Kickstarting Winter

Winter officially starts in Australia only on the 21st of June, but the streets of Melbourne are already cold, (somewhat) wet and very windy. So we went somewhere where the weather is already cold, the Victorian High country, in hope of being better prepared for winter when it hits the city really bad.

We stayed with a couple of Friends (Coop and Heeyong) in a cabin next to Lake Eildon. Well, it was a lakeside cabin until Australia, and Victoria in particular, have been subjected to a 10 years drought. So now the 'lake' is only a massive piece of cracked, dried-up land, with only 5% of its original water volume. The lakebed has recorded all of its transformations over the years, from an old farmland that was flooded by a dam in the 50's, to a popular recreational site during the past few decades and now to a gloomy no-man's land. A surreal, cool scenery that, in its own way, tells you a sad and disturbing story.































On the following day we went to the Mt. Buller ski resort, but instead of heading up the ski slopes we went the other way, to Mt. Stirling which is the cross-country alternative to Mt. Buller's bourgeois experience. It was a unanimous decision...
















A beautiful Snow Gum, the only Eucalypti specie that grows in this altitude. Unlike other alpine regions on the planet, the tree line is not that far from the top due to the relatively low altitude. in fact, there's an old snow gum near the peak itself.







































No, this isn't a lone Zapatista we've met at the top, nor is a mountaineer on top of K2 - that's Liat on the 1749m peak of Mt. Stirling. At least you don't have to hear her complaints about the cold in the picture...




















Me and Coop, the 'expedition leaders'. The sun, that was absent from most of our ascent, came out just in time to light up the amazing views of the Victorian Alps.




















Heeyong descends from the mountain - how is this picture as a postcard from down under?

Both girls were full of joy after we stepped down from the peak. Luckily for them, we didn't save the before pictures...