Mount Bogong

I live not in myself, but I become

Portion of that around me; and to me

High mountains are a feeling, but the hum 

Of human cities torture 

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – Lord Byron

I climb a mountain to raise me up. I climb to lift myself above daily routines. I climb to reach out and experience not only what is in front of me but also what is around the corner. I climb a physical path and it takes me into a metaphysical place where I sense the nature of life. The act of departure from the base is no different on Bogon than on Blencathra. What’s different about the next steps of ascent onto an Australian mountain are the trees, the birds and the enveloping warmth.

A humbling feature for anyone climbing a mountain outside of the highest of the Himalayas is that you know you are following in many thousand pairs of footsteps. When climbing Mount Bogong in the Australian state of Victoria this year I learned that 40,000 years separate me from the earliest climbers. The first indigenous people of Australia to climb up from the River Kiewa and over Bogong were the Dhudhuroa people. They came twice a year in almost a ritualistic manner. They travelled for a very important reason into this ancient, stunning and inspirational landscape. There are only around 2,000 Dhudhoroa people living in Victoria today and few of them visit the mountain; there is a modern moral here.

When I set off with my elder son at dawn this January (concerned about my energy levels and fitness to climb 1986 metres in thirty-five degrees of heat), the timeless question of why do I still climb mountains still entered my head. The answers, some listed above, came to mind. It is a ritual perhaps in part but only a very personal ritual. At least I spent a rare and valuable day with Matthew but it’s not a wider community thing. Yet for the Dhudhoroa people it was not only a ritual, it was an essential political event in their lives.

Climbing up from the valley of the River Kiewa, just as we did this year, the Dhuddhoroa took part in the Bogong Moth ceremonies. When they reached the open areas near the summit of Bogong they met up with other Aboriginal peoples such as the Yaithmathang who inhabited the high plains of this land. I learned many enriching new facts about Australia this day but these meetings of indigenous clans surprised me. Hitherto I believed that different Aborigine people were wary of socialising with other clans. Yet here I discovered that the Dhuddhoroa and the Yaithmathang not only collected moths for food but settled disputes, arranged marriages and made alliances between highland clans. (As I edit this piece on the seventh day of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine I am reminded that there are other ways of settling disputes. However, the Aborigines were the epitome of rationality in the way they lived their lives whilst Mr. Putin appears to lack all rationality.

I would like to arrange for Presidents Putin and Zelensky to be airlifted to the summit of Mount Elbrus in Russia and instructed to not come down until they have consumed a few moths and sorted out their differences. Sadly, it will never happen.) 

I should explain the ceremonies as it is astonishing to think that people could thrive on eating moths. Bogong Moths migrate twice a year to these mountains. They are big; up to 1.4 inches long and apparently they are meaty and tasty. The Aborigine men would trap large numbers of moths in nets. Then the moths would be roasted and the chaff removed. The residue was pounded into cakes and smoked to prolong usability. The result does not sound nutritious to me but clearly I have not tried them.

Once Matthew and I had set off from the base of the Staircase Spur below Bogong it was soon getting hotter. There was no wind. Around and above us came the calls and shrieks of birds such as Noisy Miners, parrots, lorikeets and wattlebirds. The narrow path - the width of one person - is extremely steep and rocky. The thick canopy of gum and box trees traps the heat in. A haze of eucalyptus mist enveloped us. After two hours my stomach was cramping and I required a dump. Matthew had warned of snakes inhabiting this area so it was with some trepidation I lowered my shorts. 

Feeling better after a clear out, then eating some Vegemite sandwiches and downing more water than I was used to, we set off in search of the Bivouac Hut which is roughly half way to the summit. There we found campers rolling their sleeping bags and about to continue the climb. There are notices at the hut about the dangers of being on Bogong in the winter months. Avalanches and cornice break offs occur on these slopes. Three climbers perished in a blizzard in August 1943. Two snowboarders lost their lives near here in July 2014.

After another hour of trudging through thick forest I was thinking this climb was a poor idea. My legs felt heavy and tired and I reminded myself that we had to descend as well; always more painful with wonky knees and hips. 

But gradually the forest thinned and we caught glimpses of distant mountain ranges. Finally, we broke out from tree cover altogether. Despite the thermometer reading thirty-six degrees the air was fresher. Lifting our eyes from the rocky path we could see for seventy miles across densely forested ranges of hills blue in the midday heat. Climbing at last to the highest point in all of the state of Victoria we were struck by the beauty of the summit fields with their backcloth of the vast mountain ranges in every direction. I then knew that the plan to climb this mountain was a good one.

Beneath our feet were patches of giant Bottle-daisies, Rosy Hyacinth-orchids, speedwell and violets. Around us fluttered huge white butterflies. There was still no wind. There was an immense sense of calm, it was so quiet. It was here where the Dhuddhoroa and the Yaithmathang peoples met and hunted moths, (none of which we saw, it was the wrong time of year). Here where they settled their differences and forged alliances. Yes, it is a reverential place. I had to prod myself and be reminded that Matthew and I had climbed to the highest point of the state; my head was still clearing from the numbing intoxication of eucalyptus oil. In a wild and remote landscape, we looked down on the world and it marvelled us as it must have marvelled our predecessors over 40,000 years.

