Mount Stirling, Victoria, Australia

June 2012

Excitedly I'd researched what I'd hoped would be our next hiking trip. I'd planned to hike Mt Howitt and the Crosscut Saw. We got up early and headed out towards Mt Buller where we'd planned to take a left turn and drive out past Mt Stirling on the dirt track that leads to the base of the climb.

When we reached Telephone Box Junction we were surprised to see a gate up blocking the road. It turned out we'd missed the cut off time by about 5 days and that they close the road every year during most of WInter and all of Spring! Damn it, what to do now...

Instead of heading home with our tails between our legs we decided to climb Mt Stirling. On the way up the relatively easy track we got a fair dusting of snow, wind and rain. 

Coming back down the other side we found a nice spot to put up the tent and despite the temperature dipping below -5 and the wind, snow and slushy rain coming down all night we got a pretty good sleep... or as it turned out, I got a pretty good sleep. During the night it turned out that Shanny wasn't enjoying the tent so she did a runner with her sleeping bag down to the hut down the track a bit. 

Apparently some kind of marsupial had kept her up for an hour or two until finally, too exhausted to stay awake any longer she drifted off to sleep.