...that rise from the lake to the trees

We went away for the weekend! After many long and boring months in Canberra we packed our little bags and drove two hours south to Jindabyne. Not exactly circumnavigating the globe, but it felt really good to go and see something different. We hadn't been down that way since well before children - Jindabyne is the main town for the ski areas, but still a tiny place, and very quiet in November. The original town was flooded for the hydro scheme, so now they have a new town, and a lovely lake. This is the view from the apartment balcony where we stayed - absolutely gorgeous.

On Saturday we went to Thredbo - a tiny village in the National Park at the bottom of some ski runs - and took the chairlift up to the top. It was high and I was scared and also kind of horrified at the fact that my seven year old was sitting next to me on a glorified park bench at least 100 feet above very hard looking rocks with absolutely no safety straps or anything ... of course he LOVED it. Here we are at the top - after having conquered the big scary chair lift.

Everyone else on the chairlift was doing the walk to the top of Mt Kosciusko - Australia's highest mountain. I'm from a country where if you want to stand on its highest point you really need to wear, at minimum, closed-in shoes. You wouldn't take your toddler and a picnic hamper. Apparently the only reason you can no longer drive to Australia's highest point is because people were trying to do it in their sedans and getting bogged. It's no wonder no-one takes the country seriously.

Having said that, even that stroll would have been too much for me this time, so we just chairlifted up and walked down. The boys got to see some snow! Much excitement. And then we saw some trees, and some nature, which is pretty damn boring. So we didn't quite do the full 5km walk and took a short cut down the ski slopes to the village ... we were hungry.

Did you know it is impossible to get down a ski slope in summer without (a) falling over and (b) breaking into something from The Sound of Music.