July–August 2015 107H
AD THERE not been mist swirl-
ing all around as we charged
up The Long Spur, we would
have glimpsed the twisting Mitta Mitta
River through gaps between the papery
snow gums. Instead, with the vapour
obscuring all but the 20m ahead of us,
we pushed past bulging bushes of
alpine pepper and plum pine so tall
they clawed at my cheeks as I hunched
over my horse’s neck and held on.
There are several steep tracks
leading up Mt Bogong. We were riding
The Long Spur – a sheer, winding path
up the mountain’s southern flank- having left our camp at Big River
that morning. We’d spent the previous
day near the town of Glen Valley at
Mittagundi’s annual bush dance and
festival; this working farm runs an
outdoor education program and its
New Year celebrations offered a chance
for the horses to catch their breath.
That reprieve seemed far away,
however, as we struggled upwards along
the overgrown – often indiscernible –
track. The Bairds are the only opera-
tors with a licence to take horses over
Bogong, and, apart from the handful of
pack trips they lead up there each year,
Long Spur is little used.
It wasn’t until we stopped in a
pretty clearing, where tiny moths
fluttered about our heads and sprigs of
pink trigger-plant flowers pushed up
from the ground, that we discovered a
packhorse was missing. After stum-
bling up a steep, rocky section of track
she’d become stuck and had to be
freed by Lin, who then removed the
packs from the discomfited horse and
loaded them onto another.
The packing of a horse is consid-
ered serious bushcraft, one from
which some mountain cattlemen
working for surveyors and tourists up
until the 1940s made a living. Gear
needs to be evenly balanced and
positioned so as to avoid sores on the
animal’s back and ribs, and the
practice is the cornerstone of any
successful expedition. Tim Cope, the
AG Society’s 2006 Adventurer of
the Year, trained with the Bairds
before he ventured on his three-year
journey from Mongolia to Hungary in
2004 (AG 89), as have many others.As we traversed Rocking Stone
Saddle on our final day, there was no
sign of the weather that had plagued us
up the mountain. The azure sky was
clear and the sun so bright that we
squinted against its glare. Our uninter-
rupted view of the rolling High Plains,
cloaked in their blue-grey eucalypt
haze, was dazzling; from this height we
could see as far as the Main Range
of Mt Kosciuszko to the north-east and
Mt Buller and beyond to the south.
Before we made the final push down
Eskdale Spur, a 1000m descent over
just 4km, we stopped by the Saddle’s
namesake. The emu egg-sized rock sits
within a larger chunk of stone, and is
thought to have formed during
glaciation within the last ice age.
“In a big, blowy wind, it rattles,” Lin
said. “That’s how you know it’s cold.
Well, you probably know before that.”
And by all accounts, in their heyday,
the mountain cattlemen needed no
rocking stone to tell them so. AGDESTINATIONS
FIND more horse trek images online at:
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/issue127AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC THANKS Tourism
North East for their assistance with this story.Pack school. The Bairds often coach novice
horsemen, such as Joel McCarthy, pictured here at
Rocking Stone Saddle. He plans to ride the Bicen-
tennial National Trail to raise money for Beyondblue.