The Workers:
- John Alexander
- Kevin Phillips
- Chris Hopkins
- Paul Sheahan (with Val and children)
- Trevor Owens and Nick
- Andrew Glennie
- James Thom
- Arie de Bear (Coordinator)
- Andrew “Bake” Baker (NPWS carpenter) and son, Joe.
This wasn’t a 4WD trip but an opportunity to participate in an on-going project which undertakes valuable work to maintain the Kosciusko National Park heritage and at the same time create a positive profile for the club with NPWS.
I met with a group at Lanyon on Saturday morning and we travelled via Namadgi National Park and Shannons Flat meeting the Snowy Mountains Highway at Adaminaby. I hadn’t travelled this road before. It cuts quite a few kilometers off the trip although was extremely dusty meaning we had to travel fairly slowly at times when on-coming cars were around.
Adaminaby was notable for the motorbikes which must have numbered in the hundreds. There was apparently a major rally that weekend and we had to watch out for bikes travelling at speed between there and the Long Plain turnoff.
When we arrived at the hut we found that some members had arrived the previous day and Arie had been there most of the week. A fair amount of work had therefore already been done and the NPWS representative, known as Bake (?) was there to assign jobs to we newcomers.
We had a couple of junior helpers with us. Bake and Trevor’s teenage sons never stopped working the whole weekend and as reward for their efforts Bake took them down to the nearby river to try their hand at trout fishing while we prepared dinner on Saturday evening. Trevor’s son came back very pleased with himself as he had caught a nice brown trout which he decided to take home rather than cook on the spot.
It was my first time at Long Plain Hut and it is one of the nicest camping spots I have seen. To settle down and enjoy the surroundings after the days work was great. We had a good campfire going and settled in after dinner for a chat and refreshments. The NPWS Ranger responsible for Long Plain Hut arrived in a Landcruiser with a colleague and joined us around the campfire. Both were young ladies who obviously enjoyed their work – they stayed the night in the hut and joined us in the work on Sunday.
Tasks undertaken by us over the weekend included:
- reconstruction of the top of the chimney (as a result of which John Alexander’s feet finished up a semi-permanent 30 degree angle to his legs)
- painting the outside of the hut a cute pink
- building a heavy steel lining into the fireplace
- repairing the creek fed water supply
- replacing and realigning the roof guttering and ridgecap
- scraping and sanding the internal timber wall boards
It was agreed we needed to put up some sort of plaque to identify the work being done by the LRC and that further work needed to be done to repair some of the internal walls. The work is not strenuous and I recommend it as a worthwhile way to support both NPWS and the Club.
Report: Andrew Glennie
Photos: Paul Sheahan
