My favourite weekend of the year is Easter, when we pack up and head south to the Snowy Mountains. It’s kind of a family tradition now, and anyone who dares to suggest that maybe we go somewhere different next Easter is pretty much shouted down and ridiculed. Well, not quite – but it wouldn’t be Easter if we weren’t in the high country.
Easter 2022 was memorable for all the wrong reasons. We left Thursday and stayed overnight in Cooma. Late Thursday afternoon I had a bit of a cough but it mostly cleared up by Friday morning…then came back later that day. Around the same time – whilst hiking in Thredbo – my phone went off: a text from my colleague, who told me that, after avoiding it for 2+ years, he’d gotten Covid. Aside from the afore-mentioned cough that was more a nuisance than anything else, I felt fine. We were hiking, and I wasn’t having any troubles. I had a runny nose, but that’s pretty common for me down there, with the altitude.
Anyway, it was suggested late Friday at our campsite near Island Bend Dam that I get a test the next day. That was Saturday, and I woke up fine. No chance I had the virus, right? Wrong. There it was: a faint line on the RAT but a line nonetheless. Worst timing ever, cutting short the weekend. We left Sunday, my cough had become very, very intermittent and the only symptom I had for my days’ of mandated isolation was boredom. And frustration. Of all the weekends to get the virus…
Still, we did get to do the hike from the top of Thredbo’s Kosciuszko Express (aka Crackenback, if you’re of a certain age) chairlift back down to the village, and my annual pilgrimages to Island Bend Dam and the Sawpit Creek waterfall were as spectacular as ever. The Easter weekend never feels long enough – even going down Thursday and coming home Tuesday – but 2022 definitely wasn’t.
Here’s hoping 2023 is memorable for better reasons.
kitchtrips 