 Recently,
it was "Seniors' Week" - with lots of
low-cost or free things to do for people
like ourselves, who have (we don't know
how!) become older; concerts, films, etc.
Alison looked through the list of activities
and found something more in our line -
abseiling. Neither of us had done this
before and it seemed like a good thing to
do, so we booked in.
What we hadn't counted on was the weather.
As the date got nearer, Victoria had massive
amounts of rain with widespread flooding,
mostly along the Goulburn River - which we
would need to cross to get to Mt. Buffalo,
where the abseiling was going to take place.
And the weather forecast was for heavy rain
on the day it was booked for; so, with 4
days to go, we rang and cancelled it. A
pity.
 So,
that was that. we spent a little more time
in Melbourne than we were going to, and
returned home to Castlemaine the day before
the cancelled abseiling; to fine, sunny
weather! What to do? We both felt, for the
first time since we retired, that we had nothing
to do! And both felt frustrated at
not being able to do what we had planned. So
we looked up the weather forecast; not as
bad as it was before. At 3pm we rang and
were able to re-book the abseiling, and at
3.30pm we'd thrown what we needed into the
"White House" and driven away
to Mt. Buffalo.
4 hours later (having crossed the flooded
Goulburn River and seen some of the damage)
dusk was approaching us, and we were
approaching Mt. Buffalo. Where to stay? We
decide to just head up the mountain and see
what we found; and fortunately we found a
nice picnic area just outside the National
Park entrance which seemed to have no
restrictions on our parking there. Very
convenient and a nice spot.
And the next day we drove up Mt. Buffalo and
went abseiling. It was fun, and remarkably
non-scary. And then walked across to Lake
Catani, and past the Underground  River,
before driving up to The Horn parking area
and walking up to the summit. And it turned
out to be a glorious day; not a drop of
rain, quite warm, and mostly sunny. So
different to the original forecast!
We drove down at dusk, again, and spent the
night in the same place. And the next day
drove back home to Castlemaine, through some
of the predicted rain. It came, just not as
early as the weather bureau had suggested.
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