By Julie Power
For nearly 150 years, heritage huts in the high country of Kosciuszko National Park have saved lives and provided refuge to skiers, hikers and workers when the weather turned bad.
In January, hiker Hadi Nazari, 23, survived nearly two weeks in the mountains, helped by two muesli bars he reportedly found in one of the 60 mountain huts.
The huts in the 19th century and today.Credit:
Now, 10 heritage huts destroyed by bushfires in 2019-20 have been rebuilt, with the completion of Round Mountain Hut last month. It was a community effort by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and the latest generation of families, like the Bradleys and the O’Briens, who built and used the huts, and the conservation group the Kosciuszko Huts Association.
NPWS project officer Megan Bowden said the huts, which date back to the 1870s, had saved many a life in the mountains. “One minute it can be sunny, the next it can be a whiteout,” she said. “People will ski and walk to these huts as a visitor destination, but they also provide a good shelter in bad weather.”
The huts were also like “little living museums” of the area’s history. Bowden said they represented the many different uses of the land, “ranging from the early graziers to timber getters, prospectors and the construction of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and then later those who built them for use for skiing and walking in the area”.
NSW Heritage Minister Penny Sharpe and NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service project officer Megan Bowden visiting Four Mile Hut in May after 10 huts destroyed were rebuilt.Credit: NSW Parks and Wildlife Service
Each hut had been built in its own style and from local materials – and rebuilt in that style after the fires, some using timber milled from burnt trees that had fallen nearby.
“So there are river stone huts down at Geehi on the Murray Valley, the log cabins at Pretty Plains and Vickerys Hut, and the split slab hut of Cascade Hut and Oldfields,” she said.
After visiting Four Mile Hut, built in 1932, Environment and Heritage Minister Penny Sharpe said it was wonderful that the hut had been brought back to life just metres from its charred remains.
Sharpe said: “They are not just important places for emergency shelter but also gems of the high country which have contributed to the rich heritage of NSW.”
Most of the huts are small and contain a bed, table and a fire place.
Bowden said they were built from whatever could be found or carted in. Local fencing wire was sometimes used to tie wood together “using No.8 wire and a Queensland hitch [knot]”.
“It was not like they had a local hardware down the road or Mitre 10 nearby,” she said.
Free to use, there is only rule. Bowden said: “It is bush etiquette to leave the fire set for the next person so they find it ready to keep them warm and dry.”
Local business Tom’s Outdoors documented the rebuilding of the huts on YouTube, including the airlift by a helicopter of Linesmans Hut.
President of Kosciuszko Huts Association Pip Brown said the rebuilding program has also trained agency staff and volunteers in traditional construction techniques to enable continuation of heritage building skills such as splitting slabs with a maul and froe, and log cabin construction, to help keep these skills alive and maintain these huts for future generations. “It was wonderful to see so many families associated with the huts at the hut openings, and goes to show the social connections with the place are still strong.”
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