Albury Getaway 2011

Happy New Year all! (all three of you my faithful blog readers)

I started 2011 with a 3-day trip to Albury, New South Wales. Right on the New Year’s Day, I took a V/Line train from Southern Cross station to Seymour followed by a bus ride to Albury. It was my first time visiting countryside Australia.

Albury was a small city right at the border of Victoria and New South Wales. It was a quite and relaxing place, the CBD wasn’t crowded, and I really enjoyed walking along Dean St and Hovell St. I was also surprised to find a Thai restaurant serving IMHO the best Rat Na in Australia, the Siam Orchid Cafe.

Albury Botanic Gardens wasn’t big but it was nice. We were greeted by this warning sign at the entrance gate, I calculated the risk for 5 seconds before deciding to enter anyway after seeing a family with 4 little children happily entered the gardens as if there’s nothing to worry about. Surprisingly, I wasn’t worried that much and actually took a short nap on the grass.

The following day we went for a trail walk along a section of the Murray River. I was all relaxed during the first hour of the walk, that was until the trail got narrower and narrower, then we saw this warning sign. Decided not to continue on the trail, and on the way back, I learned from Wikipedia that Eastern Brown snake was the second most venomous land snake in the world. No sh*t, auto switched to alert mode, holding a wooden stick as if I knew how to use it if I encountered an angry Eastern Brown. (Note: There’s only a few death cases caused by snakebites in Australia per year. It’s my rule of thumb to avoid becoming part of the statistics.)

Despite the slight adrenalin rush, the best parts of Albury were the friendly locals, the little shops and cafes in the CBD, and the old railway station (built in 1881 with 450m long platform). Next countryside getaway shall involve no Eastern Brown, preferably something tamer like whale watching.

tl;dr: Some city folks visited the country, clueless about snakes.