Travel Journal: my first actual real holiday away with the husband in over a decade
A trip down memory lane to Bright, Victoria (better late than never)
It’s a chilly Saturday afternoon here in outer suburban Melbourne. Hailstones tap loudly against the corrugated steel roof of our house. We’re in the final month of autumn in southern Australia. The days grow shorter. Today is a Full Moon. A Penumbral Lunar Eclipse crossed the skies in the very early hours of this morning, though I was asleep, cosied up in bed with one of my cats wedged in close next to me and my heat pack. He must’ve been feeling the cold. Today the thermometer reads 11.3°C (52°F), and there’s no expectation that it’ll get any warmer today. It’s a preview of winter, wrapped in a relentless icy draught gusting in through the window and the low dark clouds crawling eastwards to the mountains. Yesterday was also icy, though sunny. As I took a walk around the neighbourhood, I stopped to admire the way the sun glowed through the breeze-tossed pink Camellias in a local garden. Today, I am huddled indoors with my heater and my cat. I don’t think I will bother walking today.
Music plays softly on the sound system. First, an algorithmically generated playlist, with a selection of bands like Tool, Fleetwood Mac, Jethro Tull and Cream – as if the algorithm looked through my parents’ and my respective record collections. I hit play, open my laptop computer, and settle in to write as the dishwasher whirs away in the background. The humidifier sends a gentle scent of geranium into the air. Later, I will swap over to a playlist of my own making, of the deep sepulchral poetry of Hallatar, the haunted forest shrieking of Myrkur, and the nostalgic prog metal of early Karnivool.
It’s been a whole week since my husband and I went on a holiday to the town of Bright in the Victorian High Country. Holidays are a magnificent luxury, one that we enjoy all-too-rarely. It was our first holiday with just the two of us – minus our kids - in over a decade; and our first holiday of any sort in several years. We took a couple of holidays when our kids were much younger, staying at the cheapest accomodation we could find along the Great Ocean Road. The last holiday that my husband and I had with just the two of us was in our late 20s, as a celebration for my graduation from university, when we went whale watching in Mooloolaba, Queensland. All of our trips have otherwise been daytrips, and my husband has travelled interstate and overseas for work purposes.
Now that we are in our early 40s, the kids are adults and can be trusted to look after the house and cats for a few days. I am very grateful that we have reached a stage in life stage and budget in which travel is more of an option for us. In addition to that, as a vegan (by choice) with a few serious food allergies (not by choice), it’s much easier nowadays to find food while travelling than it was in past decades. Cafés and restaurants in general have a better understanding of managing dietary requirements and food allergies. I reasonably expected that I would be able to find food along the way (though, as always, I packed some of my own – just to be safe).
We chose Bright because it was accessible and affordable for us. A little over 300 kilometres (186 miles) from home, it was a car journey that we were able to complete in around 5 hours including rest breaks. Both of us have childhood memories of staying there, with our respective families, and we were curious to know if our memories of this vibrant autumn-hued town were accurate. My husband had a story of at least one family holiday when he was rather young, most of which centred around anecdotes of a waterslide on the Ovens River. The first thing we sought out when we arrived was the water slide (actually, it was the public toilets, but they were right next to the entrance to the slide), but at this time of year it was closed for business and carpeted with fallen leaves.
My own childhood memories of Bright are of two holidays there in my mid-teens, one of which involved a horse ride through the bushland behind the nearby town of Porepunkah. There, for a brief few hours, I lived my Man From Snowy River dreams[i]. For the rest of those holidays I carried a sketch book and pens around the town. On one of these holidays there was a nerve-racking drive to the top of Mt Buffalo. (My late grandfather, who drove the car on that occasion, seemed to think the road lane lines were mere suggestions.) I had in my memory our repeat stays in a big, mint green motel on the banks of the river – which was still there when I visited a week ago, only it’s now painted white. Some advance research had shown us that we could expect to find suitable foods for our respective dietary requirements.
I had grand visions of all the creative work I would accomplish in the three days and two nights we spent in the town. In the end, I scrawled maybe a single paragraph in my handwritten journal in the car on the way there; and I drew one or two trees in the small sketchbook that I store in my handbag while waiting for my brunch at a café. My pan paints and watercolour journal were sadly neglected, having made the trip to-and-from Bright without leaving the confines of my backpack, except for a brief stint on the chair in the motel room where I piled up the washing and the little bushwalking guidebook that we picked up at the information centre.
