A July Winter Wonderland

Maze in Wandiligong

When I first started working at Medibank at the beginning of the year, I asked some of my Australian colleagues to suggest places in Victoria to visit. Aside from the usual places that are always mentioned, like the Great Ocean Road, Phillip Island, and Mornington Peninsula, a small town called Bright was brought into the conversation. My manager had been there several times with his family and had nothing but positive things to say about it. The original plan was going to be to take a trip there in April or May since I had read that Bright is the most beautiful during the autumn months; however, other weekend activities and moving led us to delaying it until July. Although going in the dead middle of winter wasn't ideal, I was assured that any time I visited Bright would be nice since there is plenty to do during each season.

Putting on the snow chains

Once we finally finished the four-hour journey from Melbourne to Bright, we stopped at the information centre and then our cute two-bedroom cottage before driving the short distance to Wandiligong to venture through the

Freezing on Mount Hotham

massive maze. With two kilometres of garden-lined paths, the Wandiligong Maze is Australia's most massive living hedge maze. As I was wandering through it, I couldn't help but think of the fourth Harry Potter book.... except without all the magic. The main objectives when exploring the maze were to find the rose gardens and the lookout points; however, because of the season, the flowers weren't yet blooming.

Rainbow in Omeo

The following day, we drove up to Mount Hotham in the Alpine National Park. In that part of Victoria, cars are required to carry snow chains for the tires..... and it's a good thing! We never would have guessed it from Bright, but there was tons of snow on Mount Hotham and the roads were quite slick. We didn't go skiing, which is the most popular activity to do on the mountain during this time of year, but we did walk around in the snow a little, especially

Kangaroos in Bright

because it was the first time one of the girls had ever seen snow in person.

After that, we continued onward to a small town called Dinner Plain because we had read in a brochure that there was going to be some sort of Christmas in July celebration, including a group of huskies pulling a sleigh. After we arrived there, we learned nothing was going to happen until later in the evening so we drove to another small town along the

View of Bright

Great Alpine Road called Omeo to buy petrol and lunch. It had rained a bit on the ride there, but by the time we reached our destination, a beautiful rainbow decorated the sky. Our plan had been to return to Dinner Plain later in the evening for the Christmas in July festivities, but it turned out that not much was happening so we just went back to Bright.

Hiking on Mount Buffalo

The next day, we decided that we should explore Bright, even if it was just a small section, since that's where we were staying. We ended up doing one of the hikes that was supposed to take us to a key lookout spot; however, although it was a nice walk, the path wasn't well marked so we never made it there.On the plus side, we were fortunate enough to see a group of kangaroos or wallabies, which was exciting. On our way back to Melbourne, we drove up Mount Buffalo, where we experienced some more snow and did a little hiking. There was a lookout point there as well, but because of the weather conditions, the visibility was poor.

Overall, it was a wonderful trip filled with lots of laughter, some fantastic exploring, and wonderful memories I'll take with me forever. The trip may have come later than I had expected, but it was well worth the wait.