About 20 years ago my husband and I was speaking to a gentleman named Bob about Middlesex Plains and the shacks and mines in the area. He mentioned that he had spent some time up there as a seventeen-year-old in 1965. He would stay at the hut known by locals as the Ponderosa, which he described as a very smoky and rough hut to stay in. This hut subsequently was pulled down about 1989.
As we were talking Bob mentioned some hut sites and huts he found in the area of Middlesex. One being up the hill near Stormont. He described it as a log hut and in a bad state. He had to crouch to get in and he found a jump trap in the hut.1 He was able to describe how to get to it and marked it on a map for us. He mentioned going up from the Duck Pond (Lake Stormont), which is a small lake at the base of Stormont.
So off and on my husband and I have been looking for this hut in and around the area that Bob marked on the map. Always we thought it was an odd place to have a hut as it was not near water and it was a fair way up and not level. We scrambled through bauera scrub and it was not easy going. We would not be able to see any hut site unless we stood on it as the scrub in places was thick.
At the end of July 2024, I decided to have another go in looking for this elusive hut. The first day I decided to look somewhere different and look on the opposite side of the creek to where the hut was marked. It was lovely rain forest and it had been logged in the 1940’s so there were big stumps everywhere. At one place just before the rain forest ended I came across a stump that was smaller and more like the size a hut would be constructed from or firewood cut from. I marked this on my GPS and had a really good look around this stump. But again found nothing. I continued into the scrubbier forest out of the rain forest and did a bit more looking before giving up for the day.
Next day I decided to go up again to where Bob marked the hut and work my way around the top, thinking the hut might be on top of the hill (even though Bob specified that it wasn’t on the top). Oh boy that scrub, you wouldn’t find anything and no hut was found on top either. Instead of going back down the way I came up, I decided to go on the other side of the creek and go back down via the stump I had found the day before. I am glad I did, because as I came to the edge of the rainforest I looked down at my feet and there was a bottle. I couldn’t believe it, I was standing on the hut site. And it was only 20 metres from that stump. I must have walked right past it the day before.
After my first bit of excitement, I calmed down and looked at what was left of the hut. Most of the split timber had rotted into the ground except one end which, at first I thought was the chimney end, there was a piled up section of split timber under the moss. I saw a bottle and two jars and then a camp oven that had only one small hole where one of the feet was missing. I then found sticking out of the ground amongst the timber the handle of a frypan. It had rusted to nothing under the moss and dirt.
The hut size I estimated to be about 2-3m x 4-5m and it orientating east-west. There was an interesting ring of rock in the eastern end of the structure that had charcoal in it. There was lots of regrowth around the hut including myrtles and scrubby bushes. A tree stump was standing right next to the hut on the eastern end.
The next weekend I took my husband up for a look and on this visit he found a crosscut saw and two more bottles. One bottle had a plastic lid. I went back for a third visit the next morning and I found a few pieces of rusty metal on the northern side of the hut site. This metal I decided was a kero tin used as a billy.
I contacted my historian friends and invited them for a visit. Two weeks later they arrived and were able to help to find lots of nails, a door hinge, a wire hook, metal file, some snare wire and a jar with a metal lid and Kruschen embossed on it’s base.
The Hut
After a lot of discussion the group came up with a description of what the hut may have looked like. The fallen timber which I thought may have been a chimney at the first trip could have been a wall with a main roof beam. In the ring of rock we found a hook that would have been used to hang the billy over the fire and instead of a chimney it was set up like a skin shed with a fire in the middle of the room and the walls would have had the skins pegged out to dry around the fire. The hinge was found lying in the moss just south and west of the fireplace so I would suggest that the door was on the southern facing wall maybe in the centre of the hut. The sleeping/living area would have been at the western end of the hut.
The frying pan, cross cut saw and camp oven all seem to be outside the hut so may have been hanging out on the wall. By evidence of some timber beams found there may have been a small lean-to on the western end of the hut, possibly for firewood.
The Age
As there is no record of a known hunter or timber cutter building and using this hut it is very hard to know an exact date of when this hut was built. It was known that Bob found this hut in 1965 in a state of disrepair, and no longer used. Also, that the area was logged after the 1940’s when Haines purchased Middlesex from the Fields and extensively logged the area.
The artefacts found around and in the hut site suggest after the 1930’s. For example, the Kruschen Salts jar was manufactured between 1913-1957. The metal lid was more likely manufactured in the 1930’s. Also, there was a plastic lidded bottle that was also manufactured in the 1930’s. If this hut was the same hut that Bob found in 1965, we know that the hut was used for trapping possum from the discussion with Bob and the jump-trap. Also, the piece of snare wire found near the hut and the fire place suggests a skin shed set up.
The clue of the skin shed as part of the hut itself also tells us an age. This style of hut evolved in the Middlesex- Cradle area around the early 1900s) and is unique to the Tasmanian Highlands. Other examples are Linnane’s in Cradle Valley (read about that here) and the Lake Windermere miner’s hut (long demolished).
I can’t say 100% that the hut found was Bob’s Hut, as he did say he thought it was a log cabin and this one seemed to be made of split timber. But it is about the right age, in the right location and used for hunting. Even if it isn’t Bob’s Hut it is an interesting find all the same. I am hoping to take Bob into the area and show him.
Copyright Paula McCulloch 2024
1 a jump trap is a small round trap that works similar to a rabbit trap and said to be used for possums