This is the first mountainous part of the ride – the biggest mountains in Australia. The Great Dividing Range (“…is bleak, heavily forested, and inhospitable, and even today is sparsely populated.” Globetrotter) including Alpine Country and the Great Snowy Mountains run a bit inland along the coast from west of Melbourne to northwest of Sydney. Duckworth’s route, which I’ll follow east out of Melbourne to Bairnsdale, heads north on some “unsealed” roads to get to Canberra. Other routes go along the coast. I’ll take the Monaro Highway, perhaps a more trafficked road, north along the Cann River into the mountains to Canberra.
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