This column's recent exposé on our beloved high-country huts including the former Lake Albina Lodge prompted one Canberra man to confess to his long love affair with the now demolished landmark.
The timber and stone eyrie overlooking one of Australia's most dramatic cirque lakes so enamoured Steve Allen of Charnwood that he admits he "used to virtually live there in the winter from the 1970s until they pulled it down in the early 1980s".
On average Steve bunked down 50 to 60 nights each winter in the remote hut. Gee, talk about a home away from home.
"Being above the tree line was another world, it was like being on the moon," he fondly recalls. "To see that country after a blizzard is just absolutely mind boggling."
While the lofty lodge was set amongst some of the most dramatic winter scenery our country has to offer, with a lack of heating, inside it could be a bit chilly.
"But it wasn't too cold if you rugged up," Steve reveals. "When I was up there by myself, I just had my J&H brand outdoor stuff, sleeping bag and coat and snow gear."
"On weekends it would sometimes get busier and you'd strip down to long johns and a jumper and woollen pants, so you were pretty warm".
While the lodge officially boasted 12 bunks, six on either side of the hallway, according to Steve, you could "squeeze a few more inside".
"Two could sleep on the couch in the living room, six under the table [!], three on the bench on the other side... they were good weekends," he muses. I bet.
Despite its knock-out location, Steve often had the lodge to himself. And at no expense, except to ensure he left it clean.
"When I first went to Albina, the mountains weren't the mad house they are today and I'd often be the only one there," he recalls.
When Steve did have the lodge to himself, he'd set up camp on the couch with that view looking over the lake.
One time Steve was awoken with windows violently starting to rattle. Was it an avalanche?
"I quickly stepped out on the veranda just in time to see three RAAF fighter planes roar up Lady Northcote's Canyon, only about 200 feet above ground level, and straight over the top of me. One. Two. Three. It was unbelievable."
But Steve didn't make regular trips to Albina just to soak up the views.
"I learnt to ski on the main range - instead of starting on the flat country, I went straight to the top," he reveals. "Once you got the bug for backcountry exploring, it was an obsession".
"I'd leave the lodge about 10am and ski to Kosciuszko summit and the Ramsheads, next day do Mt Townsend up over the Mueller's Gap and Alice Rawson Peak.
"Sometimes, I'd sit on a rock enjoying a view, and hear a thump, and discover a 100-foot section of cornice had fallen off and was dozing its way down the face.
"Once I skied up to the fallen cornice for a closer look and the ice was blue, six-foot-thick glacial blue.
"I'm just glad I did that back then because it doesn't snow like it used to," he laments.
And Steve's not just talking about mid-winter; the back country season was often at its best in spring and sometimes right into early summer.
"Every October long weekend about 30 of us met at the lodge - from all over Australia, it was so much fun".
But living, albeit temporarily, in Australia's highest lodge wasn't without its challenges.
First there were the white-outs.
"If you ventured far from the lodge, you could easily lose sight of it," Steve says.
Then there were the accidents.
"One bloke in his 50s broke his leg down on the lake at about 4pm in the afternoon," Steve says. "By the time we got him to the lodge, it was dark."
Two medical students who were fortuitously staying at the lodge "put a splint on him and quietened him down".
"It was back in the hippy days of the 70s, so there was a bit of 'green' around," he admits.
"Still squirming in agony, the poor bloke asked if it was any good as a painkiller so a few guests rolled one up and well you should have seen him, he was the life of the party. We couldn't shut him up all night."
But in 1983, Steve's regular trips to Lake Albina Lodge came to a grinding halt.
"I was devastated when Parks pulled it down, especially when at the same time they were building Blue Cow, and Perisher and Guthega were pushing on, but apparently the lodge just didn't fit in with the environment.
"I remember the last time I went there; they'd just demolished the lodge, it was just depressing," Steve says. "I just can't bring myself to go back, I explore other areas with high-country huts instead."
But Steve is all too aware that times have changed. And not just the decline in snow.
"If the lodge was still standing, booming mountain popularity means you'd probably have to book a few years in advance to get a spot for a weekend, let alone for 60 nights," he muses.
Did You Know? Lake Albina is one of four cirque (formed by glacial erosion during the last Ice Age) lakes in the Kosciuszko National Park. While Hedley Tarn is also a glacial lake, it is a moraine-dammed tarn rather than a true amphitheatre-shaped cirque lake.
The two-storey rock and timber lodge was built in 1951 at the base of Mt Townsend, a lone place of refuge near the windswept western faces of the Main Range.
The building was mainly paid for through a £25 lifetime membership fee for people joining the Ski Tourers Association (STA). More than £2500 was raised. After it opened, guests paid a small fee of a few shillings per night to help cover maintenance costs.
The Kosciuszko State Park Trust (a forerunner to Kosciuszko National Park) granted the STA's request for the site and even helped to supply and transport materials, including the prefabricated walls, to the site.
During its construction with predominantly voluntary labour, Giovanni 'Jack ' Piazza, the parks' chief stonemason, lived at Seamans Hut, about a four-kilometre walk across the roof of Australia to and from his job each day.
The 80 tonnes of building material, some pre-fabricated, was brought in by truck and packhorse, but the last 250 metres was carried by hand. Stone for the foundations came from the other side of the valley via flying fox.
According to Deirdre Slattery and Graeme Worboys, in Kosciuszko: A Great National Park (Envirobook, 2020), "the tracks made by vehicles during the construction became rapidly eroding scars across the Main Range, which can still be seen today. This damage was compounded when the SMHEA [Snowy Scheme] also used them".
The STA had sole use of the lodge until 1969 when it was compulsorily acquired by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and made available to the public.
The lodge was removed in 1983 for several reasons, including "issues with sewage flowing in the lake".
Rating: Easy
Clue: It really is as easy as ...
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email received after 10am, Saturday June 27 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Peter Harris of Latham who was first to correctly identify last week's photo as the chimney at the former Levy Store at Michelago. It's right next to the northbound lane of the Monaro Highway opposite the ruins of the Hibernian Inn, about 1.7km the Canberra side of the Ryrie Street turn-off to Michelago. You can't miss it.
On June 1, 1866, the Clarke Brothers bushranger gang raided the town of Michelago, robbing this store and taking over the Hibernian Inn, then owned by Thomas Kennedy. Their haul, which included a large assortment of clothing, food and tobacco, filled 12 three-bushel bags and demonstrates that many bushranging raids were as much for their need of essential supplies as they were for more glittering bounty. Amongst the clothing pilfered were five pairs of ladies gloves, and eight pairs of ladies white stockings, a scarlet petticoat and a silk spencer which were later distributed to their network of female sympathisers.
After the raid on the store, the bushrangers headed back across the road to the inn where stories abound of the publican and barman "being forced to drink copious amounts of grog" while the gang relieved all patrons of their cash and valuables.
CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
