A Hut Above the Snowline

[Bellobazza]

Manfred has posted some wonderful photos of High-country huts on another (hot topic) thread, one of which was of Wallace Hut. By a strange coincidence, it was just on twelve months ago that I wrote this...

A Hut Above The Snowline © Will Moody 09/02/2010

If you go above the snowline, you should take time to prepare,
for when the weather changes you can get in strife up there.
Back in the eighteen hundreds, local cattlemen would bring
their stock up to the high plains for lush alpine grass in spring.
And knowing they’d need shelter from the alpine wind and rain,
the Wallace brothers built a hut, up on the Bogong Plain.

---000---

Eighteen eighty nine they built me and I’m known as Wallace Hut.
With Snow Gum posts and wall beams, shingles split from Woollybut.
The father was a master with the mortise axe and adze...
the boys as fit as mallee bulls and fine hard working lads.
In just six weeks they finished, even so I’m built to last.
I’m just as sound as ever though a hundred years have passed.

Now, the Wallace boys would visit me for many happy years.
We shared the warmth on cold wet nights along with hopes and fears.
But then they didn't seem to come as often as before,
and years on end I wouldn’t see a soul pass through my door.
And then I had a visitor who, strangely, didn’t go
back down below the snowline when the rains turned into snow.

He was working for the Hydro Scheme at Keira for a while,
and I was home away from home and put him up in style.
He measured wind and rainfall and the thickness of the snow,
and wrote it down each day in books. What for, I just don’t know.
Eventually he left and I was on my own again
until the nineteen forties and the Boy Scouts bought me then.

Ever since, they’ve been my owners. Almost every year they send
some groups of Rover Scouts up here to spend a long week-end.
And now and then I get to meet a hiker from Falls Creek
or skier in snow season, but it varies week to week.
They keep me up to scratch and sometimes carry out repairs.
and in return I hope I give them respite from their cares.

Though it‘s quiet and it‘s peaceful here, at times I’ve had some frights.
Sometimes when summer bushfires come, I have some sleepless nights.
I almost burned in Thirty Nine and then Two Thousand Three...
but overall, these hundred years have been real kind to me.
Here in my grove of snow gums, I've seen seasons come and go.
I might just see a few more yet, with luck, you never know.

---000---

Arthur, Will and Stewart Wallace, if there’s nothing else remains,
your works are still remembered here, up on the Bogong Plains.
A testament to bushcraft, to your hard work and your skill,
the hut you gave your name to is a boon to travellers still.
The legacy you left us lends us shelter when in need.
A tribute to the pioneers...a tough resourceful breed.

[Maureen K Clifford]

Hi Will - how very topical your poem is

I was interested in the photos Mannie posted and then this just clarified something for me because you mention it nearly burnt down in 2003 - I thought it actually had burnt down, but perhaps that may have been another one of the huts up in the high country.

They are as you say a living testament to the bushmens skills of building from the raw materials available with the tools to hand. No power saws and electric drills and no Bunnings around the corner and here they stand in the harshest of conditions over a hundred years later - doubt that some of our jerrybuilt modern edifices will stand the same test of time. I love old buildings like this they are fascinating. Our shearing shed was about the same age as these huts and had been built without any nails - all Cobb and Co twitches and morticed??? joints, sapling bearers, big log uprights earth rammed and flitches for walls. Don't know what the original roof would have been but it sported a rusted gal iron one when we got there.

Really loved your poem and how you gave the shed a voice. Old buildings do have souls.

Cheers

Maureen

[Leonie]

Just beautiful Will, as always.

I couldn't help but think that the line ...

A testament to bushcraft, to your hard work and your skill,

pretty much also describes your poem.

[Maureen K Clifford]

well said Leonie - couldn't agree more

[Heather]

I also love the way you have given the hut a voice and thus enabled it to tell it's own story. Good one Will.

Heather

[manfredvijars]

Well done Will. That hut is in a perfect setting, just a few minutes walk from the aquduct, sheltered from the so'westers. National Parks have put picnic tables alongside the hut testament to it's 'terrorist' attraction. There's no bunking down inside the hut, except if you're stuck in really bad weather.

The biggest blight on the landscape is people 'loving' our wild places to death.
Was sheltered in Cope hut during the Spring melt and was surprised at the number of little brown pyramids under their paper blankets in the melting snow. As a result we're constrained to visit our (regulated) wild places under a multitude of leagal restraints.

It's very hard to "just go Bush" anymore ...

