View from the top ... overlooking Lake Albina.Credit:Louise Southerden
First,there's the past. Driving along the Alpine Way to the start of our two-day hike in Kosciuszko National Park,we see hillsides of spidery white snow gums and the skeletal remains of alpine ash trees - poignant reminders of the bushfires that devastated two-thirds of the 690,000-hectare park in 2003.
Further on,at Thredbo,there's the present:a chairlift taking day-trippers to the start of the six-kilometre walkway that leads to the 2228-metre summit of Mount Kosciuszko. More than 100,000 people make this pilgrimage every summer and we're among them,however we're taking a longer,more circuitous route.
Starting at Dead Horse Gap,four kilometres beyond Thredbo,we'll follow the Dead Horse Gap Track,then head cross-country to our alpine campsite,watch the sunset from Kosciuszko and walk out the next day to Charlotte Pass. Kosciuszko Alpine Guided Walks,with whom I'm doing the trek,has been offering weekend walks in the national park for six years and last month started this walk,from Dead Horse Gap to Charlotte Pass.
On our first day we're blessed with a cloudless sky and brilliant sunshine. The walking is easy,too,the terrain undulating and open. Best of all,though,the alpine hills are alive with wildflowers.
There are 212 species of flowering plants and ferns in the park,21 of which are endemic,and they take turns blooming between November and February,which is wildflower season.
No sooner have we started walking,in fact,gently uphill through a forest of snow gums,than we're stopping and stooping to inspect dots of colour at our feet. In two days,we see more than 30 different wildflowers,thanks to our guide Nick's experienced eye:pennyworts and pineapple grasses,alpine sunrays and silver daisies,derwent speedwells and egg-and-bacon plants,eyebrights and billy-buttons and seven kinds of buttercup - including the dwarf buttercup,which grows only in icy alpine streams.
There's wildlife,too. We see a small but venomous copperhead snake (one of only two species of snake in the park) and when we stop for morning tea that first day,more than a few Australian ravens gather on a granite boulder behind us,making me feel like Tippi Hedren in The Birds.
That so-quiet-it's-eerie feeling returns when we stroll to the summit from our private,NPWS-approved campsite after dinner. We have the top of Kosciuszko all to ourselves - the last day-trippers having caught the last chairlift back down to Thredbo three hours earlier,at 5pm - which feels like a rare privilege.