The Standard local snow trip. (
Melbourne)
Every August we do what has become a standard snow trip to Mt Margret area
N.E. of
melbourne.
From
Lilydale you can have your wheels in the snow in 1 hour driving north
over the beautiful Black Spur.
You drive over Black spur to
Buxton turning right to Marysville and a few
km out take left turn signposted "Mt Margret Rd" and just drive to the top
where there is a rd
junction at an altitude of 1000m .
Well its the first time in some 20 years to my knowledge that there wasn't even
a
sign of snow here in August.
We weren't done yet taking the northern rd at
the junction(Blue Range rd).
This rd wanders up to about 1250m or some 4000 ft, and we eventually found
a little frozen patch of snow just off the road.
With careful manovering we placed our four wheels into the snow all at once
and in the brillant sunshine made some cappicino's over a small fire.
From here you continue north and the dirt rd drops down again after some pretty scenery and then at a
junction you take a left turn and wander down to Taggery and the black top again.
From here you head south to
Melbourne stopping on the north side of
buxton
at the Igloo roadhouse for some famous "
Buxton Burgers" and more Cappicino's.
Here scenes were made for 1950's
Gregory peck film about the end of the
world. (Mental Blackout on name - help me out someone!).
We left quickly as our Belgain Sheppard made growling noise's at the
proprietor who was only trying to give her some left over chicken.
You could just go straight
home from here however just south of
Buxton is a
right turn (east) on a dirt link track called project rd which wanders south parallel to highway for a couple of km thru
forrest then into pine plantation for about 6km
before heading out to higway again at St Filans
Despite being a flat road, within 500m of the highway our back wheels were trying to overtake the front on the hard but super greasy clay surface as the
forrest closed in.
This once 2wd road has got worse with neglect over the years and now has several bog holes. The holes kept getting bigger with occasional use of a locker required.
Several bogs now have bypasses, which are themselves a little slippery as you have to climb little banks and go in between trees to get around them.
Sure enough we came to a big bog hole and got throughly crossed up and bogged
as we tried to get out of the ruts to take a bypass.
Twin diff-locks did near to nothing and it was to be shovels, chains or winch.
Being alone, we choose winching as it meant less mud on us. The winch pulled us a critical 2metres and we were off thru the temperate rain
forrest again
and soon emerged into the
young pine plantation.
As we emerged we came across a doe with her fawn standing by a small stream
with
the pines as a back drop, and in the sunshine this made for a memorable site.
In a hour we were back over the Black spur arriving at
home at 1pm after our 5hr
round trip, where modern phone technology meant teenage kids had the bike trailer ready to hitch to the GU for an afternoon at Melbournes last inner
city motocross track.
We are spoilt to have so much variety within such easy reach of town.
Robin Miller