[Stephen Whiteside]

Manfred, I'm really impressed by the self-composting toilets they've built beside many of the huts - Federation Hut at Feathertop, Cleve Cole Hut at Bogong, and Vallejo Gantner at Macallister Springs, to name three. What is more, they often have fresh toilet paper, as well. On my last few walks in the Hotham area, I could have sworn 'Toilet Paper Man' was constantly observing me from behind a tree. Everywhere I went, there was a fresh roll of toilet paper. It is frustrating not being able to light an open fire in the alps any more, but I can also understand the reasons. Given the amount of traffic up there these days, and the limited budget under which National Parks operate, I think they do a pretty good job.

[Stephen Whiteside]

I'm visiting Spargo's Hut this weekend.


Red Robin Miner

(The story of Bill Spargo, gold prospector and alpine naturalist)

© Stephen Whiteside 12.09.04

Up in the mountains, there once lived a man,
In a rough little shed, searching for gold.
Each day he would wander, the ground he would scan,
In sunshine and rain, through heat and through cold.

He loved the high mountains, the change of the seasons.
He loved the wild creatures who made it their home;
The eagles, the emus, these were the reasons
He stayed in the highlands, testing its loam;

The stars in the night-time, the clouds in the morning,
Filling each vale like a mystical sea,
The blizzards that pounced with scarcely a warning,
The clear, freezing waters in creeks running free.

He risked all he owned in pursuit of his dreams.
Gold he would find, if he didn’t starve first.
He lived off the land, caught fish from the streams,
And tried all the plants, learnt the best from the worst.

He persevered tirelessly, year after year,
In deep, dismal gullies where gold might be found,
And reported the hazards which gave him most fear
Were branches that ancient gums dropped on the ground.

Along came a summer brim-full of foreboding,
Hotter and drier than any before.
Throughout the whole state soon great fires were exploding.
The ‘39 fires reached his hut with a roar.

He somehow survived. ‘Twas a very close thing.
He doused every flame through incredible heat.
A channed he’d dug from a fresh alpine spring
Provided his water; a marvellous feat.

Several days later he turned up in town.
He’d walked out alone, nearly blinded by smoke.
His voice, too, was gone, but not his renown.
In fact, it had grown for this durable bloke.

Soon he was back in the mountains once more.
The forests were gone now. The hill-sides were clear,
And valleys he never could visit before
Were suddenly open, to search without fear.

From all the old-timers, he’d heard it so often,
“Search all you like, but your plans they will stall.
“You can look till they bury you deep in your coffin.
“You will not find gold on the Kiewa fall.”

But now he was desperate. He’d searched every acre
Considered more likely. His savings were gone.
All he had left was his faith in his Maker,
And a woman in England who still spurred him on.

Testing the soil, and plotting the vector,
He found it quite soon on a prayer and a hunch.
He fell on a fortune, this lonely prospector,
Where cattlemen often had squatted for lunch.

Not far from Hotham, and close to Mount Loch,
Here was the object for which he’d risked all;
The end of his quest, this gold-studded rock
On Machinery Spur, on the Kiewa fall.

And who was there with him to share his relief?
Who was his witness? Who stood by his side?
‘Twas the little red robins who hopped on the reef
As this care-worn old prospector broke down and cried.

[Stephen Whiteside]

Actually, Manfred, part of the post I was trying to add the other day was to do with Cope Hut. Bill Spargo chose the site for Cope Hut. Charlie McNamara, the cattleman, told me a story about it. He encountered Bill on the road one day, and took him to task over it.

Charlie reckoned it was a terrible place to put a hut. Bill asked him why. Charlie went on to say that the view was great, and there was also plenty of fresh water available nearby, which was good.

But Charlie's big complaint was that there was no wood supply nearby. You had to walk a fair way to get your wood. And Charlie reckoned this was the most important thing. He couldn't believe Bill had made this mistake.

Bill was a pretty thin-skinned old fella, and told Charlie he wouldn't choose the site for any more huts, if that was the way he felt about it.

And Charlie told me felt sorry afterwards that he had said what he did. He hadn't meant to hurt Bill's feelings.

To my mind, stories like these are wonderful, and bring the bush alive. But, as others have pointed out, many such stories have been lost. I've collected a ton of stuff about Bill by interviewing people over the years. Eventually I plan to write a book. It's just a matter of finding the time!

The other thing about Cope Hut, of course, is that it was built for early tourists (skiers, etc.) to the area. It was so luxurious by the standards of the day that it was called the 'Menzies of the Plains', after the Hotel Menzies in Melbourne.

[manfredvijars]

A few more piccies ...