Snowy business

First of all, a word of warning. This post, covering my Easter weekend in the Snowy River National Park, is a long one...
So, the background to the annual Easter trip is that when cousin Bern Lyons came to Melbourne in his twenties he joined the climbing club and made lifelong friends, including his climbing partner Pete Smith, married to Fran. Forty three years ago a group of them arranged to meet at the Snowy one Easter, and they've been coming every Easter since, adding wives, then children and now grandchildren to the group, not to mention assorted hangers on, like myself. 

It's lashing down in Melbourne when Uncle Mick and I climb aboard Bern's 4WD van and I'm wondering if I've made the right decision to change my flight for a hefty extra fee. Mick, like some prophet of doom, announces the unpromising weather forecast at regular intervals. Camping in the rain… ugh. Last time I did that was on the Isle of Skye with my brother Rod and three of his kids. We had to work hard to make it fun.

The drive is an adventure in itself, as we stop off in hick towns for pies, loo visits and ice. Turning left away from the sea we climb through farmland and rolling hills and finally somewhere just past a place called Suggan Buggan we enter the Snowy River National Park. This is Suggan Buggan bridge on the (sunny) drive home.

The road clings to the hillside and as it's raining the surface is slippy. I forgot to say, the tarmac runs out somewhere just past Suggan Buggan, too. So, every time Bern turns the wheel, the back of the van spins out to one side. I'm sitting in the back, letting out mini-squeals every time there's a corner. My stomach is in knots. As the earth is pretty red around these parts, there's a river of what looks like blood flowing down the side of the road. 

But the rain is lifting and I get some sense of the landscape around. The mountains stretch as far as the eye can see and their thickly forested slopes and ridges look like bottle-green velvet rolled out in soft folds.

We arrive finally and the rain stops (and stays away for the whole trip). The campsite is on a large bend in the river with a riverbed beach that the kids can play on. You can see the bend in the picture below. The water level is very low, I'm told. The Snowy River dam has put paid to any hope of even a mild torrent these days.

We choose our spots and pitch up, cracking open the beers once that is done. People gradually arrive and wander over to say hello. The only facilities are two outside toilets. They are awfully scenic, though. It's down to the river for anything else.

The first night we stay round our own fire, but the following night, after we've eaten (among our Lyons family group we're on a rota of meals, everyone having prepared one meal for six to eight people), we head over to the Smith campfire for wine, banter and song. The Smith campfire is quite the place to be, with up to 30 people gathered round it in a circle. The fire is big, too, with whole tree trunks piled into a pit. Bern turns out to be quite a crooner, summoning up all the old cockney ditties and folk songs, many of which he's taught to the Smith clan. It's very strange to see Australian children singing On Ilkley Moor bar t'at and being word perfect. I eventually pluck up the nerve to sing a song and what comes into my head? Flower of Scotland!

Bern's son Michael and his wife Ayako arrive first thing in the morning with four-year-old daughter Maiko in their gleaming white 4WD landrover thingie, stuffed to the rafters with all you might need for a month in the mountains. Michael has spent 12 years as an outdoor education teacher so what he doesn't know about kit for all eventualities could be written on a postage stamp. Ayako's meal is a hard act to follow.

Bern's daughter Jenny arrives from Canberra on Saturday in a yute with her partner David. They're the gourmet wine connoisseur element of our little group, and David brings out a new wine with every meal and gives us the rundown on its provenance and eligibility. He has a wine cellar of several hundred, he tells us. Jenny's first culinary offering is kangaroo burgers. Very healthy as it's high in protein but low in fat.

One of Fran's nephews is here with his twins, also four, and they and Maiko make a mischievous little trio. It's lovely to be around kids again. I can be Auntie Cate again! I manage to persuade the girls that my bird earrings are volume dials, and that if the bird's head faces down, that means I can't hear what they're saying. The twins are freakishly lively and yet very sweet. Maiko is adorable, with a will of iron. I overhear them playing in a hammock and there's some altercation about who's turn it is to push. Tess says to Maiko, 'You know what you have Maiko? You have an attitude.' Too funny.

