A hut ever so humble

If I were to author a book, maybe it would be in the vein of - ‘High Country huts & homesteads : a celebration of Australia’s mountain shelters’ by Craig Lewis and Cathy Savage.

From the authors of one of Australia's favourite bush camping and 4WD guides comes a striking review of the High Country's most aesthetic and historic huts. Lavishly illustrated with beautiful full-colour photographs, ‘High Country huts & homesteads’ is a nostalgic collection of abandoned mountain homesteads, shearers’ huts, traveller’s shelters and many other lonely structures. The text portrays a short history of each hut along with many fascinating accompanying stories and importantly a GPS location.

Ranging from simple log cabins, wooden slab cattlemen’s huts, eclectic miner’s dwellings to homesteads on vast alpine grazing runs, this book presents a selection of rustic buildings with their associated structures, which have become part of our High Country heritage and a legacy of times gone by.

According to Craig and Cathy there are well over 300 huts remaining in the High Country. Each at the mercy of the elements, so it is great that they have chosen 63 of what they consider classic examples of the craft to present in this coffee-table style book.

Wallaces Hut

They refer Wallaces Hut, perched near Victoria’s highest peak Mt Bogong, a crude hut which has withstood over 120 snow covered winters, and dodged bushfires to become the oldest hut on the high plains.

It contrasts with Four Mile Hut in the Kosciuszko National Park erected from scavenged materials from a nearby gold mine.

Du Cane Hut below Castle Crag

While DuCane Hut on the Overland Track and Cope Hut on the Bogong High Plains were constructed to meet the needs of walkers and skiers.

Cope Hut

The Coolamine Homestead Complex was developed in stages from the 1880s to the end of the 1890s, for the managers and their families of the vast pastoral holdings. Its last resident only leaving in 1958.

Coolamine Homestead buildings

So should more bushfires devastate the High Country, there is now a better photographic record of the huts dotted through its landscape.
Like to visit any of the huts mentioned in the book, you may want to check out Craig & Cathy's camping and 4WD guides. 

Maintenant et puis

It is sometime since I've created any 'now and then' images, or showcased someone-else's, and since I've been hanging onto these - the time has come.
The vintage French postcards show the city of Nancy - the capital of the Duchy of Lorraine in north-eastern France - and have been used as the 'then'.

 

La Craffe Gate. The oldest gateway in Nancy. This former guardhouse, a fine example of military architecture built in the mid 14th century under Duke Jean I, was for centuries the main entrance to Nancy.

 

These photographs came from a book briefly on loan from a French exchange student, so sorry no bibliographic details.
And 'Maintenant et puis' ... is French for 'now and then'!