102 Australian Geographic
A
MOSAIC OF lush alpine
foliage passed swiftly
beneath us. With
Eskdale’s flyaway mane
tight in my left hand, I
urged the gelding forward with nudges
to his side. As his canter quickened
and I eased into its rhythm, the ride
became smoother and we moved with
a fluidity that felt akin to flying.
The majestic Bogong High Plains
opened up in front of us. A vast,
gently undulating carpet of cushion
grasses and white and gold everlast-
ings stretched to the horizon, where
the snowless ridgeline of Mt Bogong
loomed under ominous grey clouds.
The silhouette of my guide Lin Baird
came into view ahead; he was astride
Midnight and had Willow, one of our
six packhorses, trailing behind him.
Having ascended Timms Spur, and
circled around the dome of Mt Nelse,
we were now deep into Alpine
National Park, in north-eastern
Victoria, once the stomping ground of
Australia’s High Country cattlemen.
The Plains and the surrounding peaks
- including Mt Feathertop and Mt
Hotham – all belong to the Victorian
Alps, part of the Great Dividing Range.
During winter the Alps receive
some of Australia’s heaviest snow-
falls, but in spring and summer the
vegetation bursts into life. From the
mid-1850s until a decade ago, stock-
men from the surrounding valleys
embraced these temperate climes.
They would drive their cattle through
the lush pastures and onto the
surrounding mountains and muster
them down again in autumn before
the first major snowfalls.
This lifestyle, and the pioneering
spirit of the Australian cattleman, has
long been celebrated. But, since 2005,
when the last of the state government’s
High Plains grazing leases expired, all
that remains are the cattlemen’s huts
and scattered remnants of stockyards.
For more than 30 years, Lin and
Clay Baird, and their parents Kath
and Steve, have led packhorse trips
into the plains. Under the banner of
their company Bogong Horseback
Adventures, the trips set out from
their 45ha farm at Tawonga, on the
Kiewa River, 77km south of Albury.
The goal of this seven-day expedition
was lofty: we were headed to RockingStone Saddle, just below the 1986m
summit of Mt Bogong, Victoria’s
highest peak.
The mountain was named by local
Aboriginal people (the title comes
from ‘Bugung’, the Ngarigo word for
moth), who came from far and wide
to feast on the Bogong moths that
migrate here in spring. Horses are
prohibited on the summit, and the
Saddle is the highest point in Australia
you can venture with a horse.R
AIN LASHED relentlessly at the
sides of Kellys Hut, inside of
which we huddled, clad in our
bush hats and damp oilskins, sipping
steaming mugs of silty billy tea. It was
our second night camped on the head
of Wild Horse Creek, among mighty
stands of gnarled snow gums.
The previous afternoon we’d
been headed to a different camp, at
Cemetery Spur, when a spectacularDESTINATIONS
Well-bred. Lin Baird (below left) washes the
horses at Bogong Creek after a day’s ride. The
Baird family train their horses themselves, and the
animals soon become accustomed to the steep
mountain tracks, such as Eskdale Spur (below).