Are you still actually there now? Is this pretty much live travelogue.
Yes we are 😀 I try to keep up but I‘m always lagging a few legs behind. We are in Ararat, Victoria currently. We’ve been to inland Victoria, Tassie and Melbourne in the meantime.
EDIT: I keep this map up to date
My daughter just asked whether you have plans for hopping to New Zealand 
terbang wrote:
Yes we are 😀 I try to keep up but I‘m always lagging a few legs behind. We are in Ararat, Victoria currently. We’ve been to inland Victoria, Tassie and Melbourne in the meantime.
That is amazing Terbang. I am astounded at the audacity of this trip. And that you seem to manage to keep your cool no matter what.
My daughter just asked whether you have plans for hopping to New Zealand
We thought about go to NZ, but we won’t. Actually NZ regulations require you to have HF. There are ways around it but we found that we don’t even have enough time to see everything in Oz properly.
While you are on Victoria, and if you are interested in history, perhas go and see the Brewarrina Fish Traps. Possibly the oldest human construction in the world, maybe 10s of thousands of years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewarrina_Aboriginal_Fish_Traps
For those scpetical, Aboriginals are known to have been in Australia for at least 65,000 years. Their culture has survivied there for far far longer than anything we know in Europe. These are people who migrated to Australia long before modern man arrived in Europe.
Into the mountains
Australia isn’t famous for its mountains around the world and in fact there’s nothing that compares to the Alps or the Rockies, let alone the Andes or the Himalaya. However, the Great Dividing Range reaches more than 2200 meters or 7300 feet in the very South of NSW, close to the border to Victoria. This is closer to the Black Forest than to the Alps, but it is a stunningly beautiful area nonetheless.
Our way inland from Merimbula
Before we crossed the Great Dividing Range we paid a visit to Frogs Hollow. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t that good and soon after, we had to look for a hole to climb above the clouds.
Leaving Merimbula
Frogs Hollow
Lake Crackenback, just north of Mount Kosciuszko, mainland Australias tallest mountain
Final 25 in Albury
We flew to Albury, YMAY, where we were in for preventive maintenance. We had contacted the shop there and they had agreed to sell us a filter and the oil and let us use their facilities to get the job done. It was between Christmas and New Year, so not much was going on. Only one LAME, as mechanics are called here, and the owner were working. Besides changing the oil and cutting open the filter, I pulled the plugs to look at them and peek into the cylinders. I had to use the shop’s borescope, as mine isn’t part of our traveling toolbox, unfortunately it wasn’t great. At least the exhaust valves looked good as far as I could see. I finally treated the waste gate with Mouse Milk and we could reinstall the cowling.
This is normally a job for the apprentice, said the shop owner
It’s a messy job, no matter what you do
We spent the evening in Albury which at least among our fellow Mooney pilots doesn’t have the best reputation, but we found it really OK. It’s a country town with a few nice buildings and the main drag makes for a nice stroll. We found a pub with the usual counter meals and had our well deserved beer.
Strolling around Albury
Tastes even better after working on the plane 😉
Fellow Mooney owners John and Rosemary had invited us to stay with them at their home in Mount Beauty and once again we had the privilege to experience the overwhelming hospitality of Australian pilots. Mount Beauty, YMBT, is called like this for a reason and already the flight there was a pleasure.
Leaving Albury
Overhead Mount Beauty
Short final 14, YMBT
Our hosts organized a barbie at their home and invited several friends, pilots and non-pilots alike. The other pilots arrived by air, some in style – by Mooney. In the afternoon, our hosts took us to a museum nobody would expect in a small Australian country town. It is devoted to Stoewer automobiles. It features several lovingly restored cars of this German manufacturer (I didn’t know before, I must confess). All the vehicles are ready to drive and the owner gave us a detailed tour.
RM had nice company
The barbie with friends
View from our hosts’ deck
At the Stoewer museum
The next day our hosts gave us their car and recommended that we drive up to the High Plains for a little walk and to see this stunning landscape. It really is an interesting and lovely part of the country, less known to foreign tourists like us.
Mount Beauty Pondage
View from Mount McKay
Wallace’s hut on the High Plains
Our next destination was Tassie and Mount Beauty had perfect weather for the third day in a row which isn’t that common as we were told. We took the chance to take a look at the landscape we had visited the day before, this time from the air.
Together with our lovely hosts
Initial climb out of Mount Beauty
Mount McKay
Falls Creek and the Rocky Valley Storage on the High Plains
Wonderful report, thanks so much again!
Thanks once more
Happy for you guys the skies seem to have cleared up.
PS
Assuming your oil had about 50 hours on it, good color, still brownish iso of black. Guess your motor is not that tired. Also nice to see someone knowing about and using Mouse Milk 
Still reading your reports, thank you for posting this! Most of us will most probably never fly down under…
What’s that about with the Mouse Milk? Never heard of it. Does it good to a wastegate? Is there some official resource for that?
What’s that about with the Mouse Milk?
Countless lame jokes about it: Good but precious, milking mice is bloody hard work 🤣
In fact it’s a high temperature penetrating oil with a funny name that probably once was good marketing 🤷♂️
Conti has it in the MM for the waste gates of their turbo engines. I don’t know for Lyco.
I lube the waste gate every time the cowling comes off and the moving joints of the exhaust system (including the dreaded V band clamp) every 50 hours.
