CBR-> Falls Ck

 (19-08-2006)

 We spent Thursday and Friday in Canberra.

The primary objective today, Saturday, was to get as close as possible to Falls Creek in preparation for the final dash to the summit. We are now staying in Tawonga South which is basically an outer suburb of Mt Beauty.

Lunch was at McDonalds off the freeway at Yass.

For afternoon tea, we took the road to Gundagai.

After afternoon tea, we took the road from Gundagai. You can imagine our surprise when as we passed through a small town called Holbrook, when we saw a submarine moored at the side of the road. So we stopped and bought a coffee and had a look around. Obviously if you are a town with no visible means of support, you need to find a way to get tourists to stop and what better way than to get a sub.

Now you may be astute enough to realise that Holbrook is not a port. Those with an extremely acute sense of geography will of course know that Holbrook is not even a coastal town. So you may be curious to know how they managed to get a sub moored beside the highway. Well the story goes like this. In the great flood of 1963, in the middle of the cold war, the sub became disoriented and sailed up the Murray river and then was sucked up into the snowy hydro system and then slipped down through a series of creeks all called “deep creek” because they are. As the flood waters receded, the sub became stranded. Eventually after several days of towns people hammering Morse code messages on the side of the hull, the captain peaked out of the door in the conning tower and realised that he was not in Russian waters. The crew all hopped out. To cover their embarrassment, the Navy sent a man with plaque to stick on the side proclaiming it decommissioned and a gift to the people of Holbrook. Now you can walk around it and on it. You cant get in because the captain locked the door and took the keys.

Tomorrow we ski.