We spent a few days at the alpine village of Falls Creek last week to take some photographs and enjoy some of the alpine environment. Along with the village of Mt Hotham on the other side of the valley, Falls Creek is the gateway to the Bogong High Plains.
We were surprised to find so few people there. I guess that the period prior to Christmas is probably much more quiet than the busting time over the short ski season from June to September. In fact, we were the only guests in there entire hotel. We could have wandered around naked, or had wild parties in the passage ways and no one would have been disturbed at all. It was rather nice to be waited on by the manager at breakfast, but there was only one restaurant that was o-pen for dinner inn the entire village and the supermarket had vey little stock and was only open for limited hours. At places such as Thredbo and Mt Hotham, which are simlar in style to this place there would have been much more acrtivitty.
The landscape here is still very much impacted by the bush fires from 2009 when the entire area of the ‘high country’ was burnt out. Everywhere we looked, the environment is full of the grey skeletons of snow gums that don’t regenerate after a fire, although new shoots will grow from their root systems under the ground,. It will take many years before this place looks verdant again. One of the places in which this was obvious was the view from our balcony.
I have bushwalked across the Bogong High Plains on a few occasions and one of its features are the old cattlemen’s huts that were built many years ago. This one, Wallaces Hut is the oldest and dates back to 1889 when it was used by the Wallace brothers when they ran their cattle on the high country summer pastures.
The high plains are open areas with intermittent clumps of trees and are well above the winter snow line. I have seen brumbies (wild horses) grazing here in the past, but not on this occasion. We had fun lining up some photos of the granite boulders that are common in this area and coming across little streams that bubbled over rocks as they made their way downhill to the Rocky Valley Reservoir which forms part of the Kiewa Hydro Electric Scheme. We had to be a careful as we walked across the plains as there are many areas that are deep with sphagnum moss and any footprints left in this moss can take decades to recover.
You can see more of my photos., like this one, on my Gallery Website
Love the effect of the water over the rocks, Friend Anne was perfecting similar effect in the Elan Valley in Wales in September. the grey post fires must be heartbreaking, have never been up there.