Kosciuszko National Park dates from 1967 when an existing State Park was expanded from 5,223 km2 to 6,900 km2. At the same time numerous snow leases which had been allowed for grazing purposes in this “high country” were cancelled along with a variety of other arrangements held to be in conflict with the purposes of a National Park.
Image: From the high ground approaching Valentines’ Hut, March 1987
Huts and infrastructure built by the dispossessed cattlemen and remnants of various other incompatible activities remain, as do the expansive dams and infrastructure of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme. Of course the latter are absolutely incompatible with the underlying concept (in N.S.W. at least) of a National Park but their protection was the raison d’être for the park’s expansion in 1967.
Image: Jagungal, 1986
Three sites that are associated with the former usage of the N.S.W. high country are included in these web pages. They are:
Kiandra – a township where the buildings not made of calico and saplings had survived more or less intact from the 1860s when it was the centre of a gold rush. Then in 1967 the National Park arrived. Very little is left now, but in the early 1970s a hardy group of locals held out against a determined ideology.
Image: Kiandra, 1971
Click here to see more about Kiandra
The Grey Mare – site of a gold mine that struggled all of its life. The holders of the mining lease were also displaced by the 1967 changes. Numerous components of gold-crushing and extraction plant that had been moved on site before the axe fell lie around in the scrub nearby.
Image: The Grey Mare Hut, 1987
Click here to see more about The Grey Mare Mine
Lobbs Hole-Ravine – perhaps the site of Mrs Lobb’s restaurant or refreshment rooms during the gold rush to Kiandra, but certainly a place where copper mining commenced in the early 1860s. That activity ceased around 1915. The story of the mines at Lobbs Hole has a whiff of misrepresentation, financial manipulation, fraud and corruption. Good Stuff!!
Image: Lobbs Hole Copper Mine, 1985 – Number 1 Air Shaft
Click here to see more about Lobbs Hole Copper Mines