High Country Flyfishing & Alpine Escapes in Victoria

There was a period of my life, before I’d emerged from uni and casual retail work, when I had the freedom to take little weekend travels with a number of mates. All of us were still living with our parents and unburdened by financial responsibilities, equipped with just-functional cars and bags full of free time. During this period a mate and I set off to Mount Hotham in July to snowboard. It was relatively new to me and the world we discovered was unlike anything I’d experienced: a small, enclosed, whitewashed niche of limited visibility, constantly refuted by the rushing, weaving, full-blown awareness of the space we raced through. Much later on, returning as a Victorian resident, I discovered a new world yet again: this time, in my hiking boots. Thawed earth, burst through with dead snow gums and intricate flowers, rolled into the distance to the faded blue contours of the surrounding ranges. How could this be the same place? I ask myself this every time I go here.

Not only between visits, but even within visits, this diversity exists. One weekend more recently, we completed my all-time favourite hike, the 22km return journey from Mount Feathertop via the Razorback Trail. On top of a surplus of visual panoramas we experienced on that clear calm day, there’s one memory that’s stuck with me. Emma and I sat down to eat bananas, in the lee of a rocky outcrop. I could not believe how loud we were chewing the bananas, our teeth coming down like the footfalls of Godzilla. It took me a moment to realise that I was simply hearing it so acutely because of the absolute silence. When we stopped eating there was no noise. Nothing. My ears, unaccustomed, strained for it.

After camping next to the Ovens River that night, we headed to Mount Buffalo the next day. After a dip at Ladies Bath Falls, in the enliveningly freezing, gold-hued pool at the base of the waterfall, we moved onto Cathedral Rock, a famed rock climbing spot that made Outdoor’s cover a few issues ago. A storm was rolling in: from a vantage point up high, we watched as, across the plain, short, idle lightning strikes cut through the bruised purple sky. No silence anymore; instead, loud, carrying thunder. We soon moved onto the Horn Lookout; when we arrived, there was fog in the valley, and within a matter of seconds, that fog had completely engulfed us, obscuring all detail and lighting up from deep within with pulses of white lightning. That was our weekend. And that’s what you can expect from the High Country at its best.