Thredbo, AAWT - November 2017

Our time up in Thredbo was pretty low stress.

After arriving at Thredbo and checking into the apartment I’d spent the next couple of hours in the pub, catching up on a couple of the good things in life, like steak and beer! In hindsight though, with me having a bit of a crook guts maybe that wasn’t the best option, who’d of thought! So when Sam arrived in town the next day she was greeted by a fairly subdued Feral Walker, I was basically sitting on the balcony doing not much at all. To be brutally honest that was pretty much the story of my first day off in Thredbo really, Sam and I generally just chilling out in the village and catching up on everything that had happened in life since we last saw each other a couple of weeks ago at Mt Hotham.

My first day off in Thredbo consisted of me lazing about on the balcony, and not a lot else really!

On my second day off in Thredbo we jumped into the ute and headed off on a little road trip over to Kiandra to stash my one and only food drop for this section, at Kiandra. Of all the food drops this was the one that I’d been the most concerned about having it discovered, as there isn't a lot of tree cover in the immediate area around Kiandra. Arriving at the historical gold mining location we left the Snowy Mountain Highway and headed up Pollocks Gully as far as we were allowed to drive. Jumping out of the ute I headed up to the first few snow gums only to find two food bins already left there. After checking out the next tree and finding another food bin I decided to head in the opposite direction away from the trees and hide my bin under some alpine scrub, at least it would be more of a ‘needle in the haystack’ situation for someone to find it and I had a way mark on my GPS to help me locate it.

On my third day off in Thredbo we decided to head down to The Wild Brumby for lunch which came highly recommended by Felicity and Matilda, the ladies that I’d spent the night with back at Cascade Hut. Unfortunately The Wild Brumby was slightly over run with punters from a tour bus and with me not being known for my patience or my liking of crowds we had to give it a miss, heading down to Jindabyne for lunch at the Birchwood Cafè instead, a fairly pleasant little excursion. Returning to Thredbo Sam and I decided to actually do a short walk around the village called the Art Walk and warm up my leg muscles a bit.

Bottles (1999) by Hamilton Reid Darroch, outside the Thredbo Leisure Centre.

With Thredbo being predominantly an alpine resort and alpine resorts in Australia (and around the world) predicted to become more marginal over the years due to climate change, the people that run the resort have done a fair bit to encourage visitation after the snow season finishes up each year. The most obvious green season attraction up here is the world class Mountain Bike tracks, there are also a lot of beautiful walks radiating out from the village and even within the boundaries of the village the resort people have developed a series of self guided walks taking in points of interest. The imaginatively titled Art Walk is one of them.

Heading back into the village along Friday Drive after checking out Bottles, as usual there was a bit of weather around.

Eastern Hairy Nosed Wombat (2000) by Silvio Apponyi.

The walk is never far from the Thredbo River.

Now I won’t go into a blow by blow account of this stroll (and it is a stroll) but we basically headed out of the village along Friday Drive as far as the Thredbo Leisure Centre before heading back into town on the other side of the road and up to the Valley Terminal, which if you pick up the self guided brochure is the actual starting point of the stroll. From there we headed up a bit further checking out the installations scattered about, to emerge onto Crackenback Drive in a residential area with plenty of very flash houses.

Kip Koala (2002) by Irene Carroll.

There are some very flash houses along Crackenback Drive.

We got a few spots of rain.

Cause and Effect 11 (1999) by Roger McFarlane.

The Village Green, I'm thinking this is Ullr (2002) by Eva Volny.

Crackenback Drive marked the western extremity of the stroll and we now dropped back down to cross the Thredbo River again near the Thredbo Community Centre. Wandering back into the village through the Village Green we headed into the lobby of the Thredbo Alpine Hotel, there are actually quite a few art works in the hotel and punters are free to meander their way through the public areas checking them out, Sam and I had stayed here on our last visit to Thredbo so we’d already checked out most of these pieces before. Leaving the hotel the Art Walk heads past the pool and then through the commercial centre of Thredbo where we completed our little stroll, arriving back at our apartment. With muscles now warmed up and my guts a little more settled I was primed to head off again on the last stage of the AAWT up to Canberra tomorrow, my only concern was, surprise, surprise, the weather!

Ancestors (2000) by Eva Volny.

Grey Kangaroo (2000) by Silvio Apponyi, the roo is right beside the children's play ground and judging by its polished appearance the children like the roo as much as their play equipment!

Mountain Dance (2006) by Thomas Bucich, there was a little work going on in the Village Green which didn't do wonders for this photo, the lack of talent and camera phone are the other contorting factors to the mediocre shots on this post.

The Dirt.
The Art Walk is a very easy stroll, we probably walked around 2.5 kilometres and climbed around 80 metres or so. Now you wouldn’t travel to Thredbo just to do this kind of walk (well I wouldn’t anyway), but if you find yourself in town with a few hours to spare then picking up a self guided brochure from the information bureau and strolling around the village for an hour or so will not only give you a good lay of the land, but you may learn something too. We stayed at Squatters Run Apartments on this visit to Thredbo, these apartments are right over the commercial centre of the village so they are in a prime position. Our apartment was very nice, with small kitchen and most importantly for me a washing machine and dryer and a view from our small balcony over towards the Kosciuszko Express Chairlift, we could even see patches of remaining snow higher up the mountain from our room. I suppose the only negative with the apartment was that even though we were well out of the snow season it was very expensive, think north of $300 per night and you won’t be in for bill shock.

Relevant Posts.
AAWT, First day, October 2017.
AAWT, Previous day, November 2017.
Bullocks Track, Kosciuszko National Park, 2017.

Snowgums (2000) by Peter Simmons.

Spirit of Noctuidae (2003) by Damien Elderfield, this sculpture celebrates the spirit of the Bogong Moth.

Emu (2002) by Silvio Apponyi.