Wilkinson Memorial Lodge
Located at Wallace Gap on the Alpine Walking Trail, Bogong High Plains.
NOTE this is a SITE only, as the hut was burnt down by a gas-cyclinder fire in 2004.
Known as Wilkinson Memorial Hut or Wilkinson Lodge.
History
This hut was built by the SEC in the summer of 1932-1933 for the Kiewa Hydro Electric Scheme. It was designed to accommodate the snow research program manager and the resident engineer for the scheme.
The cottage was sited next to a hydro meteorological station, set on stilts above the snow in the same year. It designed by W.E .Gower (later SEC Chief Architect) and built by Joe Holston and C Jassund. Other sources say the builder was Bill Spargo and designer, GT Dyson.
The work was approved in 1932 after , Joe Holston (a weatherman), had been operating from Wallace's Hut and later, the Pretty Valley Hut, from 1928. Federal funding and Bureau of Meteorology assistance was won, and these two early huts were a base for construction of this building.
The work carried out there included operation of a meteorological station at the cottage, measuring the snow depth and density along two pole lines, and operating stream gauging stations in the area. he engineers included TO Olsen (1933-4), a Swiss engineer Adrian Rufenacht (1934 6), a Norwegian Martin Romuld (1936-42) and Stan Trimble until the program ceased in 1946.
During Trimble's occupation, in 1946, the hut was covered by a snow drift and the family trapped. Only the chimney tops of the hut were visible but the arrival of Rover Scouts meant the family's rescue although it took some 5 days to dig them out, with cracked rafters and a leaning hut as one result.
The hut was sold in 1948 to the Victorian Ski Club and renamed Wilkinson Lodge, Robert Wood Wilkinson, best known as 'Wilkie, was indisputably the 'Father figure' of Victorian skiing.
He first visited the snow at Mount Buffalo in 1909, at the age of thirty-five years, and was fifty when he joined the Ski Club of Victoria as one of its earliest members, in 1924. He had an immense influence on the Club in its formative years and played a prominent part in some of the earliest trips of exploration. Mr Wilkinson led the first party across the Bogong High Plains in the winter of 1926, pioneering Mt Nelse on the same trip. In 1927, with Jack Docherty, he was the first to climb Mt Fainter on ski. Again, in 1929, Mr Wilkinson, with a party from the Club, were the first to climb Mt McKay on skis.
Construction: The materials for the hut were carted on a sled or pack horse by High Plains cattleman, Wally Ryder, and his brother in-law, George Hobbs, along what is now the Alpine Walking Track from Mt Hotham. Snow pole lines were established from Pretty Valley to Mt Cope and from Wallace's down Fall's Creek to allow weather station construction.