir and the Snowy Mountains project will not be looked upon as among the greatest engineering mistakes ever made in this country. So much has been done with the expectation of ongoing rainfall.