KOSCIUSZKO HUTS ASSOCIATION
Matthew Higgins’ latest non-fiction book Bold Horizon: High-country, Place, People and Story, will be launched at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, on 11 April by Max Bourke AM, a founding committee member of KHA, inaugural Director of the Australian Heritage Commission and someone who has walked and skied in the Snowies for 50 years.
KHA members will be very welcome at the launch.
Bookings are essential and can be made once the event is listed on the NLA’s website, booking either via the website (nla.gov.au/bookings) or by phone on 02 6262 1424.
The book is being published by Rosenberg Publishing of Sydney and will be available broadly through good bookshops following the launch.
An interested relative contacted KHA with information on a hut in Victoria.
KHA's original webmaster, Olaf Moon, sought information about all Australian huts, not just those in KNP.
You can read the new infomation on the 'Railway Hut' in our Victorian huts section.
Paul Jennings sent in a report on painting at Tantangara Hut KNP. The weather was very hot and a swim in nearby Alpine Creek was a well deserved reward!
Thanks very much to Gerry and Jenny for their help on the day.
Photos: Paul Jennings 2018
Read more ...Charlie Carter, Hermit, Healer and High Country Legend. 149pp Published by Tabletop Press 2017
The author takes you for a walk in the high country, while he researches the life of one man who lived rough in one of the wildest parts between Crackenback, Upper Murray and Snowy Rivers. Charlie Carter, a miner, brumby runner, hut-builder, philosopher and recluse, born in Victoria, built his first hut of corrugated iron and flattened tins on the Ingeegoodbee. Requiring few material possesions, he survived in rugged mountain countyr existing on dingo and rabbit trapping, but still found time to publish papers on his various beliefs (featured in the appendix to the book)
Living ultimately in Tin Mine Huts, where his lifeless body was found in 1952 in the mines storehouse, his body's retreival becomes a story in itself. Klaus has made use of his rich load of oral histories collected over the years, and includes interesting journal entries of Jack Ray and Herb Hain from a 1949 brumby running expedition in Carter's coutry. As Herb said, speaking of Charlie, "Not many people were ever lost in the bush with Charlie. He was a good bushman."
The author completes his story with a detailed account of the reconstruction of Carter's Tin Mine Huts which were in bad repair by the 1980's. The Illawarra Alpine Club began work in 1982, and with the help of KHA, continued over the years. An amazing effort. Today Carter's Huts stand proud, offering a safe refuge for anyone caught out in wild weather, thanks to these KHA workers.
Klaus has illustrated his book with many interesting photos which high country hikers will recognise. Charlie Carter's reclusive life and his huts have been a story worth telling.
Reviewed by Rosemary Curry.
