'I spent my first year in Suggan Buggan, living in that tiny school house while the main house was being built. All I can remember is the cold and having a bath outside in the frost and running inside to stand in front of the big fire'.

Deep crow’s feet appear next to Clive Richardson’s alert blue-grey eyes when his mind wanders back to his early childhood.

Suggan Buggan, just 20 kilometres south of the border between Victoria and New South Wales, is a remote enclave of a handful of houses, surrounded by the rugged wilderness of the Alpine National Park.

Nowadays Clive Richardson lives in a comfortable mud-brick house, high on a hill above the tiny hamlet. The historic school house down near the fast-flowing Suggan Buggan River is still there. Erected around 1860, the building with its rough-hewn timber slabs and wooden shingles has been carefully restored. It is a reminder of the tough old days. But modern times are equally tough in that remote corner of Victoria.

Clive Richardson, a scientist, left the 'slave trade' in the city, as he calls it, to pursue a vision: to grow pistachios commercially. The idea was born during a presentation of a colleague who had just visited the southern Russian steppes.

'There were all these granite outcrops strewn over the countryside and these green trees sticking out of them. I asked him what they were and he said they were all wild pistachios. The country looked very similar to this country - browny soils, rocky country and granite. So I started looking into it and the more I looked, the better the fit was.'

That was 1980. Richardson got the first seed in 1982 and had the first seedling rootstocks and started grafting in 1984. It took ten years and a lot of trials and tribulations to get any pistachio crop of much consequence. Then came the terrible fires of 2003.

'The fire front was 15 kilometres from here and burning leaves arrived on the wind,' remembers Clive. 'We can see fires coming all over the place.'

When the smoke drifted away, the damage on the orchard became visible. The pistachio trees copped the worst of it. What kept Clive Richardson going and his dream alive was stubborn determination.

'It’s been a long-time achievement and the plan was to do a lot of things. You either make a go of it or you go away and die.'

Clive Richardson is a typical example of the people who live along the Barry Way, a partly-sealed back road that connects the Snowy Mountains with the shores of Bass Strait. It is a journey through one of the most diverse regions in Australia, one that is defined by extremes. Prolonged drought, devastating bushfires and torrential floods are facts of life here. And people have learned to live with them.

Although the Barry Way officially starts in Jindabyne, it pays to begin the journey 61 km to the north-east, in Cooma. The gateway to the Snowy Mountains nestles in a shallow valley at the end of the treeless and windswept Monaro plains and gives a sense of coziness. Local historian Deidre Clark however questions the wisdom of location choice.

'They must have chosen Cooma in the summer time. We get terrible fog here in winter,' she quips. 'Cooma is a multicultural town, it’s not a typical country town because so many people came in the times of the Snowy [Mountain Scheme] and they stayed.'

Nowadays Cooma is a service town for the surrounding farms and caters for tourists en route to the mountains. Despite its lively character, the town suffers. In the newly- established shopping centre there are numerous empty shops.

'We are very much in drought,' explains Deidre. 'All the shops suffer to a degree, because farmers have no money to spend.'

Drought is a continuous topic when travelling through the region. Between Cooma and Jindabyne, fields of large granite boulders create a unique landscape, remnants of fiery turmoil in the earth crust. One of the properties in this extraordinary area is owned by Kevin Clark. He runs 500 sheep on 500 acres, producing medium fine wool.

'Going north,' he says, referring to the Devils Marbles near Tenant Creek in the Northern Territory, 'they’ve got these great boulders up there and you go and look at them. But we’ve got them better here under our nose and don’t even see ’em. You don’t see what you are seeing everyday.'

But besides his quirky sense of humor, there is no doubt that he is doing it tough.

'The drought’s been going on for roughly 30 years,' he says, holding his tea cup with his chapped hands. 'This is unusual for this country. The last decent rain was five or six years ago.'

The result is that he has to feed his stock.

'You wouldn’t make any money out of wool. It cost me over around $22 a head this year to feed the sheep. Your wool would only just cover that.'

Despite the harsh conditions, Kevin Clark, who has worked and owned his land for over 50 years, has no intention of leaving his land for an easier life. 'Not until they cart me away,' he says with determination. 'A lot of people are going into homes. You’re better out and free.'

From Kevin Clark’s farm to Jindabyne and the start of the Barry Way is only a short 30 km. Behind Jindabyne, farmland with gentle hills in the background borders the Barry Way.

About 10km after the town, a white drum with a goat on it marks the turn-off to Hobbit Farm. The farm hides out of sight on the slopes of a sparsely wooded hill. Here lives another refugee from civilization who is following his own dream with determination - to produce quality goat cheese and make a living from it.

Mike Corbett, dressed in a white lab coat and a white cap, is in his, at first sight, quite derelict-looking shed, turning plastic containers filled with young goat cheese. Inside the shed hides a fully functioning modern and spotless cheese factory.

