Grazing and Pastoral
A Youtube video of a trip to Wheelers Hut was submitted by a member...
Everyone loves home-made blackberry jam. The pesky plants that can overrun a house in a few years bear, arguably, the most delicious of berries.
Boobee Hut is a 2009 rebuild of a Salt & Harness Shed built for John Cheney jnr c1930. The original residence at the Boobee was a two-room weatherboard cottage just north of the hut which was built by either Cheney around 1920, or by Bill Byatt in the 1890s when he was mining for gold on Diggers Creek.
Botherum Hut was built by the Willis family in 1962 on a lease they ran sheep on over the period 1927-66. It was reputedly the last stockmen’s hut to be built prior to the termination of grazing in the Snowy Mountains and is the most simplistic form of stockmen’s hut remaining in the Kosciuszko National Park today.
Cesjacks Hut was built in 1944 as a stockmens’ shelter for Cecil O’Brien and John Bolton. Initially known as Cec & Jacks Hut, the name became abbreviated over time. 1500 sheep and 35 cattle were brought up from near Kalkite to their snow lease each summer from 1943 to 1958, when grazing was terminated above 1370m elevation.
This is an extract from the Conservation Study produced by David Scott in 1995 for the NPWS.
By David Scott
From a paper given at the Australian Historical Association conference in Canberra, July 2018
Disappointment Spur Hut was constructed by the Snowy Mountains Authority c1956 as a maintenance shelter for the Munyang River Aqueduct, accommodating staff servicing the weirs and pipeline which extend 9.7 km from the creek just east of the hut in a downhill grade around the valley to the surge tank and penstock above Guthega Power Station.
During a recent workparty at Pretty Plain Hut we discovered this eulogy in the logbook to Des Healy (1960-2019) by his son Josh Healy of Wodonga.
Reproduced here as text:
A GRAVE AND ITS STORY. By John Gale, 10 March 1903
Whilst at Peppercorn some of our party paid a visit to a lonely grave out on the plain about half a mile from the homestead.
Gladys Weston recounted her memories of cooking in the mountains to Rosemary Curry, in an interview recorded in 1988.
We used to make lovely bread in a big camp oven, I couldn't lift it, a huge thing. You wouldn't have much fire underneath - if you did, you'd burn the bread.
In 1988, Rosemary Curry recorded the following interview with Gladys Weston.
Gladys Weston: After Pop got a letter, he'd have to light the lamp to read it, and then we'd put it out. Kerosene was dangerous to carry. We used candles.