Chances are, if you've driven the Snowy Mountains Highway between Adaminaby and Kiandra, you've passed Sawyers Hill Rest House, also known as Sawyers Hut. Sitting just metres from the roadside, it is probably the most recognisable and easiest to visit of all the high-country huts. But hidden behind its timber walls is a little-known story that has largely slipped from public memory - one as strange as any in the mountains.
On a cold October night in 1952, three men bunked down inside the hut. By morning, two were dead. What happened inside the little roadside refuge initially baffled investigators.
Located about nine kilometres on the Cooma side of Kiandra, the hut was then a lonely stopping place on the old mountain road. Built in the early 1900s, the rest house provided shelter for travellers and served as an exchange point for mail and supplies between Adaminaby and Kiandra. In winter, it was a vital sanctuary, with heavy snow regularly making travel through the mountains treacherous.
But the three men who arrived there in October 1952 were far from your average travellers. Several days earlier, they had stolen a truck loaded with farm supplies from a Cooma garage, planning to head north to Dubbo. Before leaving town, the brazen thieves were spotted drinking at the Cooma Hotel. They later continued to the Adaminaby Hotel before heading up the mountain road to Sawyers Hill, where they settled in for the night. What happened next would puzzle police and become one of the most bizarre episodes in high-country history.
Among the farm supplies in the back of the stolen truck were bottles wrapped in brown paper. To Ronald Norman and Arthur Ayre, they looked enough like wine to warrant opening. They must have been incredibly thirsty, for they guzzled down the contents. The third man, Eric Turner, did not touch the bottles. Assuming his companions were simply sleeping off a heavy night of drinking, he curled up in the truck cabin to sleep.
However, when morning came, Norman and Ayre were dead, lying face down on the floorboards in front of the hut's fireplace. Confronted with the grisly discovery, Turner fled in a panic. And can you blame him? Two dead mates and no obvious explanation for their deaths was hardly a good look, especially when he was already on the run from the law.
That is where this already strange story takes an unexpected turn.
After a group of trout fishermen discovered the bodies a couple of days later, the first police to arrive on the scene looked closely at the labels on the bottles and immediately realised they weren't looking for a murderer. Instead, they feared they were looking for another body.
Concerned that Turner may have also sampled the liquid, detectives desperately searched the surrounding mountain roads and ski huts. Had he driven off a cliff? Was he lying dead in a ditch?
But because Turner hadn't touched the bottles, he had actually made it safely to Dubbo, where he was eventually tracked down and arrested over the vehicle theft.
Reporting on the case on October 7, 1952, The Cooma Monaro Express summed up the bizarre series of events perfectly: "The finding of two dead bodies in a hut alongside the main road ... has provided a mystery, the solution of which seems likely to be both simple and fantastic."
Indeed, contrary to the many versions of the story whispered around high-country campfires decades later, there was no murderer lurking in the shadows, no mountain ambush, and no great conspiracy. Two men had simply failed to read the warning labels on a bottle of agricultural poison. It was a tragedy in every sense of the word.
While the story isn't widely documented in most modern alpine histories, it has at least found its way into a NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service account of Sawyers Hill, which notes that two men who stole a truck from Cooma "accidentally ended their own lives" after drinking arsenic, believing it to be alcohol.
It is ironic that a place built specifically to keep travellers safe from harsh mountain weather became the setting for such a grim event. Unfortunately, that darkness seems to have lingered, for the hut has faced more than its fair share of challenges ever since.
The original hut was replaced by the Department of Main Roads in the 1960s, but then the 2003 bushfires tore through and left it badly damaged. National Parks stepped in to rebuild it, only for the catastrophic 2019-20 Black Summer fires to raze it.
But the high country doesn't give up easily. The hut was rebuilt once more in 2022, and today it is right back to doing what it does best: welcoming thousands of winter motorists driving past.
So next time you pull over at Sawyers Hill for a cuppa, or even a play in the snow, spare a thought for the strange events that unfolded here on that fateful night in 1952. Oh, and it's probably best you don't drink from a bottle in a brown paper bag. At least not without reading the label on the bottle first.
To reduce the risk of future fire damage, all the timber used in the 2022 rebuild of Sawyers Hut was heavily treated with fire retardant before being erected. The windowsills were also sharply angled and covered with flattened corrugated iron to prevent dangerous embers from lodging on them during an attack. Fingers crossed this fourth incarnation stands the test of time.
This column's recent musings about road signs - including the sticker-plastered 90 Mile Straight sign on the Nullarbor - prompted readers to share their own examples.
After a recent trip along the Gibb River Road, Maureen and Andy Marshall of Nicholls sent a photo of a road-condition sign barely visible beneath a forest of stickers.
While stickers can obscure important information, here it isn't problematic, for since 2018, new digital signs displaying road conditions were erected at both ends of the road (near Derby and Kununurra) and the wooden sticker-covered signs relocated to adjacent rest areas. Phew!
Meanwhile, Murray Upton of Belconnen turned back the clock with photos from his 1967 trip across the Nullarbor in his 1962 EK Holden.
"In 1967 road signs on the Nullarbor were vandal free!" he exclaims, adding '"but it was hot".
"Back then whether the road was straight or not was not a concern," he says. "There was no bitumen to be seen in those days; the importance was whether the road was actually trafficable.
"By the time we drove from Ceduna to Penong the car was boiling! We stopped under a tree and waited for a cool change. The local policeman offered our three kids a cold bath which was readily accepted." Ah, those were the days.
Still on the 90 Mile Straight, Tony May of Pearce recalls a cycling adventure.
"With three other cyclists and a support vehicle towing camping gear, we began at Mallacoota and finished at Cape Leeuwin.
"Reaching the 90 Mile Straight, we camped in the scrub before tackling the stretch the next day, its completion signalled by the leading rider with a hand signal."
They covered the journey in four weeks, averaging 125 kilometres a day.
"Fun times," Tony concludes.
Mmm... I think rather I'd be in Murray's Holden, despite the heat.
Rating: Easy - Medium
Cryptic Clue: Take care near here. Bonus points if you can explain the purpose of the submerged pavers
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to [email protected]. The first correct email received after 10am, Saturday August 22 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Geoffrey McDougall of O'Connor who was the first reader to correctly identify last week's photo. "It's the pedestrian bridge between the 'mainland' and Aspen (or my less preferred name of QEII) Island on which resides the Carillon," reports Geoffrey who was present "when QEII declared the Carillon open in April 1970". "My grandfather made us kinders stand to attention when the national anthem played (God Save the Queen). Another era." Sure was.
"I remember your series about staircases to nowhere and wonder if you've ever done a similar one on gates or doors to nowhere?" asks Harriet Elvin.
Well, I haven't but it seems Harriet may have kickstarted things with this gate at Urambi Hills.
"The fences adjoining it seem to have disappeared long ago (you can see a very small section of wire to the left of the gate), so it's presumably from an old pastoral lease," reports Harriet, adding, "now the gate stands in solitary splendour!"
The gate reminds me of this stand-alone gate at Lanyon Homestead just below the café.
Are there other 'gates to nowhere' lurking in our midst?
CONTACT TIM: Email: [email protected] or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
