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| There were a few lingering patches of snow as I made my way around the southern side of Little Mount Higginbotham. |
After aborting my planned 4 day walk on the Bogong High Plains back at the start of November, I was looking for something else to do in the area for a couple of days. With some accommodation booked at The General at Mt Hotham I decided to check out a trail (yeah, the Mt Hotham marketing people have named their tracks trails, if you know what I mean). Conveniently for me the trail started around ten metres from the door of my apartment. With Climate Change going to make life pretty hard for our alpine ski resorts most of them are trying to diversify a little, some like Mt Buller and Thredbo have gone down the Mountain Bike route, but with a good network of tracks…err sorry, trails, it looks like Hotham is catering a little for walkers.
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| The trailhead for this walk was only a few metres from my accommodation at The General. |
The Brabralung Trail connects the Davenport Village at Mt Hotham with the nearby Dinner Plain Village and today I decided to walk down hill (relatively speaking) towards Dinner Plain. While this isn’t a wilderness walk it still passes through some nice country, but initially things were a little ordinary as I dropped down through the alpine resort, I’ve mentioned it before on my blog but there isn’t a much more forlorn sight than an alpine ski resort out of season. After walking above the Great Alpine Road for a couple of hundred metres, my route headed away from the road and around the southern slopes of Little Mount Higginbotham, the pretty little hill still holding a few decent drifts of snow. Apart from the snow the other feature of this section of the walk was the extensive views south towards Mt Tabletop, a walk that I’ll get around to one day.
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Initially the track stayed just above the Great Alpine Road. That's the Bogong High Plains in the distance.
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Little Mount Higginbotham.
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Easy walking as I made my way around Little Mount Higginbotham.
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Looking across towards Mount Tabletop.
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| Downhill ski resorts are generally pretty melancholy places in the off season I reckon. |
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Dropping down Little Mount Higginbotham I soon crossed the Great Alpine Road and picked up a gravel shared path along the north side of the road, initially passing through Slatey Cutting before arriving at the historic (is there any other kind?) Howards’s Hut. Howard’s Hut is named after an old stockman Billy Howard from nearby Harrietville, it’s thought that the prefabricated hut may have been purchased from the nearby Kiewa Hydro Scheme. Wherever it came from the hut has been in this spot since 1962, being used initially while Howard’s cattle grazed the area before becoming a refuge hut (although it was securely padlocked when I was there). After checking out the old hut I climbed a little through some beautiful Snowgums and soon arrived at the Biathlon Range.
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Brabralung Trail passing through Slatey Cutting next to the Great Alpine Road.
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A Biathlon Shooting Range is something that you don’t see on every walk, actually I didn’t even know that we had Biathlon athletes in Australia. Leaving the shooting range my track passed beneath the Great Alpine Road through an underpass and started to meander it’s way south through the Snowgum Forest towards Dinner Plain, zig zagging up some switchbacks. With the wide gravel path now close to the ridge line the western sun was lighting up the Snowgums on the ridge, and with blue sky overhead this was quite a pleasant place to be this afternoon. Dropping down a bit the track passed close by the Mother Johnson’s Picnic Area before flirting with the northern extremities of JB Plain.
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The Biathlon shooting range.
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Brabralung Trail passes under the Great Alpine Road near the shooting range and stays on the south side of the road for the rest of the way to Dinner Plain.
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Brabralung Trail
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Brabralung Trail features quite a lot in the way of information boards, a lot of the featuring information about the areas original inhabitants.
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Brabralung Trail climbs a little towards the ridge line.
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The afternoon sun was lighting up the Snowgums on the crest.
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JB Plain is a large Snowgrass Plain that stretches south off the Great Alpine Road, the golden grass framing views of distant mountain ranges. JB Plain is also the spot to pick up the track that heads south to the distant Mt Tabletop. After a short section of boardwalk I passed another historic hut, this time JB Plain Hut. This hut is an old forestry hut that was relocated here in the 1970’s and was used by both the scouts and as an outstation for the nearby Cobungra Station. I didn’t drop all the way down to the hut this afternoon as it’s also a camping area and being a long weekend in Melbourne there were quite a lot people camped near the hut amongst the Snowgums.
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I was still getting a few views across to the Bogong High Plains.
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Brabralung Trail would probably be suitable for wheelchairs and strollers I'm thinking.
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JB Plain
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There is a short section of boardwalk along here.
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My afternoons ramble was now quickly coming to it’s end now. Dropping down a little the flash houses of Dinner Plain came into sight at about the same time as the old CRB Hut on the other side of the Great Alpine Road appeared. The old CRB Hut was built by the Country Roads Board in the 1920’s and was used as shelter for road workers as well as travellers. Wandering the last couple hundred metres I was soon walking across the manicured grounds of Dinner Plain and my walk was over. Giving the Dinner Plain Hotel a miss, I gave Sam a call and ten minutes later she’d picked me up and we were on our way back to our flash accommodation at Mt Hotham. While it may not of been the walk that I’d planned for this weekend it was still a pleasant little stroll that had allowed me to enjoy some beautiful alpine scenery, life could of been a lot worse.
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Brabralung Trail
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For the majority of the walk I was passing through mature Snowgums but there was a couple of spots that featured the bleached skeletons of burnt trees.
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JB Plain
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The Dirt.
I walked 12.6 kilometres and climbed 243 metres according to my GPS on what I’d call an easy - medium grade walk. As far as I know the Brabralung Trail hasn’t been written up in any published walking notes, I used the basic map and one paragraph description out of a brochure called Mt Hotham & Dinner Plain Tracks & Trails that is put out by the Mt Hotham Alpine Resort. With the Brabralung Trail generally staying fairly close to the major Great Alpine Road and being very well signposted then the brochure is enough to get you through safely. As well as being well signposted the trail also features a lot of information boards, a lot of them featuring facts and stories about the original indigenous inhabitants of this land which are very interesting. While it’s a fairly long walk the gravel trail would be suitable for strollers and wheelchairs, although it might be best to just do a short section of it?
Relevant Posts.
Champion Spur, Alpine National Park, 2018.
The Twins to Mt Hotham, AAWT, Alpine National Park, 2017.
Dinner Plain to Precipice Plain, Alpine National Park, 2017.
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The Brabralung Trail is very well signposted.
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Dinner Plain Village
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| Sunset over the Victorian high country from our room at The General. |
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| Quite a pleasant spot to wind down after a nice walk. |
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