hepburn springs

we had a great, relaxing weekend (4 nites) in hepburn springs. we stayed at the continental house. it was a great place. its kinda like a hostel but without the noise (they ask that guests keep it a quiet relaxing sanctuary). the rooms are hostel style but you can get private rooms (gotta walk to the showers and toilets though). the property is vegan, drug, smoke and alcohol free so all meals you prepare in the guest kitchen have to be vegan. on saturday nite they do a vegan banquet which is an amazing buffet of food. they also have a fireplace that we spent every evening (and one afternoon) infront of (the first 2 times we tried to light it we failed-- mostly due to lack of dry kindling but we got 3 good fires going after that)
i was so amazed by the colours of all the leaves in the area-- it reminded me of home (only better cuz we don't have a lot of maples in western canada). i now have dozens of pictures of red, yellow and orange leaves. it was amazing. this was my favourite maple leaf that i found (i brought it home). i picked it up the first afternoon and zac thought it was funny that i was carrying it around with me cuz there were thousands and i could get some any time i wanted but that was my favourite one.school with autumn leaves around it.


friday afternoon we spent at a spa (cuz we were in spa country and it would be weird to spend 4 1/2 days there and not try out a spa). this one was great cuz it offered a public deal with use of mineral water spa, hydro therapy pool, mineral salt water floatation pool, spa couches (my favourite) and zenoxy massagers for only $30 so we spent a few hours moving from one area to another just relaxing.


hepburn springs is known for all of the springs around it (not just a clever name). there are water pumps where you can drink the water all over town and on short walks. each one tastes different. the name of this one makes you think it would have a pretty bad taste but it actually wasn't the worst-- one a 20min walk from this one tasted (and smelled) WAY more like sulphur than this one.

we did a lot of walks/hikes around the area too. there were soooo many different communities of plants in the forest. a lot of maple and oaks (weeds in australia but they are really pretty this time of year). we also ended up walking through large areas of gum trees. these are some of the saplings of gum trees that had been through a fire in the recent past.

thats the cool thing about a lot of native australian plants-- they NEED fire or extreme heat to regenerate