Tin Mines Hut Work Party

By Jonathan Mandl

IAC/KHA/NPWS – 18-21 April 2025

This year’s annual IAC Huts adventure held over the Easter long-weekend was many months in the making, with planning begun in October 2024 and numerous meetings held in early 2025 with Campbell Young, Head Ranger Pilot Wilderness Area and consultation with Marion Plum, Huts management Officer, Kosciuszko Huts Association.

Much IAC history was celebrated in our volunteer group including Jenna (nee Fletcher) and Luke Brajkovich, Pat Edmondson’s daughter Libby Bolton, Pat’s grandson Ballan Bolton and family; Rachel Bolton, Tully Bolton (13), Luka Bolton (12) all joined by technical specialists and friends of IAC over many years - Col Wooden, Jim Purss and his grandson Sam Wawn (11). We also had the pleasure of hosting Angus Lang and friend Joe who hiked in to meet us on site, staying for two days of hard yakka before hiking back out independently!

Starting out in 4WDs from the Cascades car park early on Good Friday 18 April, the weather was perfect with blue skies and warm Autumn sun beaming down as we traversed the Little Thredbo River and Cascades Creek crossings with a brief stop to inspect Cascades Hut. The group travelled quickly over the newly smoothed and graded sections of the Australian Alps Walking Track, arriving at Tin Mines Huts around midday with our site WHS briefing followed by camp set-up and lunch served. Afternoon tasks were outlined and work groups allocated before a perfect sunset and a hearty campfire BBQ meal of steak, chops and vegetables followed by a hot dessert.

The nights were very mild during our stay with no frosts and only light fog banks drifting in the valley at dawn. We were happily able to re-establish the clean water supply flowing near the Mess Hut chimney so the arduous duty of doing bucket runs to the river was avoided.

One of the main objectives of the work party was successfully realised on Saturday, with Ranger Campbell Young driving in two heritage consultants commissioned by NPWS with Sue and Pat Edmondson plus VIP guest local Kosciuszko legend Tommy Tomasi, who worked at Snowy Hydro’s hydrology department for 10 years between 1954 and 1964.

Tommy recalled the Tin Mines Huts site well from his history working and camping on the Ingeegoodbee River with Snowy Hydro and along with Pat and Sue, their descriptions of the rich history of IAC’s accomplishments restoring both huts provided the consultants with much information and background.

The heritage consultants’ commission is to draft a Heritage Management Plan for Tin Mines, Cascades and Teddy's Huts in 2025. This will create a document that will map out the future works (next 10-20 years min) necessary on the huts, making our maintenance planning more strategic and evidence based.

A memorable day onsite saw site works continue around the delegation’s visit, with lunch for all provided by IAC capped off a very productive and rewarding experience.

After tools down and a quick wash, the new IAC camp ovens sandwiched in a bed of hot coals worked a treat with a delicious lamb roast and vegetables plus hot dessert enjoyed around the fire. That evening, for the first time at Tin Mines Huts a special tribute to our beloved IAC Life Member Jarvis Fletcher took place with daughter Jenna and son-in-law Luke leading the group with a schnapps Shotski salute around the campfire. Jenna and Luke inducted new friends to the IAC experience, and we remembered Jarvis fondly for his love of life and happy times shared in good company.

Easter Sunday saw the ‘Libby’ bunny out early depositing chocolate eggs around the site until swooped on by the young ones. A big day’s final program of works saw 99% of all scoped work completed, however the reality was that much more was achieved than originally planned each day as our workforce numbers allowed for extra depth and detail in tasks, aided by three young sets of hands in Sam, Luka and Tully who all contributed willingly to the many small and fiddly tasks behind each big job.

The afternoon was given over to explorer-mode with groups setting out to find a brace of trout, explore the 1930s Tin Mines site ruins or take a walk down the Cowombat Trail.

We also welcomed two KHA guests with Marion and Rob joining us overnight to be ready to map both huts with a NPWS 3D scanning camera as part of an ongoing KHA project to fully document all huts in the Kosciuszko National Park. The data captured allows a life-like high resolution detail experience of each hut for those who may not be able to visit, but who would love to experience each unique structure. It also brings many technical benefits such as being able to extract precise point-to-point measurements to size up materials for future repairs and maintenance – without having to travel to site.

Libby with Rachel mastered the camp ovens for a brilliant roast pork and vegetable meal plus homemade apple crumble just as drizzle set in, so we all gathered around the fireplace inside the Mess Hut for an evening capped off by Pat Edmondson’s recipe for a hot rum toddy & a chance to toast Sue and Pat – to their good health!

