Mt Buffalo

I don’t want to sound like a tourism campaign for Victoria, but seriously, some of the coolest (and I don’t mean temperature cool) places are only a reasonably short drive from Melbourne CBD.

I don’t like playing favourites because every place has its own kind of beauty. But for this adventure, we found ourselves in Mount Buffalo National Park.

We stayed in Bright and were up at the crack of dawn. There’s really no better time to be on this mountain. The cold cuts straight through you, but the beauty is something else entirely.

As the sun slowly crept over the peaks, cracks began appearing across the frozen surface of Lake Catani.

Jason, brave enough to ignore all common sense, pulled on the waders and edged his way into the near-freezing water.

Casting a line was worth it for the photos, though definitely not for the fish. Maybe they were frozen too. Who knows. Either way, they weren’t biting.

The only sounds were cracking ice, distant birds, and Jason muttering about frozen fingers.

As the fog began to lift, I found myself completely stopped by the scene around us. “Admiring” doesn’t quite cover it. It was one of those moments of pure awe that makes you forget your hands and feet are almost numb.

There’s something about being in nature like this that strips everything back. Silence. Stillness. Perspective.

After a couple of hours and honestly, Jason deserves a lot of credit for lasting that long standing in freezing water without catching a thing — it was time to head back to Bright via The Horn. We were dreaming about hot coffee and some kind of breakfast.

For us, it felt arctic and it wasn’t even Winter yet. I’m sure people from colder parts of the world would probably call it mild.

I have a deep respect for this place. There’s a presence here that only mountains seem to carry. A kind of stillness that settles into you long after you leave.

Gone for now, but I know I plan to spend a lot more time in this part of the world.