Huts!

I can’t recall willingly staying in many huts while bushwalking, usually finding them crowded, damp and cold. There have been exceptions, of course, like finding myself on top of Mt Howitt and realising that the tent was still in the boot of the car parked down in the Howqua River valley. The Mac Springs hut was very welcome that day, especially as the weather turned a bit bleak and we found ourselves stuck there for a couple of nights. Sad thing was – we weren’t alone. A particular pest was the fellow bushwalker who spilled Shellite all over the table and added a match to the mess. My Trangia was quickly engulfed along with a few other items – like my dinner.

Many of the huts in Victoria's alpine area have burnt down. I think that bushwalker must have been around quite a bit.

Edmonsons Hut circa 1990

One hut that proved to be a welcome sight was Edmonsons Hut on the Bogong High Plains. We had made camp near the hut and spent the day skiing down various gullies in lovely weather. Clambering back up after one run, visibility had dropped to a few feet. With the gully on our right, when it should it be on our left, and no visible landmarks to be seen we sat and thought “Bugger”.

We considered our options and concluded that we had probably clambered up the wrong gully and so decided to ski across the contour, keeping the downslope to our right, hoping to find some landmark or our tracks. A copse of snowgums appeared out of the mist that we recognised as the copse of snowgums near the hut. Given how alike each copse of snowgums is, this was either brilliant recognition of minor details or pure luck. From the snowgums we saw the hut and soon we had hot coffee in our hands.

Late last century, I took my son for his first overnight hike. He was six years old and so I thought a six kilometre hike would be good and picked Ritchies Hut as the destination. From Eight Mile, the track wandered above the Howqua River. My son carried a few bits and pieces in a backpack while I carried a tent, food, stuffed kangaroo and other goodies. The plan was maybe to stay in the hut, maybe our tent. When my son saw the actual hut he quickly decided on the tent. It was dark, dirty and had the feeling of that there would be things crawling across the floor in the middle of the night. Ritchies Hut burnt down in 2007 and was rebuilt in 2009.



Ritchies Hut 1999 - burnt down and rebuilt since then

Federation Hut was built in 1969, burnt down in 2003 and rebuilt in 2004. It’s a lovely new hut, possibly one of the more comfortable in the alps.  I was there Australia Day, 2009. The area was crowded with tents … and the hut empty. Maybe in winter it gets used. At least one government Minister has visited in winter, famously needing to be rescued after falling off an icy Mount Feathertop.

Federation Hut, 2009

In the King River Valley is King River Hut. Or was ... it burnt down in a bushfire and I think has been rebuilt since. We spent a night or two there after attempt number two to hike to Mount Cobbler, some twenty years after attempt number one. The first attempt was thwarted by Greg demanding we use a cross-country shortcut that saw us wandering aimlessly in the scrub for quite some time. The second attempt failed because a third of our tucker was accidently left in the cupboard at home and some crows feasted on another third. We survived by eating what was left.

The hut wasn't really choice accomodation and so we camped.

King River Hut, 2001. Burnt down 2006. 

A couple of huts that haven’t burnt down are Wallaces Hut and Cope Hut. You can drive along a bitumen road to these two huts – give or take a few hundred metres – which gives them little in the way of being remote huts and more of a feel of being a tourist attraction. (Given the increased level of access, I expect they may burn down shortly.) My plan was to ski out there this winter. Better make that next winter now.

Cope Hut

Wallaces Hut

A true tourist hut that I also wanted to visit this winter is Craigs Hut. A film set surrounded by four wheel drives on most weekends, the hut was built for The Man for Snowy River as an empty shell, fell into disrepair after filming was completed, rebuilt and fitted out inside by local four wheel drive groups, burnt down in the 2006 bushfires and then rebuilt, but with a tin roof rather than the original wooden one. The roof question annoyed many people as the hut was no longer ‘original’. Given that was a film set to begin with, the criticism is a tad unusual.

Criags Hut - the one built after after it burnt down. Poor quality photo taken with my phone - but you can see the tin roof.

So, that’s half a dozen or so of the huts that I have visited. Only another couple of hundred to go.