All About The Adventure

Victoria’s high country and Snowy River National Park offer plenty to make a rider long for more. Graeme Sedgwick went for a look-see.

- Graeme Sedgwick

Dargo is one of the Victorian high plains’ most remote townships. It’s best known for its groves of century-old, valley-floor walnut trees and as a rest stop and supply town for a bygone era of miners to and from Grant, Talbotville and the Crooked River goldfields. It was the perfect location to start a recent alpine adventure.

Kicking off with a blast up the Dargo High Plains Road, usually closed in winter, the 15km ride to Wongungarra, keeping left at Grant Junction, and the next 56km, is a steady climb along formed gravel mixed with protruding bony patches through scenery that’s excellent on both sides. At that point there’s an opportunity to enjoy a rewarding ride up Blue Rag Range Track to the Blue Rag trig point, 1721m above sea level.

Blue Rag Track’s ridgeline ascent and descent provides any number of stunning, uninterrupted, 360-degree views over Victoria’s high country, although in places it’s not for the faint of heart.

High time

Rejoining the Dargo High Plains Road from Blue Rag Track, it’s a brisk 12km run up to Mt St Bernard, which is slightly lower than Mt Blue Rag, at 1532m. But beware: its T-junction meeting with the sealed surface of the Great Alpine Way is blind to the left and comes up quick.

The Great Alpine Way stretches across Mt Hotham’s stark topography at 1860m before heading downhill. Some generously surveyed sweepers were linked by straights and sets of tighter curves at the southern end and made for a great fun ride to Omeo.

Hot stuff

Visited first by stockmen in the 1830s, the quiet, sleepy township’s name derives from the aboriginal word for ‘mountains and hills’. One can only ponder what the boisterous alluvial mining days might’ve been like when prospectors camped in their hundreds around Livingstone Creek, uncovering no less than 58,000 ounces of gold.