Things are looking Bright
We went up to Bright for a long weekend for J's birthday. We used to go to Buxton/Marysville but the place we stayed at burned down and it would just be too depressing until they rebuild/regenerate up there.
We did see some bushfire damage on the way up, there's a solid 12km area through the Melba Hwy at Kinglake & Glenburn, with odd spots and devestated hills for 5 km on either side. The trees here have the regeneration foliage growing on their trunks for the most part so should ultimately recover, though there were some hillsides of totally dead trees. We also saw some bushfire/regen between Mansfield-Whitfield on the drive back, this would have been from the fires which gave us that terrible lingering smoke of a few years back.
The rest of the drive was through pleasent rural scenery, picturesque & clean country towns and the high country as we got closer. I'd never been to Bright before and found it remarkably like Marysville, though on a larger scale. It had the same sort of Rural & Alpine surroundings, similar historic and/or touristy buildings and trainset neatness about it.
Unfortunatly I was very tired by the drive/residual work stress and flaked out the first night, but we did a lot of walks, looking around & usual touristy stuff the next few days. I particularly liked the historic & goldfield stuff being part of the background rather than being shoved in your face Sovereign Hill style, got lots of ruin shots for the pic album and it was good seeing the snow capped Mt Hotham in the distance. We'll probably go back next year as well.
We did see some bushfire damage on the way up, there's a solid 12km area through the Melba Hwy at Kinglake & Glenburn, with odd spots and devestated hills for 5 km on either side. The trees here have the regeneration foliage growing on their trunks for the most part so should ultimately recover, though there were some hillsides of totally dead trees. We also saw some bushfire/regen between Mansfield-Whitfield on the drive back, this would have been from the fires which gave us that terrible lingering smoke of a few years back.
The rest of the drive was through pleasent rural scenery, picturesque & clean country towns and the high country as we got closer. I'd never been to Bright before and found it remarkably like Marysville, though on a larger scale. It had the same sort of Rural & Alpine surroundings, similar historic and/or touristy buildings and trainset neatness about it.
Unfortunatly I was very tired by the drive/residual work stress and flaked out the first night, but we did a lot of walks, looking around & usual touristy stuff the next few days. I particularly liked the historic & goldfield stuff being part of the background rather than being shoved in your face Sovereign Hill style, got lots of ruin shots for the pic album and it was good seeing the snow capped Mt Hotham in the distance. We'll probably go back next year as well.