Victoria Gordon by Always the Boss

Author:Always the Boss [HR-2469, MB-1809] (v0.9) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER SIX

Without the dark cloud of Dinah’s faux pas floating overhead like some satanic shadow, the rest of the day would have been quite perfect. And even with guilt on her shoulder, Dinah managed to enjoy herself far more than she would have expected.

They stopped for coffee in Tumut, glad to be off the rugged bush track and back on to bitumen roads again. Then, with Conan declaring that ‘unplanning’ would be the order of things, they picked up the makings of a picnic lunch and headed south along the edge of the great Blowering Reservoir. Conan, seemingly more able to shake off the blackness of depression than Dinah, regaled her with stories about the Massive Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme and the many attempts made by Australian Ken Warbey on the world speedboat record. It was on Blowering reservoir that he had finally achieved his dream in 1978.

They toured briefly through the famous Yarrangobilly Caves, emerging to the fresh warmth of daylight to lunch with feeding trout and voracious, biting March flies at tiny Three Mile Dam, high in the mountains. Then a quick visit to Cabramurra, rated the highest town in Australia at over fifteen hundred metres above sea level. It wasn’t much of a town, merely a few homes and a tiny shopping area to service local families and tourists, but it was important in historic terms for its significance to the Snowy River hydro-electric scheme.

There was little conversation as they drove south and west, crossing the end of Tumut Pond reservoir and down to Khancoban on the western edge of Kosciusko National Park. Dinah was enthralled by the magnificence of the scenery, and Conan drove with silent, casual attention to both road and scenery, visibly relaxing as the day progressed.

South to Tom Groggin, then east and north again along the Alpine Way, through Dead Horse Gap, and into the winter ski resort of Thredbo Village, where they stopped for coffee and debated a trip on the chairlift to the crest of Crackenback Mountain.

Dinah' feared the chairlift, but only partially because she was worried about the heights. Sitting beside Conan in the car was one thing; she wasn’t quite so sure she could handle being snuggled against him in the seat of a chairlift. Nonetheless, she agreed to try it, and even the discomfiting and yet warmly comfortable feeling of his arm around her on the way up didn’t slow her exhilaration at the vistas of scenery and the thrill of the ride itself.

Coming down, however, was distinctly frightening, and she huddled into the protective crook of Conan’s arm until the chairlift had reached the bottom, taking most of the ride with her eyes closed.

‘If it’s any consolation, I was a bit nervous too,’ he confided on the way back to the car.

‘Now that I can’t even imagine,’ she laughed. ‘I could think of nothing that would make you really nervous.’

Conan raised one eyebrow in his habitually quizzical expression. ‘You do,’ he said quietly. ‘More often than you might think.

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