Here’s my report for Thursday January 19th, covering my return trip from Merimbula:
My fiancée and I had to go straight back home to Melbourne for a friend’s wedding, held on Saturday, while my parents returned straight to Corryong. We all left our accommodation at about 9:30am; my fiancée and I didn’t arrive home in Belgrave until around 10:30pm, so we were on the road through Gippsland for roughly 13 long hours. My parents made it back to Corryong by around 5:30pm, having travelled via Pambula, Bombala, Dalgety, Jindabyne, Thredbo, Tom Groggin, Geehi, and Khancoban.
We stopped in Eden around 10am, and then crossed the Victoria/New South Wales Border around an hour later. Another hour later we arrived in Cann River, followed by lunch in Orbost roughly 90 minutes later.
Passing through Bruthen (thus bypassing Lakes Entrance and Metung unfortunately), our next stop was for a quick breather at Bairnsdale around 3pm, then a leg-stretch and powernap at Stratford around an hour later, then a bite to eat at Sale at about 5pm, and finally another quick breather at Rosedale around 20 minutes later.
From there, it was straight through the Latrobe Valley and Warragul to Melbourne. But rather than going straight home to Belgrave, we decided to head to Brighton to enjoy the evening together and have dinner first.
Weatherwise, the day was perfect! It was admittedly rather chilly in Merimbula, but otherwise it was cool and mostly cloudy through the NSW South Coast region down to the Genoa/Mallacoota area (which we reached around 11:30am). Up until about 4:30pm when we left Stratford, the weather was hazy but almost-completely cloud free, with plentiful warm sunshine and cooling east/southeast breezes from the Tasman Sea/South Pacific Ocean and Bass Strait; the winds were quite gusty in Orbost btw!

High cloud began arriving over the western horizon between Stratford and Sale, with mid-level cloud also moving in as we exited the Latrobe Valley and approached Trafalgar and Yarragon around 6pm. By the time we reached Pakenham and entered metropolitan Melbourne roughly 30 minutes later, cloud was increasing rapidly from the northwest.
Cloudcover thickened up after 7pm as we left the A1 Princes Highway/Monash Freeway (Melbourne-Sydney) and entered Wellington Road at Mulgrave, with virga streaming down from the clouds by the time we reached the bayside suburbs. Just before 8:30pm, the clouds broke up enough to review a brief but surprisingly beautiful sunset!

Directly overhead, skies remained mostly clear once we reached home but cloud increased during the night ahead of the heavy rain and thunderstorms that swept across Victoria on Thursday night and Friday morning.
Minimum and maximum temperatures (in °C) for the different major locations my fiancée and I passed through (or near) during the day:
Merimbula Airport - 9.4°C / 23.8°C
Mallacoota - 10.3°C / 22.5°C
Point Hicks- 12.3°C / 22.7°C
Combienbar - 7.8°C / 27.0°C
Orbost - 9.2°C / 25.9°C
Lakes Entrance - 8.5°C / 23.6°C
Bairnsdale Airport - 6.3°C / 23.1°C
Sale Airport - 7.4°C / 23.4°C
Morwell Latrobe Valley Airport - 4.7°C / 24.9°C
Cranbourne - 7.6°C / 25.1°C
Moorabbin Airport - 9.0°C / 24.1°C
Scoresby - 8.1°C / 27.3°C
Ferny Creek - 8.2°C / 24.0°C
Melbourne - 11.0°C / 23.4°C
And for my parents’ drive back to Corryong, both of whom reported mostly good weather:
Merimbula Airport - 9.4°C / 23.8°C
Bombala Airport - 7.9°C / 24.4°C
Cooma Airport - 10.2°C / 24.6°C
Thredbo Top Station - 3.9°C / 18.4°C
Khancoban Airport - 10.5°C / 31.9°C
Corryong Airport - 12.5°C / NA
Sadly because of my sister's wedding in around 12 months, it could be a very long time before I'm able to go back to Merimbula.
So this marks possibly the end of 12 consecutive summers of staying on the NSW South Coast, but I look forward to returning soon! I still have Corryong to go back to at any time though.

Looking forward to heading off to Canberra and Sydney in a couple of days!
