Curiosity Rocks, Lake Jindabyne

The Rocks have not looked like this since Lake Jindabyne started filling in 1967, it shows the impact of the current drought cycle that began in 1996 compare. The dam was at below 50% capacity when this was taken with a 19-35 mm lens and polarising filter. With only average snow falls this year, the inflow will have little impact after draw down for hydro power, irrigation and environmental flow for the Snowy River below the dam. more

Those snags in the water are festooned with line and lures, some of which are now part of my angling history display in the den. Some of the old classic lures which haven't seen the light of day for 20-30 years were cleaned up and given a swim with new hooks and still worked well.

I guess the Rocks looked much like this before the dam when the valley was a pioneer grazing community, home of The Man from Snowy River, and even before then when the Ngarigo people roamed here and visited the high country each summer for the bogong moth feasts.

As the weather heats up in October, the moths, Agrotis infusa, more migrate to the cooler mountains to aestivate, the reverse of hibernation, in their thousands, up to 17,000 per square metre, in the cool dark cracks and crevices in the great boulders and scree slopes. They were easily smothered with smoke and scraped off the rocks into nets and skins then carried back to camp, roasted and eaten whole or pounded to a paste, made into flat cakes and cooked on hot stones. High in protein and fat, their taste was described as rich and sweet and similar to roasted walnuts.

This abundance of food encouraged great inter-tribal gatherings for trade and exchange, feasting, ceremonies and dispute settlement. Early European observers commented on the people going up onto the mountains looking gaunt and miserable from the winter and returning after a few months sleek and fat, even the dogs were fat! Not forgetting that the mountain pigmy possum, Burramys, is also partial to a feed of bogongs.

Recently however it has emerged that the moths may contain traces of arsenic probably from insecticide absorbed by the larvae which feed on the roots of pasture plants, so recipes for bogong moth omelette should be treated with caution.

The Dingo Tree and other dog tales

My son and I were returning from a long day's fly fishing to a remote Snowy Mountains stream when a massive gum tree loomed out of the darkness, its branches festooned with the bodies of dingoes shot by the local farmer to protect his stock. This folklore practice of hanging vermin as trophies and to deter their ilk probably dates from neolithic times when animals and crops were first being domesticated. Some dogs and pups had been hanging so long only the paws wrapped in fencing wire remain.

They appear to be alpine dingoes from the white colouration of those that still have any fur; further inland they tend red-ginger to sandy-yellow to match their environment, while black and grey also occur, possibly as a result of inter-breeding with domestic dogs.

Anyone who has experienced their long echoing howling often in chorus "where the air is cold as crystal and the white stars fairly blaze, at midnight in the cold and frosty air" while camped alone by a high country stream, will never forget it.

The dingo was brought to Australia in prehistoric times by Aboriginal people who used it to hunt game and as a blanket on cold nights, hence the saying 'three dog night' for a particularly cool evening.

In fact sleeping with dogs is recorded as early as the Natufian culture around 12,000 years ago at the origins of canine domestication. My old archaeology professor, Iain Davidson, notes that in the earliest sites of domestic animals in Palestine, Pakistan and the eastern Mediterranean, you get burials of people with dogs. And sleeping with pets is probably now more widespread than ever. More intimate relations have also been recorded.

Dingo remains appear in the archaeological record from around 3,500 years ago along with a new stone tool technology named the small tool tradition.

Dingo motifs occur widely in Aboriginal art and the dingo is a common character in Aboriginal mythology. In the Blue Mountains it is recorded as a food item after being cooked in a pit oven.

Dingoes soon spread across the continent, except Tasmania, and are are a major feral pest and threat to native animals and livestock, probably accounting for the extinction of the Thylacine, known as the marsupial wolf, on the mainland. The dingo never reached Tasmania because the land bridge over Bass Straight was flooded soon after 10,000 years B.P. as sea levels stabilised.

The species Canis lupus dingo evolved from the Indian wolf about 6,000 years ago and is genetically related to the wild dogs of Indonesia and the singing dogs of New Guinea. New genetic evidence continues to throw light on dingo origins.

the Dingo Tree