The Cottage
Posted Monday 9th June 2025
Quite a few years ago an unexcelled case of socialising costs and privatising benefits was acquired from Adelaide by a couple of Victorian political wheeler dealers who had little regard for the backwash to the local community. Not only was the Grand Prix imported to Melbourne, but it was staged in Albert Park, a large central community reserve which is now desecrated for six months every year by this ‘pop up’ event. Pop up is a kind term – something like 100,000 tonnes of event accoutrements are imported from storage in the industrial west for each event and exported back to storage afterwards, occupying almost all of the period from New Year to the Winter Solstice while doing so.
All this may be exciting for rev-heads but for anyone who lives within 100 decibels of the track it is an excruciating four-day period.
We have long since emigrated to a place far more peaceful during this excrescence – generally departing on Thursday morning to the accompaniment of the first mechanical screaming event and not returning until well after the last event late on Sunday afternoon, the Grand Prix final, is done and buried for another year.
Our haven is a small cottage buried far up the Ovens Valley a little way beyond Bright. This haven enjoys an ambience that is the complete opposite of what we have just avoided – remoteness, peace, silence other than creatures and birds and a glorious environment largely determined by nature.
The first view of the cottage when approaching from the car.
To get there we head beyond Bright for a few kilometres, cross the river and divert onto an access track through apple and chestnut orchards. From there a rural lane takes us across an area of small, cleared paddocks on the lower slopes of the nearby range to a fenced green oasis which contains the owners house, our cottage and a few outbuildings, all immersed in a garden of great charm.
The cottage is a small timber building with one bedroom on the ground level as well as a kitchen / dining area, lounge, bathroom, toilet and laundry/storage room. Up a set of stairs (more properly a nautical ladder) there are two more sleeping areas in the loft under the steeple roof, each with dormer a window. The whole is more than adequate for the two of us (and Millie the dog) and quite functional even when we have been a larger number.
The patio end is a delightful place on the edge of the local natural world.
There is a small patio outside at one end of the cottage, while in the immediate surrounds there are a swinging ‘love’ seat and a number of recliners and other restful pieces. A pair of colourful Maple trees, a mature Camellia, a huge old Eucalypt, and more distant Ginko and Dogwood trees provide the ambience. The views from inside the cottage are almost devoid of anything man made.
The view across the Ovens Valley has a few cattle, but little else to disrupt the peace.
The trees provide ample shade while the more grounded growth provides form and colour. A number of trees are ‘autumn colour’ types, both within the garden and across the nearby property. While yellow is the dominant autumn colour close in, the wider view reveals a range of colours up to almost iridescent red.
Yellow autumn within the cottage garden.
Red autumn on the property but more remote from the Cottage.
The whole is contained behind a ridge to the east and looks on to a ridge to the west that together form the Ovens Valley at this place.
The surrounding fields support a considerable number of kangaroos which live in the nearby forest while off on the adjacent property there is a flock of alpacas and down below, almost out of hearing range, a small group of black cattle makes its home.
Alpacas seem to all work in unison. Here 24 eyes watch us watching them.
Bird life is everywhere and can become quite noisy early in the day and again around sunset. Magpies, Pee Wees, Lorikeets, White Cockatoos, Black Cockatoos, Wagtails, Kookaburras, Wrens and numbers of small scrub birds are all part of the avian chorus line.
Morning is dictated by the sun, which is not the same as daylight at this place. From the first blush of dawn the birds start their morning chorus, to be followed in time with the first fringe of sunlight capping the ridge opposite. Slowly the ridge is increasingly illuminated until the sun reaches where we are on the west facing slopes of our ridge. Around about this time is a good time to get up.
On some occasions the timing of the Grand Prix is such that autumn colours are in their full glory while on others it is relatively early so that a bit of yellow and a faint tinge of red are all that will be seen. 2025 was one of the latter which along with an unusually warm autumn period made for a relatively colour free time.
One of the early years with colours just starting to turn.
In fact, the weather was borderline hot on our most recent visit, resulting in us going high during the day – Mt Hotham / Dinner Plain one day, Mt Buffalo the next – and returning late.
We waited until the sun had gone behind the westerly ridge, well ahead of official sunset, before setting up out on the patio for drinks and nibbles as a precursor to a much later evening repast. Periodic riffs of breeze rustled the leaves and occasionally stirred the wind chimes into life, while the birds sang the ending of the day. A couple of kangaroos came skittishly past during this time, while an odd bellow or two from distant cattle was hardly enough to disturb the peace. Of traffic noise, boom boxes and all the human sounds that we live with there was nothing – just the slowly subsiding orchestra of birds and rustle of leaves.
With the light slowly fading we consumed a somewhat simple evening meal. A gang of kookaburras serenaded the evening as the now unseen setting sun was painting the wisps of cloud a soft pink. We finished just as the last blush of dusk faded to blackness, presaging a retreat to indoors feeling decidedly at peace with the world.
‘…painting the wisps of cloud a soft pink’.
Everyone should have a ‘happy’ place that they can go to at times when life otherwise might be less than optimal. We have ours and we have an annual incentive to keep going back there. Even if the GPX moves away from Melbourne I suspect we will still be making a periodic pilgrimage north.
