THE event was a little while ago now, but a reader has just brought us in an interesting story written by Rupert Barnett of Canberra, who visited the area last year to watch the “Snowy flowing” in October.
Rupert was so impressed with his experience that he wrote an article for the magazine printed by his walking club, and we share it here –
“Three days’ notice for a pack walk is a bit short, but four of us took a long weekend in October to visit the Snowy River in perhaps its remotest stretch, the section where it seems its decided to go back to its start near Kosci.
“Like many, my awareness of the Snowy perhaps started with hearing Banjo’s ‘Man from...’, but it gained a bit of geographic fidelity as the Snowy Mountains Scheme was fed to us as our greatest national achievement.
The Jindabyne Dam was completed in 1967 to ‘turn the Snowy inland’, and when I first saw the river at McKillops Bridge (Victoria) in 1980, we camped by shallow pools in a sand-filled bed l00m wide, weed covered, almost dead.
I was aware of a little of the area’s shared history with NSW- Strzelecki, McMillan and the pre-Federation role of Delegate, but realised that Melbourne people tended to think of the River as (mostly) theirs.
I also discovered the Snowy area offers some great walking and that to raft the river was an ‘icon’ trip, so it was a thrill when I was offered a seat, with paddle. That was a great experience, and shared with people who knew much about the effect of the dams on the people and ecologies downstream.
George Seddon’s 1994 book ‘Searching for the Snowy’ asked and often answered a lot of good questions too, amongst them whether users of that water got it too cheaply because the scheme was paid for by city users of its electricity.
So I took note when restoration of the river became an issue for Victoria’s hung parliament of 1999, and later, when relevant governments agreed to return the Snowy to 28% of its natural flow, it seemed time to get into its more remote sections while I could.
So in December 2000 four of us found our way to Delegate, then the Burnt Hut crossing. It was a rewarding excursion, for both the river we walked and the country and communities we discovered.
Then I moved to Canberra and in subsequent explorations have touched the Byadbo wilderness, crossed Blackjack Mountain, and meandered parts of the river more than it does. There are a few sets of rapids and occasional low falls along it; those near Byadbo Creek, the Snowy River Falls, have been dubbed by canoeists ‘The Washing Machine’, and on each visit I’ve promised myself to see it when there was a ‘decent’ flood’
My hope of significant action was optimistic of course - the flows ‘02 to ‘04 were around 3% of ‘average natural’, then in 2005 lifted to around 4%.
Federal election 2007 promises to lift the flow to 2l% by 2012 sounded great, but despite the completion last year of work on the Jindabyne Dam to facilitate releases, competing interests look like restricting the total to around 5% for some time. So my hopes of a ‘decent’ flow had faded, until in October there was a burst of publicity for the coming biggest release ever from Jindabyne. That stirred my promises and I decided to ‘go’.
At the Delegate petrol bowser the price wasn’t showing but real road-side service was being provided by an old face with craggy grin. “No,” he insisted, “the cafe down the street isn’t good, its the best in Oz”, and he’s probably right.
Driving again, we turned west and soon were following winding rural tracks with just enough signage to match the map. There is a longer and slow public road that ends on Byadbo Creek a days’ walk up from the Snowy, but our objective was their confluence, in Kosci’ National Park. For this the most convenient access was through private property, and in this the owners had been most helpful.
So by midday we were sitting on a hilltop having lunch - or a second or third. A detour to a nearby lookout had allowed us to orient ourselves - north was the Snowy valley and Monaro, and a few km to the west Blackjack
Mountain was a clipnosed bulk. Beyond it the long view was hazy, but a couple of days later would show a long skyline of gleaming white - the Main Range under extensive snow.
Lunch over, the trail steered between steep valleys then stopped at the top of the steep descent to the creek; on a previous trip the water here had been brown from the backup after a big release; now it was clear, and near the confluence the only level spot for camping was intact and dry. The water was about 30cms deep at the creek’s usually dry exit, and debris indicated it had been another foot higher in recent days.
But the snowy was flowing strongly, rapidly, loudly, right across its 200m bed. Usually one would walk with dry feet across a half km of rock bars and sandy pools to the falls, but today we could only clamber around a small bluff and up the spur that divided the streams. There the tees opened up, we could see the swirling river. A little farther, there, those crashing waters, clouds of spray. The Falls were alive!
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