It must have been 30 years since I’d been here. The summit of Mt Howitt; another of those bald bluffs, like Bogong, that press up in bold wind-swept mounds to form the high points of the southern alps. Weathered to roundness, an arc of hardy grasses and craggy rock above the treeline.
Last time, first time, only other time, I was here was on horseback.
This was early in my riding life, a thing I came to in my late twenties and through trail riding. I’d heard tell of this bloke, based in Poowong down in the dairy and potato hills of southern Gippsland, who trucked horses and riders to the higher country and led wild little multi-night expeditions. A connection of quite a few years was formed and some spectacular country was explored, friends were made.
We’d ride out of places like Licola, picking along the rivers, the Macalister, the Wonnangatta, the Moroka, then heading up. Ever up. Tracing the top of Mount Wellington and on into the Howitt plains and eventually to Howitt itself, a summit approachable at a rolling canter.
I wrote about the thrill of that riding, back in the day, for The Age:
The rain is hard, cold and near horizontal. We’re riding straight into it, flat chat at a fast canter drumming insistently at the verge of a gallop. We spread over the high-country snow plain, breaking with a leap from a low, scrubby tangle of winter white gum and lifting the pace. The horses—fit, certain, little mountain types—toss their heads at the chance to stretch their legs, hitting out in suddenly open country. We lean forward out of the saddle, poised on the balls of our feet, flexing to the swoop of the horse, hands low and tight on the withers and moving to the regular, reaching rhythm. Fingers are numb with cold and tangled with soggy strands of flying mane, the coat flaps behind, mud and clods fly from the steely flash of hooves.
The ground is flat, running on in a long, sweeping curve 200 metres broad between two enclosing kerbs of snow gum. Flat, open country, but still a precarious mystery. Whatever rocks, logs, streams or dips there may be are hidden until the last moment by tussocks of calf-high alpine grass.
From the middle distance, you get the impression of a long, uninterrupted meadow. It’s not, maybe, but that’s the fun of it: the uncertain plunge at windrush speed, eyes blinded by rain, charging into a great throttling hand of cold air with the constant shadowing possibility of an instant neck-snapping death. Or at least a bloody and bonebreaking stumble, a quick, irretrievable chaos of legs and hot, heavy careening flesh diving, rolling, tumbling to the ground.
We pull up at the far edge of the plain, horses and riders breathing hard, walking off the run. And then you stand and sit, wind and rain suddenly stilled, and drink in the slow-gathering mauve mist of early evening, the horse snorting plumes of steam that mix with the cry of birds shrieking for dusk as you amble towards the tree line and camp. And it fills your heart.
But not for the horse, who simply moves on to the next entirely captivating moment with slow, gentle grace, a moment sufficient to occupy its entire slim intellect, a moment linked to a lifetime of others by a thick stream of undilutable but simple memory of what brought comfort and what brought fear. And what brought food. Now the job of riding’s done, he won’t want to curl up with you like a dog or yap at your heels. He has no mind for it, no need of you. He’ll just want to eat and quietly go, passing the evening happy in the familiar, secure comfort of the herd, chewing whatever it is in the herbivore world that passes for the fat. The horse will not romanticise the setting, the sense or the situation. It can’t. No mind for that either.
I had no idea of what I was doing on the back of a horse. Probably never did to any degree of skill of certainty. But i rode on. I hunted a fair bit, evented a bit, loved the whole of it, until one day, facing a long canter grid down to a 90cm straight rail in a jumps class, I just suddenly clicked out of it. Sold the horse (lovely boy) and moved on into a life unencumbered by the habit of nearly 30 years: riding four days, at least, out of seven.
Other things filled that space. Walking among them. So, here I was again, moving up to the top of Howitt, this time on my own two, sluggish feet. So glad to be there, all those years on to gaze out along the jagged backbone of the cross cut saw, down into the deep tangled blur of the Viking-Razor wilderness.
Beautiful country and somehow a little wilder than the better-known hills to the north, cramped as they are by roads and farms and resorts.
I walked on. Birds hopped along the path ahead of me, the odd snake gave reluctant way.
30 years on. The place unchanged, a place working to a totally different rhythm of rock, weather and deep time. And my wonder at it. Almost as constant.
August-September 1981, we skied north to south across The Alps. Six or seven of us, from YHA Bushwalking. We climbed up into snow on The Bluff, headed for Kelly’s Yards. The most critical and trying day was 1st September, climbing an icy Mt Magdala and then heading via Macalister Springs to Vallejo Gantner Hut and the southward draining country that was our reward and exit route. Unfortunately my camera stayed home—total pack weight was great enough without it.
I walked this area a bit, first at Timbertop school then through my twenties. The Alps are special to me in a way I can't describe, it's the scent of the place as much as anything.
I grew up around horses, was a confident rider, but never combined trail riding and the Alps. I could feel your earlier experience, thanks for that.