As the Monday dawned, we were getting ready for a checkout at 10am and to prepare ourselves for the next leg of the trip.
We had a brief breakfast in the Villa before packing the car (like a game of Tetris). Jake had been chomping at the bit to play indoor putt putt golf, and Lakes Entrance has a bizarrely wide selection of venues to suit. I believe there are four putt putt golf locations in town (but two are up for sale) and only one which is partly indoors, so that is where we went. We kicked off at around 10am and played a combination of indoor and outdoor holes. Austin did really well for his age, and everyone had a red hot go. Some of the holes featured air pressurised tubes to fire the golf balls high into the air in sleek metal grids or even a series of canoes! The seventh hole shot Toni’s ball like a projectile and scored her a hole in one. Some holes had novelties like fussball or mechanisms you had to stand on to push the ball a certain direction.
Damian won the day with a best score of 39 (in 18), and everyone went into the draw to win something at the end – Jake won another free game of 18 holes!
Before we set out, we dropped into town and had an early lunch at Kelli Cake on Myers, where the boys each decided cake was a valid lunch option. We bid farewell to Matthew, who retraced his path back up and out towards Canberra, as we took off west to the town of Bairnsdale.
I had planned to visit a Telstra shop to deal with a locked device issue, but instead checked out a record store while the others shopped for a week of food to take up the mountains. Bairnsdale isn’t exactly “on the way”, but not too bad a detour either. Once we had squashed a week’s worth of food into an already crammed car, we set east towards Bruthen and then up the windy roads and valleys towards Omeo.
It’s a fair slog. It took almost two hours to reach Omeo, nestled close to where the alpine area proper begins. We found most things closed (not surprising with the close of the ski season the day before). Toni bought a couple of missing items from the FoodWorks while I filled up at the 24-hour petrol and the kids played in a nearby park. Austin was not agreeable to returning to the car, but we coerced him eventually.
The drive from Omeo to Dinner Plain was uneventful and pretty straightforward. Snow here was long gone, and with it any concerns about snow chains. We made great time and arrived in the village not long after 4pm. We had a quick check in visit with reception, then detoured to the village supermarket (on its last day or trading) and then went on to our chalet. There’s little snow left in the village, but it’s still very pleasant.
Once we located the property it didn’t take long for us to occupy it. The first order was to assign rooms and quickly turned into a priority to get dinner underway. As the sun dropped, so did the temperature, but we managed to sneak in a brief 20 minute walk through the village to the toboggan/ski field and a chance encounter with the remaining ice.
It was a long night as Damian and Austin refused to go to sleep. I managed them up to 11:30/midnight before they ran out of gas and went off to a sleep which did not last long.