| When I was a child I thought that any old man I saw in the High Country was a god. Now we have grey hair I know that we’re just clapped out, happy old dinosaurs. There never has been and never will be anything god-like about grey hair! Thankfully grey hair hasn’t stopped us from walking in the footsteps of Strzelecki and enjoying the High Country. Age might prevent us from climbing the Hannel Spur but it won’t deter us from looking out from the Strzelecki Memorial on Geehi flats near the Swampy Plains River. If you are coming from the other direction, you might choose to pause by Lake Jindabyne to pay your respects to the great explorer Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki. Appropriately the arm of his memorial statue points to the High Country.
The summit is a gathering point with visitors arriving there from different directions, some walking up the road from Charlotte’s Pass and others coming from the Main Range Trail. We took the easy way from Thredbo by catching the Crackenback Chairlift ($49 for oldies over 65) to the Eagle’s Nest and then walking the 6.5km along a raised wire mesh trail leading to the summit. A strong headwind made the first, long hill difficult but thereafter the walk became easier.
It was late February, almost 186 years since Strzelecki ascended and named Mount Kosciuszko after his Revolutionary hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko (1746 – 1817) and the wildflowers were past their best. I was wondering where Strzelecki had found a flower to send to his love Adyna Turno back in Poland when I saw a clump of snow daisies, some of which were still flowering above Lake Cootapatamba, the lake that seems to perch in a dip in a slope beneath Mt Kosciuszko. Lake Cootapatamba is a source of the Swampy Plains River that flows into the Murray River at Bringenbrong.
A young German couple who stopped to admire the Lake explained that they’d been working at Thredbo’s Alpine Hotel for three months and were leaving in a couple of days time. Surprisingly for people whose homeland has some of the most beautiful mountains in Europe, they told us that they love Kosciuszko and had walked to the summit no less than fifteen times! I had always known that Kosciuszko had the power to impress but this young couple confirmed that it holds something special, not just for locals but also for its visitors. For me, born and bred in the High Country, Kosciuszko has etched its hauntingly bleak beauty into my psyche.
Along with a steady stream of visitors, we were serenaded by the eerie call of masses of sleek, black crows as we zig-zagged up the last kilometre from Rawson’s Pass to the Summit. Walkers returning from the Summit were cheerfully telling us we only had a short distance to climb!
While the raised wire mesh trail is being completed, a temporary aluminium staircase has been provided for the final few metres up to the cairn marking the summit. Eventually this trail will provide disabled access and the Strzelecki memorial plaque will be restored to the summit when the work on the trail is completed.
If we needed proof of the summit’s magnetic powers, we saw what could only be mainland Australia’s highest, impromptu picnic party from which we picked up the cadences and rhythms of many different languages.
Mt Kosciuszko is located almost in the centre of Australia’s mainland’s highest alpine water sources. The summit offers a captivating view over the fragile source as it divides the flow into the Snowy River flowing to the east and into the Murray River system flowing down the western side of the Great Dividing Range.
Little wonder that local indigenous mythology places the source of the Snowy and of the Swampy Plains Rivers as the land of the rainmaker. The rainmaker is also winter’s snowmaker. In fact the rainmaker is any natural phenomena associated with rain, snow and water. In spring the warmth that melts the snow and the sphagnum mosses captures, stores and helps regulate the waters gathering into streams that feed our rivers.
Kosciuszko is popular with the crows as they clean up edible remains after the picnickers. In fine weather in the warmer months when there is no snow, the summit is one of the best crow dining facilities in Australia. From there they fly to their other perches high in the rocks of the Ramshead peaks from where they can survey their other food sources scattered across the High Country. We probably disappointed our avian companions when we wrapped up the remains of our picnic and packed them into to our daypack.
As there didn’t seem to be many grey-haired visitors on the summit while we were there, I felt very grateful that I am still fit enough to relive memories of other journeys and to rediscover the pleasures of sitting eating sandwiches on the summit. The walk reminded me of my good fortune and to share my pleasure with those who can’t do it for themselves. The least I can do is make a small donation to returned service personnel who are totally and permanently disabled as a result of their service and represented by the TPI Association. I hope others will do something similar.
Strzelecki Memorial Plaques at Geehi Plains |
Strzelecki Monument, a gift from Poland, unveiled in Jindabyne in 1988 |
I hope we will remain fit enough to repeat the journey and to climb other hills and mountains. The call of the High Country is an incentive to remain as fit as possible until age gets the better of me. Each time I climb a mountain, I will give something for those who can’t answer the call of high places like Mt Kosciuszko. Over the years I have experienced Mt Kosciuszko in different seasons but with advancing years, I will be quite content if we can choose fine weather for our expeditions.
Text and photos Honor Auchinleck
Originally published in TPI Victoria Incorporated
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