"Just a half-day tootle---back early afternoon " ....taking it ewasy loading up the bikes and gear for the trip home tomorrow morning.
Ok then...
Many moons ago we'd done a road from MittaMitta to Tawong/ Mt. Beauty with the trusty Nissan 4WD, let's see if we can find the start of it from the Mt. Beauty side.
The guy at the servo mumbles something about Trappers Gap and lots of dirt/ bushfires/ wildlife and all that, but describes the "entry" from Tawonga....we'll give it a whirl.
...and it turns out to be quite a good track.
Lots of leaflitter though, which makes things pretty skittish sometimes....Ooooops
Skittish alright, sideways in fact
I promised "WE DELIVER"....into the last wombat hole, if needed
And yo, that was Yours Truly scuttling that postie
No harm done but most probably prevented worse, coming around a sharp righthander 2 bends down and....
And it's getting HOT...popping out the MittaMitta end of the road...time for a break, the sweat is starting to run.
No doubt what this place is...
As things took longer than planned, it's onto the Mitta Mitta back-road, right along the currently flooded Mitta Mitta River, following upstream to Eskdale, a beauty of a litle wiggler...
Not wanting the long way around through the Lockhard Gap and the dreaded Red Bank Road up the Kiewa, we'd found a tiny, wiggly line on an old Shell map the night before, leading across the range from Eskdale into the Kiewa Valley around Dederang.
Time for asking around in Eskdale to get some local info.
The pub sounds a logical choice
....and it's cool !!
"Oi, Geoff...here's a bloke for you, wants to go across the range to Dederang, you know every wombat-hole up there?!!"
Geoff looks trustworthy enough after his umpteenth beer that morning...
"to the end of the bitumen... Smyth Rd....T-intersection turn off right, right?...then a bit left, right?
2 cattlegrids, then turn off across the NEW grid and follow the road, get's you right over the top...."
Piece of cake, right...right? I'm riddled....but what the hell. right?
Off we go... to the end of the bitumen...there's a bit of dirt, a side-road to the right, then more bitumen ahead....where to now??
An rusty, clapped-out Commodore comes along, stops...the guy's a bad stutterer, conversation impossible, we might finish up in Afghanistan.....
A minute later a guy in thongs and T-shirt comes barrelling out of a Sahara dust-storm on a 250 Yammie, stops...."I'm not from here"
Ahhh, Christ !!
Thinking about timing, petrol, distances...we'll just turn into that side-road, a sign proclaims Smyth Rd., which was part of that clear-as-bells jumble in the pub... through some farming country, up a side-valley, across some cattle-grids, but no NEW grid, hmmmm.
The road finishes a few k's later at another grid and some fencing "Private Property, Keep out !!!".....and just to the right is a brandnew, galvanised-sparkling cattle grid....framed a couple of barely legible signs, one displaying "Dederang".
Got it !!