Tumut  (wikipedia) is a town in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia, situated on the banks of the Tumut River. Tumut is at the foothills of the Snowy Mountains and is referred to as the gateway to the Snowy Mountains Scheme. Tumut Shire is administered from offices located in the town.

Tumut is approximately 410 kilometres (250 mi) south-west of Sydney and 525 kilometres (330 mi) north-east of Melbourne. Tumut is home to a number of historic buildings, including an Anglican church designed by Edmund Blacket and a Courthouse designed by James Barnet. Many of the pubs in the town have been in use from the mid to late 1800s.

Early settlers established a large number of European deciduous trees throughout the area. The stand of Poplars, Elm and Willow, amongst others, create a well renown display of colour over Autumn. Tumut celebrates this with the yearly Festival of the Falling Leaf. Tumut is a name derived from an Aboriginal word meaning “a quiet resting place by the river”

History

Wynyard Street

Tumut Post Office opened 1 January 1849.

Tumut was one of the ten areas short-listed in 1908 as a site for the Australian Capital Territory. Other locations that were short-listed include Albury, Armidale, Bombala, Dalgety, Lake George, Orange, Tooma, Lyndhurst and Yass-Canberra.

22^nd November, Saturday

We finally left Gundagia for Tumut.  It took us about an hour to get here, such a long journey to get here (ha, ha). Tumut is a lovely town and bigger that Gundegai and it is the gateway to the snowy mountains, all dry and brown at the moment but you can imagine it all green and covered in snow.  Even although it’s brown and dry it’s still so pretty. It’s skiing country here and we are not far from the ski resorts. It’s hot here today, nearly 40 degrees and again tomorrow. We have been given a top spot under the trees overlooking the river (talk about being spoiled).  It’s closer here to do the Snowy mountains than Gundegai and there is gold to be found in the creeks, so guess what Ralph is going to be doing, let’s hope that he brings back the goodies.  We have decided not to stay with the old fella we met as we are not really happy about leaving the caravan in the street.  It’s probably very safe there (safer than anywhere else) but we still feel uneasy about it.  There are trees growing here (English Plane trees), they are the same ones that are growing in Gundagai and we were parked right underneath it, they have balls on them that explode and let out feathery type stuff that floats on the air and they are hayfever deluxe.  I haven’t stopped sneezing for a week, runny eyes, the works and I’m living on havfever tablets.   

23^rd November, Sunday

Busy, busy day today.  We left at 7am and got back at 5.30 – knackered. We did the snowy mountains today and it takes ages as the roads are mountainous (Well, duh), steep, windy and narrow and you can’t rush it but why would you because you would miss out on so much. We took the Snowy Mountain Highway from Tumut as far as Kiandra where we turned off onto the Khancoban-Cabramurra road. Once you get to the turn off the first town is Cabramurra and from there the road to just before Khancoban which is where we were heading for is closed during the winter months.  When you go on this road you can understand why as it’s just wide enough for 2 cars, very steep and windy and sheer cliffs some of the way.  It’s concentration enough in this weather and I would hate to think what it would be like in icy and snowy conditions.  Our first stop apart from stopping to take photos and admiring views was Cabramurra which is a lovely little Alpine town.  Cabramurra is the highest town in Australia with an elevation of 1488m and is the centre of the snowy scheme.  The houses there are so cute, they all look the same and I guess that they have been built that way for the snow.  There are the most beautiful wild lupins in all colours growing there. From there the landscape gets really weird, it’s almost eerie as all the trees as far as the eye can see are dead.  There is some undergrowth however but it’s still weird.  Apparently a huge fire went through here years ago (not sure when) and it was so hot that it killed all the trees. New trees started sprouting up and then another fire came through.  It’s such a strange sight as from a distance it shimmers silver.  The scenery in these mountains just blows you away.  It’s at such a high elevation and overlooks valleys and rivers and dams.  There are a lot of ski resorts here as well and the all closed for the summer.  We stopped off at a nice little pub in Khancoban for lunch.  It is a very hot day in Tumut (I think that they said it was 40 degrees) and even this high up in the mountains it’s hot, we thought that it would be cooler than this.  From there we went to one of the power stations (There are 7 of them in this scheme) as Ralph wanted to see inside a Hydro power station, this one wasn’t operating at the moment because they only use it for peak periods.  There are 3 huge water pipes coming down the hill that feed the power station, you will see in the photos just how big they are.  Apparently they don’t go all the way up as there have been tunnels made through the mountains for the water.  Apparently if there is a blockage they have to send a submarine in – I kid you not.  From there we took a different way back to Tumut along the Alpine way and then onto the Tooma road.  One of the little towns we went through (Batlow) is a huge apple growing area.  As far as the eye can see, up the mountains and in the valleys are what looks like white sheets.  These are all orchards that have been covered for birds and perhaps frost (not sure).  There were would have to thousands and thousands of acres of apple trees.  I only took a photo of one of the smaller orchards.  Back to base, aircon and glass of wine and a veg out….. It really was a big day and it was just magic.  I am sorry about the amount of photos that I am posting for today.  I took about 160 and culled them back to 90 and then couldn’t decide and thought “Oh, what the hell, I’ll put them all on :-)”.

tainsar

 

24^th November, Monday

It rained most of last night and it has been raining all day today.  Yesterday 40 degrees, Today 21 degrees, what a huge difference.  We haven’t done anything today just reading, TV, vegging out etc. so not much to tell you or show you but you did get your monies worth yesterday, so I can have a break today :-).  Tomorrow the weather looks like being sunny again and temps in the low 30’s.

25^th November, Tuesday

It was a wild night last night.  Mother nature put on the works, wind, thunder (deluxe) and lightning and it is really noisy being in a caravan.  I eased up and stopped at about midnight and today is the most beautiful day.  The river is running really quickly this morning as I’m sure it’s to do with the amount of rain they have had up here. We did a little reccie of the town this morning, visited the pioneer cemetery and seeing the old pubs and buildings which is a must do when you are in these little historical country towns.    Some of the Sturt family are buried here. A brief history of the Sturt family :  Captain Charles Napier Sturt (28 April 1795 – 16 June 1869) was a British explorer of Australia, and part of the European exploration of Australia. He led several expeditions into the interior of the continent, starting from both Sydney and later from Adelaide. His expeditions traced several of the westward-flowing rivers, establishing that they all merged into the Murray River. He was searching to determine if there was an “inland sea”.

We came back to the caravan park and relaxed by sitting overlooking the river for the best part of the day. We leave for Wagga Wagga (or as most people say “Wagga”) in the morning.