We packed up camp – we actually got up in the middle of the night to put the tent fly on with a few drops of rain. But all dry in the morning.
Headed off back through Tumut and worked our way through Cooma, Jindabyne, and Thredbo. Outside Cooma we drove with two separate nasty looking electrical storms on either side of us. Spectacular, but the brewing storm clouds ahead made us consider a cabin for the night at Jindabyne. But we pushed on and wound our way down steeply from Thredbo to the Tom Groggin camp on the Murray River – the other side of which (all of four metres) was Victoria.
The UHF radio came into use again as we followed a bus down the steep descent. Two different 4WDers called the driver up to warn him that the storms had caused many tree falls across the road ahead and although the chainsawing was well underway it was narrow for a bus to weave through. Luckily, we turned off to our camp before we got to the path of the storm.
The storms has put a strong flush through the river and it was tannin-stained and flowing strongly. Some caravanners camping near us told us they had had small hail at the camp but missed the brunt of the storm. Josh had a quick fish and there were definitely trout jumping but the high flows weren’t ideal. A more serious fisherman with waders was fly-fishing up in the next section but no spectacular catches were seen.
JALC-OZ-2018 