Sunday 20 January 2013

Great Alpine Walk: day 1

This is the first of 7 or so posts covering the Great Alpine Walk that Trevor and I undertook with Auswalks in January 2013.

There were 11 other walkers in the group:

  • John from PNG
  • Joan and Maria Teresa, a couple from Barcelona
  • Trish from Perth
  • Peter, Ian and Sam from Queensland
  • Marie-Louise and her son Alec and Anne from Sydney
  • Alison from just over the hill from us in Canberra.

Our guides were Phil and Marie.

Yes, we had more than the odd Marie/Maria.

Here is the first installment. Oh, I will get around to tarting up the posts however I am a bit restricted with what is available and I thought it best to start to post what I have done to date. There will be photos in the following day posts.

Great Alpine Walk: Day 1

Trevor decided to wake me up at 6:20am .... I had my phone set to go off at 6:30 so the extra 10 minutes was not welcome. I turned over and went back to sleep until my phone sprung into life.

Up and into the shower.

After sorting out my bag and what was not going on the walk I went and got my breakfast: museli and a cup of tea. Trevor had already had his breakfast and Helen, my niece who had arrived about 10pm for a bed at her mother's, was also up.

Helen, accompanied by Jen, drove us into the city and dropped up in Spencer Street. We had a good run through and arrived before 8:30 which meant that we could have a cup of coffee, the first of many for the day, before going to our pickup spot.

What time were we being picked up? Our documents had 9:00am on page 1 and over the page it said 9:20am. We arrived at the Alto on Bourke Street before 9:00 and joined an ever growing group of hikers as most had opted for the pickup at the Alto. This gave us a chance to meet some of our fellow hikers.

The Aus Walks bus arrived across from the Alto just before 9:20 and we trundled across the road with bags and packs. Being a Sunday there was almost no traffic at that hour so it was easy to do the crossing. As our bags were being loaded we met of guides: Phil and Maria. We had two further stops before heading for the Hume Highway and the north.

We had a toilet and coffee stop about an hour and 15 minutes after leaving the airport. The lunch stop was at Milawa and a further stop at Mount Beauty before doing the climb to Falls Creek.

The day had started grey and got progressively heavier. By the time we stopped for lunch it had started raining, lightly admittedly, but still rain. It continued to rain as Phil negotiated the winding road up to Falls Creeek, our home for three nights.

After checking in and checking out our accommodation at Diana Alpine Lodge we headed off for a walking tour of the village. This was important as we need to organise our own dinner tomorrow night and needed to check out the limited oprtions available to us during the off season here in a skiing resort. At least the rain had stopped although the grass was damp and we did traverse a number of grassed areas.

At 7 o'clock the group met in the bar for pre-dinner nibbles and drinks.

Dinner was served in our Lodge and was fine except for some coriander in Trevor's main.

After a briefing for tomorrows program it was time to retire for the night.

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