The night sky here is something I'll never forget. In this completely light-free area it is mind-blowingly clear and alive with possibility. I recognise a few constellations, there's Orion, for example, but his 'sword' is above the belt, and I see the Southern Cross, I know where to find it now. I get up early one morning and Bern and I go down to the Snowy to take photographs of the morning mist on the water. I'm paddling because it's actually warmer in than out. The campfire-cooked breakfast proves to be just the job after that little excursion.

The big Saturday bush walk is something else I won't forget in a hurry. We have to be transported to the start of the walk in 4WD vehicles and I soon find out why. The track up is almost vertical in places and the surface like a river bed, with giant gorges and mounds worn into it. Most of the time I'm thinking to myself, surely we won't make it up/over/down/around that… It's so bumpy that when we finally reach the plateau after half an hour, I announce: 'I'm glad I wore my sports bra – just for the ride up.' 

The view from the top reaches far across the mountains, towards Kosciuszko, the highest mountain in Australia, at 2,228m. There's a lot of map consultation (makes me miss my siblings) and discussion about where we're going to walk and in the end we go with Pete Smith's route.


Pete is in his seventies but sets a cracking pace, closely followed by Uncle Mick 'The Treadmill' Lyons. I'm invariably bringing up the rear, wanting to do frivolous things such as take photos, drink water, look at a view or, God forbid, stop for a rest.

There are funny moments. When Pete's daughter-in-law Jenny offers a bag of snacks to the old boys, saying, 'Sweet nuts?' it has us all laughing hysterically. Injuries I sustain include lacerated shins and arms from the bush bashing, a sprained thumb from slipping on the dusty path and putting my hand down to break my fall and bending my thumb back the wrong way, and aches and pains at the outer edges of my feet, from hours of traversing or winding down ferociously steep gradients. We are rewarded in some measure by the sight of several brumbies or wild horses. All the way down Jenny, who is a horsewoman, tells us how fresh the horse poo is, and therefore how close we are to brumbies. I know about these from watching a DVD of The Man From Snowy River at The Louise hotel in the Barossa Valley. It's one of those Eighties Aussie classics based on a poem written in 1890 by Banjo Paterson about a young man from the mountains of the Snowy River who daringly recaptures a prize colt which has escaped and joined the brumbies. 

Easter Sunday kicks off with the Easter Egg Hunt and Jenny and I help hide a few of the hundreds of eggs that have been collected from everyone in a section of the bush roped off as an 'egg domain'. Mine turn out to be far too obvious and I have to revisit a few of the hidey-holes to make the hunt a little more fiendish. When the kids are unleashed with their 'sacks' I see why. They are relentless and not one egg is left undiscovered. Wee Maiko is certainly on a mission.









Another Snowy River Easter tradition started some 20 years ago is the Snowy River Hash. Since the children are now involved it has become shorter and a little easier. This year Uncle Mick and Pete set the Hash around the bush between the campsite and the 'main' road and it lasts about an hour. There are special tasks to carry out at each Check, which gives little ones (and me – those older kids run like the clappers) a chance to catch up, something to sing, for example.



Apart from that all the normal rules apply, from the 'down downs' for Snowy Hash organisers and virgins (me and Tess the twin), to a special solo 'down down' for the other twin who rolled in the flour. Mick presents me with a Hash t-shirt for changing my flight to join them all. And I have to do another 'down down'.






I go off for a couple of walks on my own, just along the river to the border with New South Wales, surprising a family of kangaroos at one point. The Snowy features a lovely mix of trees, with pockets of temperate rainforest alongside drier forests of white cypress pine (or are they black?) and nearer the banks of the river what is called wattle, with soft bluish-green foliage. 
On our last day I go paddling down the Snowy in an inflatable kayak with Michael and the three girls. There are gentle rapids and at the river's edge, rocks carved by the water into Henry Moore type sculptures. The girls shatter the calm by standing up in the boat to do The Birdy Song. It makes my day. Correction, it makes my weekend.

So it's time to leave and we drive out of the park in glorious sunshine, detouring slightly to view a spectacular gorge at Little River and the tiny former schoolhouse at Suggan Buggan. Then, just as Mick is saying, 'You still haven't seen an emu, Cate', we pass a whole field of them. My Australian wishlist is done and dusted. 

Actually, it really isn't. I've barely skimmed the surface. But the big country and the big hearts of the people I've spent time with have left me wanting to see more. Australia, I'll be back...