I think we were just so busy walking absolutely everywhere, trying to complete as many activities as we could in the ~48 hours we were in the town, that by the time we had a moment to rest, I just wanted to sleep. There were no deep spiritual revelations, no especially profound moments, and no words composed – but there were amazing autumn colours, plenty of bushwalking, and a series of excellent cafés. It was a relief to get a change of scenery, and get away from the daily routine for a couple of days.
Friday: Day 1
It was still dark when we left home early in the morning. I said farewell to the kids, half-asleep as they were, and to the cats. The cats knew something was up, and I felt awfully guilty leaving them behind. At least my adult children could understand what was going on; my fur-children became surly and anxious when they saw me packing the suitcase.
In the pre-dawn gloom, the air was strangely still, and a slow chorus of late-season crickets greeted the morning as the pink tinge of sunrise crept along the low clouds. So began the long drive to a different part of the state of Victoria, with several rest breaks along the way. We swung by an inner-city café my husband likes to frequent when his job in the rail industry takes him to that part of Melbourne. Then began the long haul north-east along the Hume Freeway. We zoomed past a series of rural towns with names I didn’t recognise, though my husband knew a number of them from the times he’d worked on train test runs through that region. Other towns he recognised as locations that appeared in his family history research, linked to the Cornish branches of his family that migrated to Victoria during the Gold Rush era of the 1850s and 1860s. Occasionally we stopped at petrol stations seemingly in the middle of nowhere for rest breaks. I wondered at the remote feelings of these places, and wondered about the people working at those petrol stations. But I reminded myself that I also was born and raised in a rural town that keeps mostly to itself, sort of existing to outsiders as merely a place between places. Most people who tell me that they’ve heard of my hometown will tell me that they only know it because they stopped there on the way to somewhere more tourist-oriented.
We passed Army trucks on their way to and from the not-too-distant defence force base, and a lot of trucks, and a guy driving erratically all over the road while he fiddled with his mobile phone, a huge Ichthys sticker taking pride of place on the back of his vehicle.[ii]
We had lunch in Beechworth: take away curried potato pies from the bakery, followed by a pleasant walk around the Chinese Gardens and part of the Lake Sambell Reserve. Vibrant autumn colours and the contemplative garden with the large Buddha statue and myriad native birds foraging in the vivid green lawns were a lovely backdrop to the gazebo where we sat for lunch.
We reached Bright shortly after lunchtime and sought out a café to pass the time before we were due to check in at the motel. It was lovely, seated under trellises bound by red-tinged ornamental grape vines, with views of the flocks of cockatoos flying overhead. From our first moment in the town we were greeted with the magnificent array of autumn colours for which Bright is known. We quite deliberately timed our visit to coincide with this season. The motel we stayed at was fully booked out, as were most of the accommodation places around town. As soon as we settled in and put away our bags, we pulled on our bushwalking shoes and took a stroll along the Canyon Walk.
The Canyon Walk loop was approximately 3.4 kilometres (2.1 miles), and took 1 hour and 40 minutes. We took our time, stopping frequently to take photos and record videos of the flowing river. Fairy wrens chattered in the trees for most of the trail. The clear water clattered joyfully over the smooth stones. Mushrooms poked out among the long grass and fern fronds. In one spot we even found a fly agaric, a shocking patch of red in the sandy stones of the pine-topped riverbank. Some parts of the walk were more challenging than others, with some sections of slippery, rocky stairs cut into the riverbanks, and the late afternoon light gave way to nighttime rather quickly as the low sun dipped behind the ever-looming mountains. The beautiful avenue of yellow poplars that was lodged in my memories from my last visit some 25 years ago came into view as we returned from the trail to the town. It was even more beautiful than I recalled. I stood there for a while, mostly waiting for my husband to finish taking photos of those trees, while I watched with amusement as a flock of native wood ducks struggled to swim against the flow of the river for no apparent reason.
Dinner that night was a gourmet vegetable-topped pizza, then a walk back to the motel via the shockingly dark river trail. We used the torches on our mobile phones to ensure that we didn’t fall into the river. As we passed the old motel I recalled from my teen years, a silhouetted figure looked out of the window of the very same room I had once stayed in. I think he was surprised to see our torchlights flashing on the trail in the otherwise pitch-dark night.
Saturday - Day 2
I had an excellent sleep, most likely because I didn’t have my cats meowing at me through the night. The town was wonderfully quiet at night, and I awoke in the morning to the distinctive cries of yellow-tailed black cockatoos and pied currawongs echoing over the valley.
We wandered down to a café close to the big park on the banks of the river and shivered in the foggy cool morning. The autumn colours were especially vibrant against the grey skies. Breakfast was a delicious medley of assorted fried mushrooms served on corn muffins, with wilted spinach and a hot long black coffee. We sat outside, watching the river flowing past the playground, and the people flowing past on their bicycles.
