Plans to rebuild more Snowy Mountains huts on the table
Media release: 9 May 2008
Plans to rebuild more historic huts in Kosciuszko National Park are now on the table for further discussion with hopes that construction of Brooks and Sawyers Huts will be completed before winter next year.
Sawyers Hut lies beside the Snowy Mountains Highway, 10km east of Kiandra while Brooks Hut is one of the network of huts on the Happy Jacks Plain, west of Adaminaby.
A total of 19 historic huts were either destroyed or severely damaged during the 2003 fires however recent changes to international conventions have opened the way for a number of the huts that were destroyed to be rebuilt.
NPWS South West Slopes Regional Manager, Steve Horsley, said the new view is that the social and cultural significance of a hut does not disappear just because the fabric of the original hut has gone.
"Heritage managers have, in more recent times, decided that the story and the history as well as the social and family connections binding people to a place and a heritage can remain even though the hut is gone."
"The award winning Kosciuszko Huts Conservation Strategy developed two years ago essentially offered us the option to rebuild destroyed or damaged huts and recommended the rebuilding of seven huts that had been lost as well as the reconstruction of a number of others."
"With help from the Kosciuszko Huts Association the rebuilding and reconstruction program is on schedule. Broken Dam, Patons and Delanys Huts are rebuilt and stage one has been completed on Opera House Hut."
Initial consultation has been held with family descendants, KHA, NPWS officers and other associated people on site at Brooks and Sawyers.
"We have been and will continue to try to provide huts that look similar and reflect significant elements of the old huts but we will use modern fixings along with new and recycled materials."
Kosciuszko Huts Association President Bob Moon said the new Brooks Hut would be an "archetypal corrugated iron structure with a stud frame sitting on steel piers". He said Sawyers Hut will need to be carefully dismantled with footings and a new slab installed before the hut can be reconstructed. Both huts will look very similar to their predecessors.
The plans for Brooks and Sawyers Huts will be on exhibition on the NPWS website www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au and at the Queanbeyan, Jindabyne and Tumut NPWS offices. Members of the public are invited to comment on these plans.
Submissions should be in writing and lodged on the NPWS website or forwarded to The Project Officer, Hut Rebuilding Exhibition, NPWS PO Box 472 Tumut NSW 2720 by 16th May, 2008 or for additional information, contact the NPWS Tumut office on 02 6947 7000.
Contact: Tonia Liosatos