We started our journey on Sunday at 8am from Torquay and arrived in Bright at 1pm. It was quite a picturesque town with the mountaineous backdrop. It would be even prettier in autumn when the tree leaves turn into various hue of colours. The road, also known as Great Alpine Road was a beautiful drive.
Once in Bright, we stopped at JD Ski Hire shop to get our ski gears. We then headed to Harrietville, 35km from Bright to check into Harrietville Hotel/Motel for the night. The town is much smaller than Bright but is the closest town (approx 30km) to Mt Hotham. We had no choice as accommodation was 100% booked out in Mt Hotham being school holidays. In fact we very nearly had to cancel our ski holiday as all the ski resorts in Victoria and NSW were fully booked. The sacrifice was to stay at the foot of the hill and take the 30km winding drive up everyday. This I am grateful and thankful to Keith for being such a wonderful alert, careful driver. Have to also thank him for patiently putting on and removing the snow chains each time we drove up and down in freezing temperatures of minus 3 degrees Celcius or so.
Anyway that Sunday afternoon we decided to take a drive up to Mt Hotham and Dinner Plain to check out the place. We started at about 3:45pm and it took us an hour to get to Mt Hotham. We then proceeded on to Dinner Plain a further 20km from Mt Hotham. We got out of the car in Dinner Plain and took lots of photos. We had to leave at 5pm as it was getting dark and there was a blizzard. The drive back was quite challenging as it was very foggy, windy and difficult to see so at some stage we were travelling at 10km/h. Even then it was difficult. I was relieved when we made it back to Harrietville incident free. We headed to the Harrietville Hotel/Motel restaurant for dinner. The fries were excellent, couldn't stop pinching Keith's.
Monday morning we woke up at 6am and started our journey at 6:45am. Got to the top at 8am and bought our lift pass for the day. I bought a lesson for intermediate skiiers and guess what, the class was too advanced for me I was left behind! I kept tumbling on the blue slopes, my very first attempt at them too. After struggling on my own for 1 hour, Keith came to my rescue. The slopes were sooooo crowded, we had to wait 30 minutes just to get on to a chair lift to take us back to the top. By then it was lunch time. I spoke to the Ski School about being left behind by the instructor and they allowed me to take another class, one step lower than the one I took. This time I was more at ease and fitted in better with the new group. The lesson lasted 2 hours, and I learnt some new tricks too. We got back down to Harrietville about 7pm and drove to the Lavender Farm Cottage as it was where we were going to stay for the next 2 days. It was a beautiful little cottage made of timber. The owners were wonderful people and their lavender ginger cookie was simply yummy.
Tuesday was another day spent on Mt Hotham. I was skiing very well and followed Keith to some of the blue slopes. In the afternoon after lunch, we got more adventurous and Keith took me down a blue slope I hadn't been on before. It was rather steep but I'm sure I've skiied on something similar to that sort of gradient before. However, I don't know what got into me, I must have freaked out and totally lost control and had a hard fall. I felt my left knee buckling and snapping. I knew I had sprained my knee as I could feel the muscle pulling/twisting. Thankfully, I still managed to get up and ski to the bottom. I decided to rest my knee as I didn't want to aggravate it further. So the rest of the afternoon was spent sitting while waiting for Keith and Kar Mun to finish their skiing. As the day wore on, my knee got more and more painful. It was all swollen and I had to walk with a limp.
The next morning I was in so much pain I could barely get out of bed. It was also the day we were to head home. Got my knee bandaged up, took some Panadeine and we were on our way home. Luckily for the Panadeine, I managed to enjoy the scenery on the way back. We stopped in Milawa to get their gourmet cheese and chocolate. Also stopped in Glenrowan a town where Ned Kelly, Australia's most famous bushranger got into a rampage 150 years ago. Our final stop before going home was Lygon St , Melbourne for some Italian dinner which Kar Mun bought us.
I enjoyed the short holiday very much even though my knee is still hurting from the incident. I am hoping it will heal quick so that I can head to the slopes again before the skiing season ends in late September. Maybe it'll be Falls Creek next :).
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