A well-travelled man with an economics background, Mike Corbett calls himself a 'tree changer' who 'followed the lure of the hills'. That was more than 20 years ago, long before leaving the city in search of a simpler life became a trend.

The basic recipe to his cheeses originated from a farm in western France. He produces quark or fresh curd, and goat cheese of different ages and tastes.

'I’m trying to make the best cheese I can and enjoying it. In one sense I’ve turned my back on wealthy riches. Nobody ever promised everyone to get rich in agriculture over night.'

Not far from Mike’s farm, the Barry Way leaves the mountains and the bitumen and starts its descent into the deep valley of the Snowy River. The gentle rural landscape, which accompanied the road so far, is swallowed up by steep slopes covered in monochromatic sparse grey bush that seems to sap colour from everything. Deep down, mysterious valleys beckon in the heat haze. It seems as if the land suddenly breaks away.

The southern slopes of the Snowy Mountains, protected as the Pilot and Byadbo Wilderness areas of the Kosciuszko National Park, form a magnificent wilderness.

Lying in the rain shadow of the main range, it is dry country. White box and cypress pine dominate the vegetation and form one of the last strongholds of these plant communities in Australia.

All along the descent into the hidden valley of the Snowy River, the scars of the terrible firestorm in 2003 are all too visible. About 100.000 hectares of land were burnt out in a single day here.

This area 'is very dry, it is extremely fire prone', explains long-time Kosciuszko Ranger Pam O’Brien, at a campsite along the Jacob River near where the Barry Way meets the Snowy River for the first time.

'But at the same time, it’s adapted to fire and it comes back really well after fire. If you had driven down here after the fire you’d say nothing could have survived this,' she said.

And yet, not only the vegetation bounced back, it is the wildlife as well. Before the fire, rangers were monitoring 21 quolls fitted with radio collars.

'After the fires we relocated 16 tagged animals,' says Pam. 'You might hear a quoll tonight. They make this sort of growling noise.'

A few kilometres past the campsite, the Barry Way reaches the Snowy River. The famous river, eternally starved of water since the construction of the dam near Jindabyne, winds through a broad and gentle valley.

Every now and then, the river tumbles over polished rock barriers, just to turn into long, almost stagnant ponds soon afterwards. All the way to the border with Victoria, the river is a steady companion.

Then the road leaves the river, climbs over a high ridge and descends into Suggan Buggan – just to climb out of the deep valley soon after the hamlet and on to the green plateau above.

Rich volcanic soil and, under normal circumstances reliable rainfall, have created a corridor of farmland between the Alpine and the Snowy River National Park.

This usually lush rural landscape also suffered from a prolonged drought that broke only in December 2008, when the heaviest rainfall in 15 years soaked the soil and let the rivers and creeks swell to brown, foamy torrents.

All of these water-courses drain into the deep ravine of the Snowy River that forms the centrepiece of the Snowy River National Park. The latter offers a worthwhile destination as a side trip from the Barry Way: McKillops Bridge, the only Bridge over the Snowy River between Jindabyne and the timber town Orbost not far from the coast.

Back on the plateau the gravel road is soon left behind and the size of trees increases. Travellers get a glimpse of the magnificent forests of East Gippsland.

That however changes again, when the round and, thanks to drought and overgrazing, barren limestone hills near Buchan are reached. Sinkholes along the road offer clues to what makes the picturesque village so special.

Buchan’s real treasure lies underground. Dale Calnom has worked in the Buchan Cave Reserve for 30 years and made his way through the ranks to senior ranger.

'What makes the reserve so special,' he says, 'is the age of the caves. The cave system here provides some of the oldest cave systems in South Eastern Australia.'

In his younger years an avid caver, he now focuses his energy and passion in the preservation and protection of this unique ecosystem. Dale loves living in Buchan.

'Buchan is obviously a great place to live. It is a very close-nit community. We have seen this in recent times particularly with events like the 2003 bushfires, where the whole community really gets behind one another. When you experience that, it only strengthens your whole connection with this part of East Gippsland.'

The journey along the Barry Way ends in the coastal town of Lakes Entrance. Lakes Entrance is a curious town. Stretched along the Princes Highway on a narrow strip of land parallel to the ocean between the North and the Cunningham Arms of Lake King, the town is a holiday resort.

One who witnessed the change from a fishing village into a tourist town is fifth generation professional fisherman Harry Mitchelson.

'It used to be a fishing town,' he recalls. 'We’ve lost probably well over half of our boats in the last 20 years, just through attrition, people selling out and leaving. Tourism is pretty big in town now. When I was a child there was none of this. All there was were the boats and the wharves. You’re either a fisherman or you’re not.'

But Harry Mitchelson sees the changes as positive.

'If this town relied on fishing it wouldn’t be much of a town. This town here, with all the tourism, it’s still going,' he says.

And there it is again, the determination, the stubbornness but also the flexibility towards change, that seems to run like a thread through the region, all the way from the mountains to the sea.