Day 17: Bega to Dalgety

I didn’t want to get up this day. It was the first day of Australia’s four-day national long weekend: Easter (Friday to Tuesday). This weekend is traditionally a time that many people go away, and often engage in outdoor activities like camping, so  many services are closed this weekend.

I'd gone to sleep the night before hoping that today might be when we could find somewhere to visit a dentist. The problem we encountered in searching using Google Maps was that most places either were marked as usual operating hours on Friday, or there was a note that there was uncertainty about the hours due to the public holidays. Because we didn't find out this was potentially a dental problem until after most clinics closed for the long weekend, we didn't even get the chance to call clinics to find out if they were open, or if they knew of somewhere that was. This morning I even called Canberra Hospital to see if they knew of somewhere...but they did exactly what we'd been doing—Googled it, and came up with possibilities, but none of them ended up being open. 

So we ended up getting exactly nowhere in terms of making a plan. In the end we just carried on with the plan we'd had before: to spend the next two nights on a farm in the highlands near Dalgety on the Snowy River, about 80 km by road from Australia's highest mountain (Mt Kosciuszko).*

I didn't want to get out of bed. I was in pain, had nausea, and had difficulty eating (chewing and opening my mouth were both painful). But checkout time approached and I just pushed myself into that vehicle. I was drowsy during that journey because I also hadn't been sleeping well. Thankfully I didn't need to drive.

The landscape was amazing, though. It changed from being usual "great dividing range" forest to a weird brown, barren land (see the photos). Turns out this is a naturally dry area in a rain shadow. It was weird.

Our hosts were very friendly, in fact, it was hard to stop them talking. I felt terrible and not at all like socialising, sadly! It was a strange place to stay, but also a peaceful one where we saw lots of sky and two beautiful sunsets. Nearby were two other sets of campers, but not so close that we needed to interact with them. Strangely here was a flush toilet sitting on top of a nearby hill. We were not connected to electricity, and basically self sufficient, so it was weird to have access to a flush toilet (though you had to manually fill the tank from a container).

I was thankful to have been able to make the journey there and then to rest, but was still concerned about what the "next steps" should be: should we go back to Canberra, press on to Melbourne, or something else? And was my condition getting worse (swelling in the neck area is always concerning). No answers were easily forthcoming and this overshadowed the two nights and one day we spent at this place.

*At least the highest mountain on the continent, there are others higher in the Australian territory of Antarctia.