Victoria: High Country - Day 25

Driving back up the track as we left camp I remembered how you would not want to be doing this in the wet. Back at the Low Saddle Road we continued along using mostly low range 3 and 4. A landslide near the bridge had resulted in lots of fresh soil across the track which we found had been freshly graded so it wasn't long before we were travelling faster. We came up to a grader and followed a smooth widened track all the way to the next bridge over the north branch of the Jamieson River (many nice campsites here along the river bank). Once over the bridge we turned right onto Brocks Rd then left at a sign to King Billy 1 + 2, then veered left onto Cairn Crk Trk - not "seriously steep" as noted on the Rooftop map, in fact, easy. This tracks joins up with the Bluff Tk just before Lovicks Hut. So there you have it - a great 2 day shortcut through to the Bluff Tk from Woods Point.

After a few days in the High Country, and noting various huts on the map that we were so near, yet so far from being able to see, we were really looking forward to seeing Lovicks Hut.

You can imagine our disappointment to find it had been demolished for rebuilding and there were March flies everywhere making sitting out with the kids on the picnic rug almost impossible to enjoy.








I need to comment here that if you are running OziExplorer, you'll find that by keeping your eye on the altitude readings that the Snow Gums and wildflowers appear at precisely 1500m, whilst at lower altitudes you'll see ferns. This is a glorious piece of Australia - with an abundance of wildflowers and changing flora at every corner.

The Bluff Track is an easy, but very pretty path through to Howitts Plain. We overshot the Zeka Spur Track to enable us to camp at the nearby Howitts Hut even though we expected it to be full of travellers because it is accessible by 2WDs. Fortunately, the site was totally empty on our arrival at 5pm but by 7pm great hoards of campers had arrived. We had chosen the most remote camp at the top of the hill so we didn't really hear them - but it was a noisy night due to a massive storm. We managed to cook a huge lamb roast in the camp oven with pumpkin, potatoes, served with gravy and snow peas and red wine just before the first rain started at dusk.