From there we followed Morses Creek upstream, crossing the town to look at the Memorial Arboretum. Then we spent a very pleasant morning in the local art society’s gallery for their annual autumn art show. I loved looking at the local artworks. One of my favourite things to do when visiting rural Australian communities is to see what their local artists are painting. It’s inspiring for my own artistic ideas, but it’s also a lovely way to get to know the community. In my hometown – situated close to both coast and mountains – the art shows I attended in the past were dominated by paintings of crashing waves on the shore, or of the native birds that called the hilly bushland home. But here, in Bright, in the Victorian Alps, many of the works were of the snow-dusted granite rock formations of the mountains that tower over the town. There were seascapes but they were few and far between. After the art show, we had coffee in a cute little coffee shop, followed by lunch at a vegetarian restaurant.
In the afternoon, we drove partway up the immense and beautiful Mt Buffalo, to walk a trail that connects three waterfalls. That was incredible, and very steep. I am grateful that I recently bought new hiking shoes[iii] because they were perfect for the narrow, rocky and step path. Ladies Bath Falls, the first stop along the way, was lovely. It was a perfect place to test out our new camera, a retro-styled Nikon Zfc, which we bought after trading in our old Nikon D40 and D90. Lower and Upper Eurobin falls were magnificent and awesome in the literal awe-inspiring sense. The higher up the trail we went, the less people there were. And the more that the information signs warned of immediate injury and death to anyone foolish enough to try to leave the trail and climb the slippery granite. A subsequent search of news articles online, once we reconnected to the motel wifi internet, was a sad tale of multiple incidents in which people were left critically injured after they ignored those very signs. Personally, nothing about the falls and the tall fences edging the path made me think, ‘Sure, I could climb that.’ I had wondered at the necessity of those signs, but after crossing paths with a few people who were trying to walk the trail in high heel shoes, I had to reassess my understanding of what people think is sensible. I don’t want to judge folks’ individual fashion choices, but I can’t fathom looking at any mountainside bushwalking trail in Australia and thinking that high heeled shoes are in any way a rational option.
Once we reached the top of the walking trail, the Upper Eurobin Falls lookout, I was able to find a quiet moment – my favourite kind of moment! – to sit on a broad, flat stone and listen to the roar of the falls and try to feel the intense power and ancientness of the mountain. We took a photo for a couple who had also made it to the top of the trail, but otherwise we mostly had the spot to ourselves.
Dinner that night was another excellent vegan meal at another restaurant. I fell into bed at the motel much earlier than my normal bedtime and fell asleep almost immediately.
Sunday - Day 3
We checked out of the motel before driving into town for the morning. I felt a little sad. I was relieved to go back to the comforts of home, but sad it was already over after so many months anticipating the trip. I think that I wanted just one more night to have a slower-paced day and appreciate the town and its autumn colours a little longer. I looked at my pile of untouched sketchbooks and my neglected journal on the motel chair and wished that I’d had just a little more space in between activities to sit and create. I love journalling – it’s an important regular practice for me. But it also feels more meaningful to write in situ when I visit new places, rather than after the event. In my personal journals I like to write observationally about local weather patterns and moon phases and describe exactly what I can see, hear and smell. Bright has a soundtrack of rushing river water and black cockatoo calls, a scent of fallen oak leaves composting on the riverbanks, and the scenery of cloud-shrouded mountains rising sharply in a ring around the town. I wish I’d taken some time to write about it while I was there. It was the Southern Hemisphere’s Samhain, too and I normally try to write on those sorts of seasonal transitional days. But I was too busy and tired in that moment to think to pull out my journal and pens.
Breakfast was smashed avocado topped with spices and served on sourdough, followed by a stroll along the Cherry Walk. Then followed an early lunch – a huge tofu burger and hand cut potato chips - again at the vegetarian restaurant, where some older blokes talked loudly about how all they really wanted was a plate of seafood or a plate of lamb chops, as if they had somehow been forced to eat at the vegetarian place.
We drove to nearby Myrtleford for coffees and a walk around part of that town. I really like Myrtleford and I would love to visit there again sometime. I saw hints of an intriguing community personality dotted around the town: the tiny little pride flag mosaic on a light pole in the main street; the references to spiritual retreats and a youth community centre; the historic churches a short distance apart; all framed by rows of autumn yellowed poplars and the picuresque, frog choir-soundtracked Happy Valley Creek.
