Wallace Hut

Wallace Hut is one of 106 huts scattered across the Alpine National Park. Many of these huts were burnt in the 2003 Alpine fires but fortunately Wallace Hut survived. Wallace Hut, near Falls Creek, is the oldest hut in the park. It was built by the three Wallace brothers – Arthur, William and Stewart – who arrived as small boys in Melbourne from Ireland in 1869 with their parents.

The hut is never locked. You enter by pulling the string hanging through a hole at the lower right of the tiny window in the split- paling door. This releases the latch and the sunlight, revealing an unusual split-slab and rammed-earth floor, a rough table of mountain ash on snow-gum legs and the fireplace at the far end. The names of cattlemen who first used the hut are burnt into the tie-beams of the roof and at the back of the mantelpiece. One small window looks towards the distant Mount Kosciusko. 

Prompt: Dutch Goes The Photo, Tuesday Photo Challenge, woods