We drove into Bright with a clutch bag of recommendations but few expectations.
In fact we almost didn’t. Go that is.

The weather out to the east of us and down the coast was forecast to be wet and windy. Kelly suggested an alternate trip out west into unexplored territory in the general direction of Bright, a town located at the end of the Ovens Vally just across the boarder in Victoria. She excitedly pinched and zoomed Google maps around a in a vertigo inducing demonstration of places in that vicinity we had never even visited.

Only the forecast for these places was uncomfortably hot. My weather app was popping out a crescendo of days above thirty-two degrees Celsius. The kind of hot that sweats out one’s groins and armpits in a most unromantic lubrication of irritability and quickly frazzled tempers.

You see, just a few weeks prior, trying to erect Ripley’s fiddly awning under a searing hot midday sun, the trip quickly unravelled into a verbal mixed martial arts cage fight.
Only to be de-escalated once one of us tapped out and we both fled to Ripley’s air-conditioned interior.

Yet a trip to the coast would not cover any ground we had not already seen. It would be raining every day, and the wet wind and the wet dog and our wet selves would all conspire to bring the wet into Ripley. Filling her though and through with a wet, smelly, wetty, wetness.

Don’t get me wrong. Neither of these trip scenarios was a deal breaker. More like over-considered inconveniences to be dwelled on as we tried to plot the course of most fun.

So. We vacillated between going wet or going hot for some time. Then it was time to go. In fact even as we coasted Ripley down the driveway we were still not sure which way she should steer.

Boy did we get it right.
We had a most excellent adventure (without even a hint of any sweaty Jujitsu choke holds) and our stay in Bright was overwhelmingly gorgeous. Even as we were driving home we were are planning a re-visit in the immediate future  to explore some more of this town and the surrounding country.

Rating: Five stars. Five Bright stars.