We drove home via the scenic and treacherous-feeling roads through the Yarra Ranges, where winding roads and high cliffs gave us views of huge granite boulders surrounded by grazing farm animals. It was a more direct route home, but on rough rural roads. It was less distance overall, but a route that took a longer time than if we’d followed the main Freeway. Unfamiliar place names appeared on the GPS map – in the places where we actually had any kind of internet reception – and were marked by sparsely spaced farmhouses. Once in a while we passed very expensive looking Thoroughbred horse stud farms, but for most of the first leg of the journey home it was a place of huge, steep farms. In some areas the landscape looked like something out of a fairy tale – jagged, pointed-topped mountains, as if they had been drawn on paper as great triangles with a blue sky behind them. The boulders looked as if giants had set up standing stone circles in time immemorial. The giants were long gone but their stone circles remained, spirit portals heaped on the landscape and haunted by sheep like fluffy ghosts. Strange, twisted forms of gum tree haunted the valleys by the various tributaries of the Goulburn River. Their trunks seemed twisted into tortured corkscrew shapes, guarding the valleys as the low afternoon light slanted through them. Perhaps I was imagining it, but it seemed to me the place most likely to be patrolled by the restless undead out of all the places we’d seen thus far. We paused for a rest break in Yarck, a place we had previously only known from the somewhat ubiquitous ‘Where the farck is Yarck?’ bumper stickers that decorate any of the bush bashing vehicles we see in our suburb’s pub carpark. After some hours of meandering mountain roads, we reached Coldstream. It was there that we finally saw the familiar bulk of Mt Dandenong in the distance, with its summit arrayed with the same communications towers that we can see from our windows at home. We had reached the final leg of the journey and I felt a sense of relief knowing that the comforts of home and my own bed were not too far away.
When we arrived home, it was perhaps an hour before my cats would speak to me again. They were predictably angry after my absence.
Afterthoughts - a week later
I certainly hope that this holiday was the first of many years of holiday adventuring around our home state of Victoria for my husband and I. If I could do things differently, I would probably try for three nights instead of two, with activities spaced out a bit further apart. I would bring my own breakfast cereal from home to eat in the motel. That would save money and carve out some time to write in my journal or draw in my sketchbook in the mornings before the day’s adventures. I don’t like rushing through things, leaping from one task to the next. I would also book ahead at restaurants for dinner, rather than hoping for a free table. I would take one more change of clothes than I expected to need (see, for example, the tomato stains on my light-coloured jumper when a particularly juicy grilled cherry tomato erupted on the first night’s pizzeria outing).
I’m also grateful that almost a year ago I started diligently exercising more regularly. Nothing too complicated – just more frequent walks around the neighbourhood and following along with free basic weight training workouts and yoga practices on YouTube – because I wanted to be able to do things like bushwalking with more ease. This minimal change to my daily routine is resulting in real life benefits as I have more energy, stamina and strength than before. If I’d tried walking up the Eurobin Falls trail a year ago, I truly don’t think my then-fitness levels would have been up to the task. Finding joy in regular physical movement has meant that I can better enjoy the more challenging bushwalking opportunities when they arise. It was worth the effort to try to create that discipline for myself.
And that is the summary of my very enjoyable three days and two nights revisiting a place full of memories. Thank you for reading along.
[i] It’s worth noting that in that part of my life I was a regular student at a horse riding school and actually knew how to ride. I think the muscles I had back then have long since atrophied from lack of use.
[ii] It brought back memories of our days in our former church, when the carpark at the megachurch complex felt a bit like stepping onto a battlefield of expensive cars and stressed out congregants fighting for the spot closest to the door. Fun times.
[iii] Vivobarefoot vegan-friendly recycled materials ankle-high hiking shoes, if anyone’s wondering. I love them. [Not sponsored in any way to promote them.]
I hope you guys get to travel there again. Definitely a long weekend would be more relaxing than only a couple of nights if you can. More time to relax and sketch or write or nap on one of your full days there.😉 Your video was gorgeous too. Beautiful sounds of nature.🤗
Lovely article and photos. Your words brought back wonderful memories for me of Bright - and the trip there too, although yours sounds a bit different from our past drives to the town, when we went over the Dandenong Ranges then through the Yarra Ranges -Gembrook, Healesville, Maroondah Dam, Benalla, Wangaratta. The morning sunshine at the dam, then the late afternoon shadows along the Ovens Highway were so uplifting! Ah...memorieeeeees!😁😍
I really enjoyed this piece, thank you.
Lol, apt description of Leongatha in that it exists only as a place between places. So true! 😅