IT’S the sort of place where it feels only right to stretch out a picnic rug on a lazy afternoon, to sit and sigh and stare off into the distance.
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There’s a picture-book perfection in the green, rolling hills and the river that ambles quietly through them, with its willow trees that reach down and stroke the water as it skips by.
You can understand why Amy Dickinson and her family holidayed here.
The beauty of the place overwhelms everything and yesterday it brushed uncomfortably with grim goings-on.
The police cars and the beeping excavator that scraped up the sludge from the river bottom were clearly out of place.
It was a wrongness sharply felt by Ms Dickinson’s family, who shook their head and said, with a heavy disbelief, “but it’s so beautiful”.
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On Sunday they arrived at Biggara, a quiet spot about 30 minutes up the river from Corryong, home to spring burst butterflies and burgeoning dairy cows.
Among the group of six were Amy’s mother Helen Dickinson, her partner Ross Greenaway, their two friends and Amy’s boyfriend Nick Best.
Mr Greenaway had holidayed in the area for many years and he and Amy’s mother had canoed the same rapids for “a long time”.
While it was Amy’s first time paddling this river, it was not her first time in a canoe.
And she had been on the river for about half an hour on Tuesday afternoon, paddling along with her mother, when she hit a rapid near a tangled tree.
Her canoe capsized and she was quickly swallowed by the water.
Behind the river’s idyllic facade is a potentially fatal concoction of gripping currents, hidden obstacles and stabbing icy water freshly melted off still snow-capped mountains.
Hope quickly fades in scenarios like this.
After getting word of the accident on Tuesday night, Amy’s father Cam Dickinson and her sister Laura, 21, rushed to the search site from Melbourne, joining the others in the vigil.
Then all of them camped on.
They remained stuck in the clothes picked for their holiday, a camping trip that had to continue on in the worst of circumstances.
On the first full day of searching, police and family had clutched to the improbable dream Amy had clambered onto a grassy bank after being washed downstream.
Yesterday the pretending was over — the search was a recovery mission and hopes turned to her body being found soon so the awful wait would end.
All her mother, father, sister, boyfriend and friends could do was walk and wait.
Still, there was not a cloud in the sky.
