ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 64 | August 2003
Map
Collection
Early Memories of the Kosciuszko Region
|
The recently acquired
Kosciuszko snow lease plan of 1892 |
A battered, well loved, expertly repaired, and very are snow lease permissive occupancy map of the northern end of what is now the Kosciuszko National Park was recently donated to the Library by the Kosciuszko Huts Association.
Published in 1892—and titled Plan of snow leases lots numbered 61–72 inclusive, Parishes of Murray, Cooleman, Long Plain, Nattung, Yarrangobilly, The Peaks and Peppercorn, Counties of Cowley and Buccleuch—the map was one of the earliest issued by the New South Wales Government to depict a new form of land lease—summer grazing in the High Country.
Abundant feed and water following the snowmelt, and a cooler climate, provided excellent grazing for cattle during the hot dry summer months of the Monaro, with graziers droving the cattle to the pastures early in the season (around October) and bringing them down again before the winter set in. Leases were issued to graziers from the late-1880s through an annual tender selection process and were classed as either Snow Leases or Permissive Occupancies depending on the area concerned. The area eventually extended to the Victorian border and covered land in the Yarralumla, Tumut, Tumbarumba, Monaro and Snowy Shires.
This map is now the oldest of its type in the Library’s Collection, and the oldest known in existence. It complements a small collection of this type of map in the Library depicting this seasonal use of the land, which continued until the late 1950s. By then the dual requirements of maintaining the quality of the water catchment area for the Snowy Mountains Scheme and returning the area to wilderness for the Kosciuszko National Park forced the closure of this form of land use. A digital scan of the map is available on the Library’s website, through the catalogue record for the map: <nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm3690>.
The Kosciuszko Huts Association complemented its map donation with an earlier
donation of nine volumes of its archive of recent and early photographs of the
huts of the Kosciuszko and Namadgi National Parks prior to the devastating bushfires
earlier this year, when a number of the huts were destroyed. Arranged in alphabetical
order by hut name, the photographs, in both colour and black and white, are
carefully annotated with date, photographer’s name and other information about
each hut. Some of the more significant huts are also accompanied by historical
notes. A selection of the photographs will be scanned and made accessible on
the Pictures Catalogue, the Library’s pictorial Internet database.
—Maura O’Connor, Map Curator
| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: pcliff@nla.gov.au