Big Trip 2026(1) Day 3 - The Long Drive

I had planned today’s drive, from Corowa to Jindabyne, to be the longest of the entire trip.  It was not only long, but the weather conditions made for one challenging drive.

We said goodbye to Corowa and headed back over the border to Victoria to our first break in Beechworth.

I first came across Beechworth playing with Box Hill City Band at the Beechworth Celtic festival. This town is noted for the number of festivals they have each year,  I think it was one of those festivals where I had taken Lesley and Nick (no Ben yet) and over the subsequent years we have regarded the town as a special destination. So much so that, when Nick first became interested in this trip, he insisted on a visit to Beechworth as one of his conditions for coming with me. I was happy to oblige.

First stop was Beechworth Bakery to get some breakfast (food reviews below). 

Nick then forced me to go to Beechworth Sweet Co so he could stock up on some sugary stuff (it would have been rude of me not to participate). I was looking for some mandarin sweets. The lady behind the counter went out the back and packaged some up for me as they had run out of them in the shopfront. Great service there!

After a bit more sightseeing it was back to Beechworth Bakery to buy something for lunch, as I wasn’t expecting to be in a town selling food around lunch time.

Everything was going according to plan until we made a toilet stop in Granya. Getting back into the car, I misread Google Maps (not my fault, I swear. It was behaving funny), made a left turn instead of a right turn, and headed in the wrong direction.  When I say “wrong” direction, there were two ways of getting to Jindabyne, and they both took roughly the same time.  I was trying to avoid the route that would send us through a lot of the recent fire activity from the Walwa bush fire in January. I failed.

Once we hit the edge of the recent fire activity we were driving through fire effected land for the next forty minutes or so (the Walwa fire burnt about 120,000 hectares of land).

It appears as though there had been a fair bit or rain in the area since the fire as there appeared to be large tracts of green ground cover.  This contrasted with the significant fire impacted trees, however a lot had some epicormic growth already coming through.

By the way, these photos were all taken by Nick whilst I was driving. Great work there.

Once we drove past the old fire activity it was only a relatively short distance before we reached Corryong, not a town I was intending to drive through.  A large ship caused me to pull over and investigate.

This was in front of a public toilet. Although it was threatening to rain it was a good place to have a rest and eat some lunch.  Well done Corryong for an innovative approach to providing opportunities to stop and rest.

I had been challenged in the readers' comments to provide a review of a ham and salad roll. Here is one that also included some cheese.

My review: Purchased premade at the Beechworth Bakery. It was OK. Probably too much green stuff.

After a decent rest we continued our drive which started to climb into the Mountains. At Khancoban we paid our entry fees into the Kosciuscko National Park. And then it started to rain. And rain. And rain.

It also became foggy. Not enough to onscure the road, but enough to ensure there were no scenic views.

It’s times like this where I am glad to be able to share the driving and Nick was more than up for the challenge. By the time we reached our cabin at the Jindabyne Discovery Parks we were both a little bit knackered from the concentration of driving in challenging conditions.

Tea tonight was take away.

We have a full day here tomorrow before heading onwards on Thursday.

Food Review

Nick said the "sausage" was the best he has had so far on this trip, however the pastry was too flaky. 8/10

On my last trip I was disappointed with a pie that I had at the Echuca Beechworth Bakery. Given that this was "head office" I expected better this time around. My pie of choice was the pepper steak. This was a much better pie as it was very, very meaty with a lovely  peppery flavour 8/10

 Today's Album - Soundtrack to the movie Gladiator: 20th Anniversary Edition

Kms Travelled Today -  447

Kms Travelled Total - 937