Corryong with my Best Friend

 Keith and I drove to Corryong on Wednesday as a nice way to celebrate my birthday. Again, we rented a little house, this time a "Miners' Cottage" built in about 1900. Corryong is in the Upper Murray region, getting very close to the source of the Murray - the Snowy Mountains.









Unfortunately, we missed the best views because the whole of Victoria is covered with bushfire smoke haze, as you can see in this photo.





The next photo is our "mighty Murray" looking great, in spite of the smoke.

This photo view is just as lovely and we noticed that campers could almost secretly camp near the river in lots of places.











The fifth photo shows you what we should have been able to see from a lookout and the next one what we actually saw.

Before coming home yesterday we had lunch at this little country pub at Cudgewa, not far from Corryong. Cudgewa was the last train station on the line that used to go from Wodonga past Tallangatta up close to the Snowy Mountains, to the 'Man from Snowy River" country. There is lots of history in this area and we paid our usual visit to the local cemetery, especially noting the grave of Jack Riley, reportedly to be the Man from Snowy River (as in the poem). The local museum was full of wondrous things and it is always fun to imagine life when these "things" were used. The "birthing bed" didn't look fun though. I just tried to find a picture of the one we saw but there is no such torture thing like it on the web.

It was a very restful few days and I read a lot. I was reading a book by an Irish man called John Banfield called "The Sea". The hero was about my age, who was staying by the sea and coming to terms with losing his wife to cancer. It was all about what life is, really. So, I thought too. Having a break from normal life is just the place to do that and I wondered why I can't take the time at home to do this thinking. After all, I am retired! I haven't found the answer, just in case you think you are about to read it.

For a long time, I have been trying to learn to live in the moment, as I am sure that is the answer, but I haven't learnt that either. Oh dear, I guess I will just get on with the emails and uni work, and all the other things that keep me busy, and one day soon, we will take another lovely pensive holiday.