There are many reasons for climbing a mountain as I have said - the mundane ones such as, ‘because it is there’ and feeling a sense of physical achievement also still apply. This year our extra reward for climbing this mountain is a feeling of separation from the crap of modern life that lately has fomented madness amongst some national leaders. Up here I could briefly forget that the art of political compromise, enacted by the Aborigine clans, is deserting some of our ‘elected’ politicians and seemingly leading us to war. I could forget too about climate change and the pandemic, but only briefly. Our beautiful planet, admired from this mountain summit, is being destroyed by the very people who inhabit it. The Dhuddhoroa and the Yaithmathang peoples knew how to live in the landscapes they encountered. They are the masters of sustainable living. Oh, how we Europeans abused them and the land, from the moment of Captain Cook’s landfall in 1770 until 1972 when the Australian prime minister declared the policy of White Australia was over. During two hundred years of arrogance and imposition of the British rule of law, the Aborigine suffered under the feet of our ancestors. That Western liberal democracy has now been under attack from within for some years. Now it is from the outside by a murderous Russian - not for the first time. Europeans eventually came to our senses with regard to our attitude to the Aborigine; we show signs of doing so again over Russian autocrats.

I felt reluctant to leave this wondrous mountain top. After having the place to ourselves for fifteen minutes our tranquillity was broken by the sounds of loud male voices coming from below on the Eskdale Spur track, our route down. So, we set off to let them take our place. Four boisterous South American lads, carrying enormous backpacks and clutching bottles of beer, greeted us with their story of having missed a turn on the mountains the day before and so had to camp out under the stars. Three were from Chile and one from Peru. They were an instant reminder of the kinship and harmony that can exist amongst differing clans.

After another three hours we arrived at the Eskdale Spur Trailhead. As we did we met two Australian men clad in shorts and tee-shirts - also clutching bottles of beer, but with no backpacks or water – in all seriousness saying they were climbing to the top. Crazy; no Australian beer I have come across, and I have tasted many in Matthew’s company, will sustain you on a mountain climb. Now if it was a pint or two of Black Sheep bitter from Yorkshire, that would be a different matter. 

We still had four miles to walk along the forest floor back to our car. I have not been in the Singapore jungle but imagined I was. I wondered how I would have performed as a prisoner of war, being force marched in such conditions as we encountered here. We were walking at speed in high humidity, descended on by swarms of insects and with the threat of snakes. Insects included the sizeable March Fly, the bite of which is suddenly painful and draws blood. And then we confronted our first black snake, sunning itself in the middle of our track. It slithered into the undergrowth, more scared of us than we of it.

A week after our ascent of Mount Bogong we again set out to climb, this time the second highest peak in Victoria, Mount Feathertop. Like Bogong it is a hard climb for a septuagenarian with dodgy hips. This time it took us over four hours to reach the summit. Feathertop’s summit is wholly different to Bogong’s. We could almost have been on the top of a beloved Lakeland fell. The peak is small and steeply sided, devoid of undergrowth, flowers and butterflies. Cloud cover swirled up and down around us, blocking out intermittingly the views of more vast ranges of hills in all directions. It was even cold enough to put a woollen jumper over our tee-shirts. 

The descent from Mount Feathertop along Razorback Track is over seven miles long. It hugs the side of a hill before twisting one way and then another before dropping down into a forest of ghostly eucalypts that was burned out by bushfires in 2020. 

The stems of the trees stand starkly bare and mysteriously white against the blue mountains and carpets of lush grass. We eventually ended up at Mount Hotham, one of Australia’s principal ski resorts. Here ski lifts and Alpine architecture stand out incongruously against the forested skyline. We were met by the rest of our family - the youngest aged nearly three chased lizards and skinks and hoped for a snake – they reminded us of their value to us, their essential part of us and what we live for. They brought us back to earth after our lofty conversations with God. We dined at a pub in the bizarrely named ski resort of Diner Plain. A ski resort in high summer is one weird place to be.

Climbing mountains can be a lonely activity but one in which I come close to understanding what life is about. Walking amongst the giants of Victoria and the lesser heights of Lakeland in Cumbria brings with it a sense of proportion. I look down on the earth and feel what is good, what is worth living for. (Yes, I reflected briefly on the past horror show in the White House and current one in the Kremlin but try not to let them spoil my view of the world.) Despite the clambering of millions of feet on the summits of Bogong and Feathertop I still gained a primal sense that this land reminds me of the most important aspects of life on earth. The Dhudhuroa people came to these mountains, transacted their business - both social and political – and left those landscapes as they found them. In the three weeks we spent in the High Country of Victoria this year I never once saw an indigenous Australian climbing the mountains. Some of them may do it when I am not looking but I have my doubts. The reasons are all too obvious.

Lord Byron wrote in Don Juan:

The mountains look on Marathon –

And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone,

I dream’d that Greece might still be free

Let us substitute Ukraine for Greece.