I loved the undulating (currently green) hills of Rawdon Vale. The valley is an established Hereford cattle property since 1845, and even has a few National Trust buildings on site (a 19th Century red brick mansion being one of them). For me, the landscape reminded me more of the hills and plains of Wyoming, a la Legends of the Fall.
We’re starting a little journey today – on a weekend camping trip to the Barrington Tops. I’ve visited this area only a handful of times over the years, but never went right across it until this trip.
We started on the eastern side of the range. Having left Gloucester, we made our way down the backroads into Rawdon Vale – the foothills to the Tops. You can see how much rain they’ve had – everything was green.
Above the treeline (where the average yearly temperature is too low for any trees to grow), things seem rather stark, but there is plenty of life.
During the summer there is a wealth of wildflowers on the heath. Ironically, most of them seem to be white in colour. Since we walked in mid-December it was only the shoulder season for flowers, hence we didn’t see a wealth of them, but enough to get a taste of what happens in mid-January during peak season. With the flowers unfortunately comes the flies – they are the chief pollinaters in the alpine since bees don’t seem to exist up so high.
We walked into camp not long after 3pm, and what a superb place to camp, on top of Australia.
Static and Silence 