Caytie and I woke up extremely early this morning. With the rise of the sun, the birds woke up too, hence, we woke up. It was about 5am. We both decided since we were up, we might as well get on the road. We had discussed taking a bush shower the night before, but it was just a little too chilly (4 degrees C; 39 degrees F), so we wore the same cloths that we had worn the day before because that is what we slept in! The sunrise was beautiful! We got on the road at 5:40am, and as we were heading up the Snowy Wilderness “driveway” we came across a couple of kangaroos!! 
We were able to get a picture of one of them before it bounded away. Once to the end of the “driveway,” we turned left heading towards Buchan down the Barry Way. Well, as navigator, I looked more closely at the maps we had, and noticed we had planned to go a different way, so, since we were told how “dodgy” the Barry Way was (and AJ had gotten really pale when we told him which way we were headed for today), we decided to go the original way we had planned along the McKillops Road (a supposed tourist drive). 
We turned the car around, headed back towards Jindabyne, and turned off the Barry Way heading towards McKillops Road. As the sun rose, the clouds came rolling in. Because we were so high in the mountains, we were IN the clouds. It was absolutely beautiful! Some places were so clouded over that we could barely see where the road was, while others were so bright and clear! We even came across a few places where the cloud’s condensation had adhered to spider webs along the side of the road so that they glistened in the sun! It was pretty cool! We also came across this really old bridge (erected in 1888, the Dalgety Bridge). It wasn’t very long, but it was awesome because the area we were in was a lower “valley” at the top of the Snowy Mountains, and the clouds were everywhere, so it looked foggy.
The drive itself up to Snowy River National Park was beautiful, but it seemed to take quite a while. We were feeling a little lost because it was taking longer than the directions indicated it would take to get to the National Park, so, when we came across a couple of guys doing some road work, we stopped to ask if we were on the right track to McKillops Road and bridge. (Their reactions should have told us all we needed to know, but somehow we managed to ignore and/or miss them!) We were told we were going in the right direction; to keep heading down the road we were on and we’d come to McKillops Bridge eventually. One of the guys was kind of scowly and just leaned on his shovel and listened; the other looked some-what worried; however, neither said anything about the condition of the road, so we just kept on going.
About 10 minutes later, the road turned to gravel. Neither Caytie nor I though anything of this as we had driven a few gravel roads coming out of the Blue Mountains; however, it should have been a huge red flag. Again, no big deal. However, the gravel road wasn’t for long! Soon we came to a T and we couldn’t figure out if we were supposed to turn off or not (we were on the non-intersection of the T). 
We passed it, backed up, sat for a while looking at maps, and finally decided to take the turn (the road signs were no help at all, as per usual!) Soon after, the nice, two-lane gravel road became a one-lane, two-directional dirt road with cliffs and no guardrail. Not so much fun anymore, at least for Caytie as the driver!The pictures on here do not do this road justice. We drove under 60 miles from the dirt road to the end of McKillops Road, and it took us about 4 hours to drive it, not including two stops at McKillops Bridge for lunch and Little River Gorge for a small hike. It took us roughly 8 hours to drive 210 miles.
Look closely at some of the pictures, and you can see the tracks in the dirt for the tires, and there just are not 3 tracks or 4 like there would be on a normal dirt road going both directions. 
No, there are only TWO! Not only that, but there was no guardrail anywhere to be seen. We came across one spot in the roughly 60 miles of the McKillops “dodgy” Road that was cemented with a guardrail (about a 6-8 feet long section). That was scarier than not having anything, anywhere because really, why was it needed there? Finally, about 2/3 of the drive was cliff face going straight up on one side and a sheer drop on the other! Some spots were better than others, with trees blocking us from plummeting to our death if we went off the road, but not often, and sometime not enough trees for even that!The drive was, however, quite beautiful. At least for me. I took pictures, so I wasn’t too badly off; Caytie, however, white-knuckled it the whole way! The road followed the curves of the Snowy Mountains, going in and out of Snowy River National Park and Alpine National Park. The road followed the Deddick River all the way to McKillops Bridge where the Deddick River and the Snowy River meet. We stopped to take a few pictures, stretch our legs, and eat lunch here. Afterwards, we got back on the road for the last leg of McKillops Road (which ended up being worse that the first leg).
The McKillops Bridge runs over the Snowy River, and we followed first the Snowy River and then the Little River the rest of the way out of the mountains. The bridge itself was built in 1935, and looks it! One of the signs said “Cyclists Dismount. Beware of gaps in bridge deck.” Made it real easy to DRIVE across it!! :D 
It looked like we were driving into a car was because there were boards on the bridge that were perpendicular to the bridge boards that we had to drive on top of! One other sign before we got onto the bridge made us a “little” leery of driving on (but what else were we going to do…go back?): “Road Unsuitable for Semi-Trailers and Caravans Beyond this Point.” 
Like the drive before was suitable for those vehicles?!?! Australia and the States have two very different standards for suitable roads I think!For half of the rest of the drive, we had to drive on the outside “lane” with the sheer cliff dropping next to me. Caytie still hugged the cliff face, but even so, we were not far from the edge as the road was not that wide.
Throughout the whole drive, we only came across 2 other vehicles (another hint that we shouldn’t have been driving there?). The first was when we were on the inside of the road and we had just come to a little jut in the road where we could pull over a bit. The second time, however, we were not so lucky…we came across a small SUV while we were on the outside of the road. Caytie stopped the car to let the other person pass. We looked at him and he looked at us. 
Finally (probably seeing the panicked look on our faces) he lifted his hand and pointed towards the cliff…we had to move left, and there really wasn’t much room to do so. It all worked out fine, but both Caytie and I had a slight panic attack when he made that gesture…he laughed! 
We made it to our next stop, Little River Gorge, and went on a short (400m; ¼ mile) hike. It may have been short, but it was fairly steep. The pathway was gravel, and the surrounding trees looked like they were growing back from a recent fire.
We reached to the bottom of the path to the overlook for the Little River Gorge (Victoria's deepest gorge) where there was an awesome view of Little River, the falls, and the Snowy Mountains.After our steep climb back up to the car park, we hit the road…we were nearly out! We knew we were officially out once we hit a paved road, along with a town and gas station with the appropriate name of…Seldom Seen!
About an hour later, we were in Buchan and headed to the Buchan Caves Reserve.
We got there about 2:30pm, and had plenty of time to catch the 3:30pm tour of Royal Cave! The cave has calcite-rimmed pools, and a ton of awesome stalactites, stalagmites, and helictites. 
The cave was awesome! Just as we were leaving the cave, we saw kangaroos (which never got boring)! 
We hit the road about 5pm (I drove) and stopped off for dinner at KFC. We got to Morwell just at sunset (about 7:45pm). We checked into our hotel and took showers and relaxed for the rest of the evening! (Check out my foot!!!)
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