Victorian High Country Hall of Fame plan modelled on Stockman’s Hall of Fame

EXCLUSIVE: IT HAS been immortalised in Australian folklore — and now Victoria’s High Country could be celebrated in bricks and mortar.

Whip it up: Mountain Cattlemen’s Association of Victoria president Graeme Stoney, on his farm near Mansfield last week, says a hall of fame will help preserve history. Picture: Chloe Smith

EXCLUSIVE: IT HAS been immortalised in Australian folklore — and now Victoria’s High Country could be celebrated in bricks and mortar.

The Victorian Coalition will this weekend make a $200,000 election commitment towards a High Country Hall of Fame.

The pledge will be announced by Nationals leader and opposition agriculture spokesman Peter Walsh at the Mountain Cattlemen’s Association of Victoria’s Annual Get Together at Omeo on Saturday.

Mr Walsh said a proposed hall of fame would “pay tribute to the people and industries that have shaped this unique region’s history” and would be established in consultation with high country communities to determine the best location and design.

The Coalition funding will go towards supporting expressions of interest with the best three bids to receive financial assistance and help from Regional Development Victoria to prepare detailed business cases.

MCAV president and former Liberal MP Graeme Stoney said the establishment of a hall of fame was critical, particularly for mountain cattlemen who had been “gradually removed from most of the high country” in light of the 2005 ban on cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park.

“With that removal has been the loss of much knowledge as to how the high country works and how best to manage it,” Mr Stoney said.

“If this knowledge, history and culture isn’t recorded and displayed in such facilities as in a Hall of Fame, soon it will be lost forever.”

The proposed Hall of Fame could be established along similar lines to the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame at Longreach in Queensland, which has hosted more than one million visitors since it was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.