Due to the rain the prior day and during the night we found the Dargo river this morning a couple of feet deeper than last night and it was no longer clear.
After packing up camp we headed off towards Mt Ewan Spur Tk, this is a steep climb and with the rain overnight it was slippery, I found myself heading up side-ways when my rear wheels slid into the ruts and then again facing the opposite direction when I came out of the ruts.
After stopping at the helicopter landing pad we made our way along Downey Rd to Treasures huts.
There are three huts on the site, the first hut was built in 1939 by Harry Treasure, the second hut was built for Freda Treasure as her bedroom in about 1945 the third hut was built in the 1960s.
From here we made our way along High Plains Rd and onto Ritchies Rd which offered amazing views since the fires went through. Although this is an easy drive there is still a need to keep an eye open for such things as the fallen tree.
We stopped at an old railway carriage which is known as Basalt Knob Hut, this was once a chilled railway carriage built in 1894 and worked by loading a tube full of ice. I am told the legend of this hut is that a truck broke down whilst carrying it in the 1970's and unloaded it and never returned. Why a truck carrying this was here in the first place is beyond me?
Along Basalt Knob North Tk onto the much famed Blue Rag Range Tk which takes you to a trig point at the top of Mount Blue Rag. This is an amazing track that crests a ridge with staggering drops to both sides in places of a thousand feet to the valleys below, the trig point at 1718m ASL provides a 360 degree panorama of Hotham, Feathertop and the Bogong complex.
Before the rain hit and it got dark we made our way down towards Mayford t o make camp, travelling along the High Plains Rd and the boggy Kings Spur Tk. We were foiled by the Dargo River which was deep and running very fast, with the sun fading we made camp a short distance away.
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This website was taken down in 2014, but in 2023 I decided to resurrected it and bring it back online, as it is now over 20 years old, expect bugs and features to no longer work as they once did.
The website is 90GB in size and contains approx 30,000 photos taken by us between 2003-2011, it is hosted at home on an old HP Proliant NAS running Lotus Domino 8.5 and spanning across multiple databases.
High Country Trip - Dargo to Hotham, Day 3 - High Country - Anzac Day Weekend
Slideshow
Sunday, 25 April 2010
