My Mt Canobolas — Borry Gartrell

“My family’s ties with Mt Canobolas go back to the 19th century; the Gartrell’s were miners, Cornishmen, that got side-tracked to California in the strike (goldrush) of 1849. Two went out and found a bit of gold and came back and told the others. But, by the time the other 130 had charted a ship and got out there, they were too late, the gold had all gone.

 They then had to go to Pennsylvania for coal mining but the conditions there were worse than they had back in Cornwall, However, one of the women had married one of the many Johns from Emu Swamp, and they came out here.

 My name is actually ‘Harold’ but I got the name ‘Borry’ because our family home was at Caves Creek on Boree Lane near the Borenore Caves.

 Like a lot of people, my first memory of Mt Canobolas is of going up there when it snowed. The snow that we got up there used to be feet deep, everywhere you looked. 

 I was about 10 at a time and we all went-up in an old ‘1954 Ford Single Spinner’. They were not very good in the snow. They were all very different vehicles than you would go up there now and there were cars slipping everywhere.

 I also remember being up there as a child when there was a fire, it seemed like the whole mountain was burning.

 People lived up there in the Great Depression in little shanty huts made of corrugated iron. They used to pick the blackberries to survive.

 When I was a little kid, I went up there to harvest blackberries myself. I remember seeing an old shed full of old kerosene tins that had been washed-out with markings of the IXL company with the tins overflowing.

 I went up there another time with Cecil Selwood and we and he had a sheet of corrugated iron, we laid on the ground and pulled some wire-net over the blackberries, the blackberries just fell off in the pounds. I remember coming back with half a ton of blackberries

 It is the extraordinary elevation up there that makes it special as a place. The last couple of hundred metres before the peak is subalpine and alpine, absolutely unique in this part of Australia.

 And it sits in a jet-stream. Whenever there is a big frost down here and it’s still and quiet; the top of the mountain looks like a tree on fire. With the really cold air shooting across it, you look up there and there’s this fiery glow of smoke and light.

 It happens 30–40 times a year and it’s absolutely spectacular. It looks like it’s going to erupt at any moment.

 Because it’s so isolated, it’s like the Galapagos Islands, there are species there not found elsewhere, there’s actually a eucalyptus species not found anywhere else, but because it’s so common, it’s not endangered.

 There are rare and endangered species — rats, other rodents, possums, even beautiful little native orchids.

 My favourite places up there are where you can go walking. When you see the sun on the southern side of the Mount, it’s extraordinary.

 I think my very favourite place is the Federal Falls when water is going-over. You can walk behind the Falls with the water spilling and there are ferns and other species, and you feel like ‘The Phantom’.

 Hopetoun Falls is another wonderful place when in water with a series of little cascades. I remember some pictures of about 30 buggies going up there with ladies in their Sunday best dresses and hats, celebrating the naming of the falls after Governor-General Hopetoun.

 All year round; it’s such a special place. So many people have got the same ties and the same bonds with it. I remember an old-time fruit-grower, Len Lewis who had an orchard for 50–60 years. Before he died, he said to his wife, ‘I want to be cremated and I want you to ask Borry to spread my ashes up there’.

 So we got a plane and went up the northern side and the pilot just opened the door and said, ‘spread them out ‘and away they fell with me hanging-out of the plane.

 For 20 years, I ran the Trust with Garrett Barry from Crown Lands. I was Chairman and any land — Crown Land or expired stock leases or the like — we would have placed in the Trust. It covered an extraordinary area.

 We became very powerful and we had some very grandiose plans for what we wanted to do with the Mount. We administered maybe 100,000 hectares, probably more.

 When we just got it all together and we set out to cash it up, we had a young minister come-up and decide it should all be in National Parks. I’ve got all this land under my control and suddenly, it’s all gone.

 I incurred the wrath of Crown Lands when I said, ‘it should all go to National Parks’, they thought I would fight to keep it.

 The problems up there though are quite extraordinary and enormous, especially the blackberries.

 But it was the right thing to do. National Parks are gradually getting on top of the weed and pest problems.

 I’m so pleased at how it’s all gone.”