Ghost Town in the Sky

Very heavy mist this morning, seeping cold with it, but the day warmed up nicely when the mist cleared up... or was it the other way around? I finally met our local policeman this morning. While taking Basil for his walk, I noticed Sam (our policeman) unpacking his gear from his 4wd. He'd obviously just been out keeping our street safe from high speed interstate interlopers. I took Basil over and introduced myself. He seems a remarkably nice young bloke. Younger than I'd imagined from the talk we've heard. Kind of a poster-boy look about him, I could see his face on recruiting posters for the police force of old. Tall (almost as tall as me) and muscular, imagine his teeth glinting in a corny black and white movie as he closes in on the bad guys. A very old fashioned stereotypical country cop like when they had a requirement to be over six feet tall in order to join. Yet another odd way in which I feel we've stepped back in time in many ways moving to this town.

After consulting with our good friend google-maps, we determined that there are two ways to Ben Lomond from here. Both according to 'maps' should take around one and a half hours. If a road ran directly from here to there, it'd be about twenty minutes, half an hour tops, but that's the way thing go... "You can't get there from here." We decided to go one way and come back the other. Turns out what maps didn't tell us was that the way we went was almost half on logging roads. Lets just say it took longer than anticipated to get there and never speak of the route via Fingal again... ever. Well, okay one more thing about the approach... it was taking us so long and we hadn't seen any signs for so long that we decided we must have missed a turning, so we turned back and I went up to a house by the side of the road. As I walked around the back to the door a man who I assume was the occupant was disappearing over a hill behind the house on a trail bike with a rifle strapped to his back. The faint strains of Duelling Banjos echoing in my head as I came back to the car were dispelled by an approaching ute that I flagged down to ask directions. Seems we had been going in the right direction, if we'd only kept going another fifteen kilometres down the road we would have come back on to the main road. (The main road being the one we would have been on had we come the other way.)

The road up to Ben Lomond from the main road certainly had it's moments. Paula was terrified to the point of nausea. One part in particular had the road going up a virtual cliff face in a series of switchbacks with hairpin turns at every turn. This is a section of the road I believe the locals call Jacobs Ladder. Stunning views all along the trip, rainbows in rock as background to pristine pastures. Breathtaking. It'll be fascinating to see it in winter with snow there too.

We finally arrived at the alpine village that serves as the ski resort during winter. Desolate, stark rocks stabbing at the sky all around this isolated virtually deserted loose collection of unpainted uninviting buildings. The pub's for sale, along with the accommodation arm of that particular business. One of the other places that probably serves as a takeaway place in season only had half the sign up. There was a barracks like structure behind the pub to the south that looked as though it had a couple of people staying at the moment. Probably off season caretakers I imagine. The main hotel like accommodation was a grey concrete affair on the hill behind the pub. Holes in the concrete facing suggested it was either just recently redone or otherwise need to be redone before the season starts. Food prices at the pub were no big surprise, extortionate! Four dollars for a very ordinary pie that would be around two dollars in the average rip off service station, though frankly most service station pies are of a far higher standard than this sorry limp thing. At least they didn't charge extra for sauce.