Laying tracks in the High Country

On top of Mount Howitt, the air is thick with Bogong moths. Thousands of wings swirl from the rocks and crevices on the darkening mountain, and stars as thick and dense as land are starting to show. On the horizon I can just make out the lights of the ski lodge of Bulla, now quiet for the summer, but this is just a faint human speck amongst these giant hills, that have a bare, immense presence in the growing dusk.

I’ve just spent the day, pick axe in hand, leavening a walking track in the remote High Country of Victoria, Australia. The local Parks Ranger Wayne is about 65 years old. Despite being 3 times my age he is 5 times as sprightly, and I know that he still has a few hours work in him, despite having spent the day bounding up the mountain to bring us volunteers the heavy rubber matting that we are laying to stop track erosion and keep the mountains passable for the few hundred people that venture this far every year.

I am pooped – I can barely get my pack off my shoulders, or bend my knees to sit, and I know I must smell pretty awful. But somehow, though I am sunburnt and aching, I feel completely content watching the sun set on this vast mountainscape with its withered trees, tiny alpine flowers and foreboding names such as ‘Hell’s Window’, ‘The Devil’s Staircase’ and ‘Cross Cut Saw’.

Trekking in the high country is more than a quick day trip. It’s a four-hour drive from Melbourne to Licola in country Victoria, along a highway studded with signs to country towns like ‘Yea’ (pronounced ‘Yay’!). After crossing the Macalister River via seated flying fox and collecting packs and supplies from the Wollangarra homestead on the far bank, it takes another 3 hours driving along sickeningly narrow and winding mountain roads, and a 2 hour hike to reach the campsite. And that’s before 4 full days of digging, carrying, and walking! No wonder I can barely speak, let alone rouse myself to see why Ranger Wayne is calling us all over to the campfire.

Wayne is prodding at a cast iron pot that looks like it has been sitting on embers for a few hours. I was ready to eat wheat biscuits and vegemite for dinner, but somehow this man of miracles has cooked a lamb stew and some rough damper bread. I can’t figure out where he pulled the lamb from, or the pot for that matter (I assumed his hike pack held normal provisions like clothes and a tent, but it seems I was happily wrong). However, when he emerges from his tent after mains with a homemade blackberry-apple pie, and a carton of custard, I give up trying to figure out how he does it. It seems that it’s better to take Wayne’s genius as a given, and get stuck into the food.