Easter Monday morning saw the drizzle off early and we broke camp with the aim of having lunch at Cascades Hut on the return leg. We farewelled Marion and Rob to use the 3D camera without people or vehicles to spoil their capture and made for Cascades, which coincided with more drizzle so we all squeezed into the hut for lunch as has been done over many years by IAC members sheltering from the elements.

Safely back at Cascades car park, warm and dry we all took stock of 4 days of huge achievements and the great cooperative spirit and laughs shared that makes a work party at our huts sites so rewarding and uplifting. It’s often said when you volunteer your time and effort, you gain more out of the experience than you appear to put in.  I think that rang true for all who participated in 2025.

We’re now all looking forward to 2026 and hope you can be a part of this unique IAC tradition now in its 53^rd year.

Our scope of works in 2025

In February 2025 a recon group led by Pat Edmondson and Col Wooden travelled to site and identified a number of key objectives for restoration and maintenance focussing on the smaller ‘Manager’s Hut’ aka ‘Charlie Carter’s’) and also the larger ‘Mess Hut’ (aka ‘The Barn’).

A key concern noted at the Manager’s Hut was the amount of moisture being captured by the rammed earth floor from external water ingress due to poor drainage around the hut. Earthen spoon drains become shallower over the passing of years as silt and soil build up the grass surface level, where is doesn’t take much to lose any natural fall in ground levels and water collects and stays in these hollows.

Compounding this was water flowing down the external vertical weatherboards onto the bed logs and into the hut floor. A solution was devised by Pat based on the successful use of iron flashing on the bed logs of Teddy’s Hut in April 2024.

Works at the Manager’s Hut included fabricating long flashing strips from aged, galvanized roofing sheets recovered from other hut sites, fitting them to each of the six bed logs using galvanized wood screws. Locally gathered granite rock was used to support and conceal the flashing. Inside the hut the neat hessian trim upholstering the walls was carefully untacked at the base while the flashing was fitted, then painstakingly tacked back into place.

Significant earthworks were carefully undertaken at the Eastern (entry) end of the Manager’s Hut, shallowing out the spoon drain and levelling the surrounding sod to drain rainwater and snowmelt away from settling and pooling beside the hut.

On the external vertical weatherboards, a lichen identified in February was accelerating damage to the timber. The Lichen was sprayed with white vinegar then brushed off as advised by former Illawarra Alpine Club member and current NPWS Ranger Megan Bowden.

The leather strap fitted to the entry door in 2023 was adjusted to hold the door open or closed. Preventing animals from getting into our huts is an important consideration.

Significant earthworks were carefully undertaken at the Eastern (entry) end of the Manager’s Hut, shallowing out the spoon drain and levelling the surrounding sod to drain rainwater and snowmelt away from settling and pooling beside the hut.

The hut was comprehensively cleared and swept of debris from use as a year-round shelter, with the front entry and granite stonework threshold restored to full & practical glory after being covered with a layer of sod that had built up over recent years.

The same care was taken to completely clear and sweep the rammed earth floor of the Mess Hut, after removing the many sheets of iron and spare shingle supply from our pre-COVID re-roofing of the hut – these will now be stored at the NPWS Waste Point depot.

The two cord-and-peg-operated shutters on the window frames of the Mess Hut’s western wall received attention, with a new ingenious use of leather straps fitted to hold the shutters closed.

A small fireplace situated in the middle of the camping area was remediated to natural grass sod, keeping the focus on the use of the main fireplace ringed with large granite stones for all cooking fires and campfires.

One of the key convenient features of the site is a diverted waterflow through a rustic iron pipe spilling into a small pool adjacent to the chimney of the Mess Hut. It’s fed by a diverted stream whose source is an uphill gully of sphagnum moss. In recent years the flow has been hard to re-establish due to debris blockages and the stream’s changing pathways down the gully. We were able to use a polypipe to capture a feed from the uphill stream and direct it into our filter around the iron pipe to create a steady flow of clear water for our boiling and washing needs. It’s the next best thing to having water ‘on tap’ next to our camp kitchen so we will replicate this method in future years. It saves a laborious but well-worn trail from the huts site to the nearby Ingeegoodbee River around 200m away.

One of the enduring success stories at the site is the wild horse exclusion fence constructed by IAC volunteers in 2023. This 50m x 50m structure has withstood extreme weather over Summers and Winters and is still drum-tight and doing a magnificent job of allowing natural regeneration to occur where only nearby the collapsing of riverbanks and constant upheaval of the riverbed is making a black, muddy mess where native grasses struggle to hold the soil together and aquatic grass in the river isn’t able to purify the quantity of sediments being stirred up. Before and after photos show the extent of the recovery, which is startling to the untrained eye and demonstrates that recovery is possible, provided wild horses are restricted – a model that over future years will see the horse population continue to decrease and the original native environment slowly shift to re-establish the many fragile ecosystems of the Kosciuszko National Park.