We returned to Mount Gambier today after a lovely two-week holiday in the Alpine Shire region of North East Victoria, where we used to live.

The video shows the kids jumping into the Ovens River at Porepunkah.

We stayed in a four-bedroom holiday house on the Buffalo Creek Road, south of Myrtleford. It was a little remote from town (8km), but offered great scenery and plenty of space at good value.

James (6) wanted a helicopter to pick up the house and take it back to Mount Gambier!

Regular readers will know we visited Bright and Porepunkah, swam in the Ovens River and Lake Buffalo, climbed The Horn and enjoyed fine food at Milawa and Beechworth.

The weather was a mixed bag. Some days were hotter than we were used to (from previously) and there was a cold snap, but most days were perfect.

I commented to friends that in our nine years at Porepunkah we could only recall one day over 40 degrees. I kept daily weather records for much of that time as well.

However, we struck two 40-degree days during our holiday. That followed some similarly hot days earlier in the summer and more are forecast this week.

Deny climate change? Not me.

Our house was air-conditioned and we avoided the worst of the heat by cooling off in the river or lake.

Despite being away for four years, a lot of people remembered us. Juliet took the boys into Myrtleford for a haircut and the hairdresser remembered everyone’s names. We bumped into many people we knew.

The drive was just under 10 hours, including voluntary and necessary stops. We travelled up via Ararat, Bendigo and Shepparton, returning via Melbourne and Ballarat.

The return trip was on better roads and slightly quicker, despite the longer distance. Kathleen and Maggie both get carsick, unfortunately.

I’m a great believer in three-week holidays. This one was terrific, just a little short.

When he was three or four years old, about 10 years ago, my parents gave Michael and Kathleen each an acorn, which they planted in pot plants.

Kathleen’s failed to grow, while Michael’s thrived.

He planted it in the back yard of our “little house” where we lived for our first four years in Porepunkah.

The tree grew and was doing well when we left four years ago.

It’s still going strong (pictured to the right of the cubby house).

I hope it’s never removed. We worried it may crowd out the fig tree next to it someday, or the roots could become a nuisance.

It’s just nice to think we have left behind something so substantial and beautiful.

We visited Porepunkah today for the first time since we left almost four years ago exactly.

The twins, now 6, don’t remember Porepunkah at all, but for the older children it’s where they grew up and where they attended most of their primary school.

I had mixed feelings today. Seeing how wonderful it is I wondered why we ever left.

The reasons were sound at the time. Financial gains; career move for me; and a chance for the older kids to live in a major regional centre, giving them more educational, sporting and cultural options.

Kalgoorlie was a stark contrast, but it delivered on the financial aspects.

At Mount Gambier we sacrificed the financial gains and hoped for an upswing on the lifestyle scale. Has that been achieved? Time will tell.

Porepunkah hasn’t changed much. The only new business we could see was the Rail Trail Cafe in the old shop opposite the hotel near the service station and the old bridge.

When we moved to Porepunkah in 1996 we were told the shop used to be a butcher. Our neighbor used to work there.

It was vacant for many years and then it became a residence.

Today it was thriving as a cafe, with more than a dozen bikes parked outside the front and all the tables full.

What a great idea! We used to cycle from Porepunkah to Bright and enjoy a wine and coffee at the Riverdeck, but there was nothing for the majority of people who travel the other way, except the Porepunkah Hotel.

Not everyone feels comfortable going to a pub.

The swimming hole at the river was just as we remembered it (pictured above) … a great place to cool down on a perfect summer’s day.

Summer in Porepunkah was nearly always perfect. Most days were in the range of 28 to 34 degrees, with not much variation.

Our arrival to 41 degrees was quite a shock. Next week there is a forecast of several days in the mid 20s, which is unusually cool.

Today was normal for summer, as we remembered it, and everyone enjoyed a swim in the river.

I’m sure we’ll visit two or three more times before we leave.

One visual disappointment was the overgrown state of the Porepunkah Oval, pictured below.

There is obviously no cricket or baseball being played at the moment, and the school children are on holiday, but people might use the oval if they could.

It’s a shabby look that I can’t imagine seeing on a public sports ground outside of Africa.

Carlton great Newton Chandler (pictured), who played his first football on the oval, would be turning in his grave.

I only encountered a handful of days when the wind was strong enough and chilly enough to make indoors more attractive than being outside.

Moving back to south-eastern Australia we’ve experienced a very mild start to winter, but there have been a few hints of what’s to come.

Stopping near Ballarat for lunch I wanted to close the door to keep the cold out; haven’t done that for three years.

Mount Gambier and Moe, where I’ve been staying, both have foggy mornings. The mist doesn’t lift until 10am or thereabouts; meanwhile the overnight chill hangs in the air.

I remember foggy mornings at Traralgon when I rode my bike to high school. The moisture from the fog sometimes turned to ice on my school jumper while cycling and I arrived at school looking like a snowman.

I wore gloves though and the frost quickly melted, so that doesn’t qualify as one of my coldest experiences.

Nor does skiing, visiting the snow or travelling around Europe in December. While doing those things I was dressed for the conditions and every building was properly heated.

