Before me, wrapped in a tender blue haze, the range of hills lay majestically silent. The sun streams down from the zenith beyond a thread of opal clouds. A heavy, oppressive aroma arises from the gum trees an grass. The countryside is dry - there is no green except for the trees and vineyard below. The valley below is yellow and in places the soil is being sucked up in the air in little dust devils. All, around, as far as the eye can see, is dry, illimitable space, quivering streams of haze, and on the horizon the magically intangibly azure Mount Buller, the summit clean of its attendent tugboat clouds and its flanks plae in the sunlight.