The final mob of cattle has been cajoled through Kosciuszko National Park.
It ends a tradition spanning more than 100 years for fifth generation cattle grazier and third generation drover, Janet Webb, whose fate could be a glimpse of the future for hundreds of other graziers and drovers throughout NSW.
Many of the brumbies Banjo Paterson wrote about will soon be gone as well.
Wide-ranging reforms are now being imposed across the State that could mean Travelling Stock Routes are handed to the State Government.
The same happened to three routes in Kosciuszko 26 years ago when they were given to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).
All are now closed to drovers.
Cattlemen and women with stock were refused entry to the last, “Broken Cart”, from June this year.
Janet, a 51-year-old mother-of-one and lifelong farmer, expects the closure of the last-remaining stock route through the rugged park to cost her operation $26,000 a year in trucking costs.
“Since the day they took over I knew our days would be numbered,” she said.
“When the Rural Lands Protection Board (then the Pastures Protection Board) handed over management of the Travelling Stock Routes to National Parks we were assured the routes would remain open so that stock had access from the Monaro to the Riverina.”
Janet used Broken Cart twice a year for the past two decades as she moved hundreds of cattle between her two southern NSW properties.
It took a month to walk them the 170 kilometres south-east from the winter property, “Califat”, Adelong, on the southern slopes, to the reliable summer farm, “Stuartfield”, near Yaouk, on the high country.
Fourteen days of the trip were spent trekking 100km through the national park.
It was another month-long trip to return in the autumn.
Her cattle knew the terrain and wandered little despite the absence of yards along the way.
The end of droving in Kosciuszko closes a book of memories dating back to her childhood.
“We used to come home from boarding school and that’s what we’d do, it was just part of our lives,” she said.
“We would all come back with nice, little pale skin and then at the end of the trip we were sunburnt.”
Her family and the workers would set up an open camp every night while on the trail.
Advice such as “when you’re lost in a fog get on a creek to find your way” was given by the old drovers during chats with the children.
Although Janet (who works the two properties with her husband, Warren, son, Stuart, and his wife, Wendy) has spent a lot of her life in the Snowy Mountains bush, there are places she has not been.
“Things passed on from older generations cannot be learned from books or the Internet – it is hands-on experience and teaching that keeps our history alive,” she said.
“Until now there has been a continuous use of the Broken Cart stock route and it is an unbroken link with the past.”
The wildlife service claimed cattle damaged creek crossings and spread weeds.
The same reasons are behind the service removing many of the park’s 1700 brumbies in the coming months.
It seems bushwalkers but not beasts will be the only creatures allowed to trek the park’s steep inclines as Janet predicts horseriders will soon be evicted.
She maintains Kosciuszko National Park should be for the wider public, not solely hikers.
Most Travelling Stock Routes (TSRs) in NSW, except those in the Western Division, are managed by the State’s 47 Rural Lands Protection Boards, which will be overhauled and turned into 14 by January 1.
A number of unprofitable TSRs will be ceded to the Department of Lands by mid-2009.
www.theland.com.au
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