Cold (and heat) hits you when you’re unprepared or it’s unexpected. The coldest I have ever been:

1) Riding my bike in the freezing rain, aged about 13. I used to go for long bike trips, about 50km from Traralgon to neighboring towns and places.

One day, obviously in winter, coming back from Rosedale the weather changed. A cold front came in from the south-west delivering icy rain and a freezing headwind. I wasn’t appropriately dressed and didn’t have gloves.

After trying to shelter beneath a tree until the rain stopped I got back on the highway until an elderly couple took pity on me and drove me home.

2) Aged 20 and working as a cadet journalist at the Bairnsdale Advertiser, I visited friends at Benambra in the high country,

Benambra is a farming town on the edge of the alps, about 1000 metres abive sea level. It’s probably the highest non-skiing community in Victoria.

My friends (two brothers) lived in a rambling old farm house while their parents sensibly lived in a modern warmer home nearby.

It got to minus eight degrees that night. The wood fire went out and only heated one room anyway. I think I was in a sleeping bag that just wasn’t good enough for the job.

3) Not as extreme, but worth relating. Our first winter at Porepunkah in 1997 was the coldest we experienced there. Again, the house wasn’t properly insulated or heated.

There must have been 50 or more frosts that year and we didn’t have a carport. Nearly every winter morning I had to remove ice from the car before driving to work in Myrtleford. One night, ice formed before 10pm when we had to take Michael into hospital with an asthma condition.

The worst night was when condensation froze on the walls inside the house. The glass of water I kept beside my bed also iced over.

I know Australia doesn’t get cold compared with many other places in the world. It doesn’t snow at sea level, except occasionally in Victoria and Tasmania. But it can get pretty chilly and often we’re not prepared.

This was a weekly newspaper that Juliet and I produced from our home in Porepunkah for six months from July 2002 to January 2003.

It circulated in the Bright area and reached a peak of 2400 copies when we also distributed free in Myrtleford.

The newspaper was financially a sideline to my public relations business, but took up most of time. It was like the adage that 20 percent of your customers generate 80 percent of your income.

That was certainly true for me with the Alpine News, which took up 80 percent of my 70-hour working week to produce maybe 20 percent of my revenue.

It was good fun though and I look back with pride on the work we produced. Newspapers are historical records and the electronic copies I still have are probably the only complete collection of this one-time local journal.

I’ve uploaded six front pages to my Scribd account and they can be viewed here. Sample below. If there is any interest I will upload more pages and editions.

I came home from work this afternoon after a full day inside the office, stepped out of the car and said to Juliet: “This reminds me of those summer evenings in Porepunkah when we used to go for a swim at the river.” It was 29 degrees.

Of course, it will get much hotter in Kalgoorlie and we’ll have more days over 40 than Porepunkah used to get over 32, and North East Victoria gets hot by Victorian standards.

We bought a house again when we moved to Porepunkah, Victoria. It was a small three-bedroom hardiplank home on a delightful block in Seamer Street, and cost $81,000. A few years later we moved two doors up the road to a much bigger house, which cost $184,000.

The picture shows the last heavy snowfall at Porepunkah. I think it was in 2000. I remember it was a Sunday in May.

We don’t have many other pictures of the little house, and I regret not taking more photos around Porepunkah on the day of that snowfall.

Our house in Porepunkah finally sold and we have some spare cash for the first time since 1993. Combined with the fact we can now go out for dinner or functions, leaving the little kids with the big ones safely for a couple of hours, our lives have completely changed!

Kalgoorlie has an active social life and the mood here is really buoyant at the moment, so it’s an exciting time.

The coming Race Round is going to be fantastic. This is Kalgoorlie’s equivalent of the Melbourne spring carnival. It includes some high-quality races intermingled with social events.

Our plan is to attend the Boulder Cup and the Hannans Club Ball (black tie, masquerade) plus whatever else we can fit in between work and family commitments.

The temperature is now starting to increase and the forecast for Tuesday is 27 degrees. These figures are incomprehensible in May for someone from cooler climes in Victoria. The last low-level snowfall we experienced at Porepunkah was in May!

The mozzies are still buzzing here. Apart from that the conditions are glorious.

A quick check of the Weather Bureau site shows that 30 degree days are possible in every month except June and July.

Juliet and Dude both managed to fall ill within two days of arriving in Kalgoorlie. Nothing serious, but we’ve made the doctor’s acquaintance.

Our furniture was meant to arrive today (Monday) but it hasn’t. The removal company doesn’t know where our container is! They think it might be in Adelaide. There was a train derailment between Kalgoorlie and Perth which disrupted all rail traffic.

We now expect the furniture to come on Thursday. Our neighbors have helped out with some essentials in the meantime.

The kids have settled in well at school. Hannans Primary has 430 students and is within easy walking distance. I’m pleased Kathleen was able to start there, rather than go to a high school with over 1000 students. Year levels are different between WA and Victoria.

Kathleen and Dude say hello to Mrs Rampling, Mrs Clapperton, Mr Dwyer and Mr Holden and everyone at Porepunkah.