By the late 1940s, the outside world had made only superficial impressions on the lives of the people and 'the way of things' on the Monaro Plains below the Snowy Mountains.
Home of the high country graziers who gave birth to legends like the 'The Man From Snowy River', it was one of the last bastions of traditional 'Outback' living in southern Australia.
Cars were few, sealed roads even rarer. The occasional passage of modern transport across the vast expanse of open grazing country could be tracked from afar by the plume of opaque brown dust.
The people of the Monaro held stoically and unafraid to an era which typified for many the source of the true Australian psyche.
The Monaro, discovered in the 1820s by explorers seeking grazing country to sustain the rapidly expanding wool industry, was one of the first areas settled by squatters. It was a natural plain, its deep basalt rock forming an impenetrable barrier to most native trees. It was this feature which gave it its name. Phonetically it had been the Manaro, or Maneroo, ever since it was drawn into human experience tens of thousands of years earlier by the Aborigines. When the squatters learned its Aboriginal name, meaning treeless plains, they saw no need to change it.
Against the deep violet backdrop of spectral mountains it lay as an endless vista of undulating yellow grasslands, smudged just here and there by the grey-green wash of Eucalypts and in more recent times by darker, isolated splashes where planted pines and poplars hid homesteads.
Time was measured by the seasons. Once the hardships of settlement had become history it marched to the casual plops and easy laughter of Saturday afternoon tennis parties in the cool of the homestead trees; and to the sudden changes in children appearing briefly in the rotations of boarding school terms.
Progress was marked by the annual Pasture and Agricultural Shows, where achievement could be a blue ribbon for a fine looking ram, or first prize for a jar of home-made marmalade.
Like the far flung Aboriginal tribes who had gathered each year for the Bogong corroborees, the agricultural shows brought together the widely scattered European Australians for their dancing and courtship, gossip and news; and to listen to brass bands wooing with sweet harmonies from far-away England.
Isolation had welded the people into small, independent communities. They were of resolute pioneering stock, living in homes fashioned by their forefathers from the materials at hand. They remained spiritually in touch with the exuberant days of youth and daring when a young stockman could make his start by capturing mounts from wild brumby mobs and build the nucleus of a herd from rogue cattle missed in past musters.
It was a time when the jingle of bit and spur, the snort of a horse and the creak of leather were still familiar sounds as the first fingers of dawn stroked the dewy plains. In 1949 as in 1849, stockmen would gather at the great runs for the summer droving and the autumn musters. Every rider a master horseman, always eager to demonstrate his ability and courage. Resilient bushmen, fed on slabs of damper, cold beef, strong black tea and campfire yarns. Sons and grandsons of the men from the Snowy River who rode to join the famed Australian Light Horse mounted infantry in the imperial wars against the Boer and the Hun. The men of the Monaro 7th Light, on mountain-bred horses could ride, and fight, like few others.
The small townships which served and fed off the graziers, mirrored their ways and shared their heritage. Even in the early 1950s, stockmen were still a common sight, droving sheep through even the largest towns such as Cooma as they made their way slowly, noisily and dustily to the saleyards. Friday was sale day. It always had been and no reason yet to think it would be any other way.
When word filtered through that the Government was for the first time seriously considering a scheme to harness the alpine waters, it was dismissed by many as a repetition of old rumours. Such talk had been heard before.
But even as the Monaro people argued, there were strangers in their midst; high up in the mountains with theodolite and pole, marking the earth and rock for the invasion to come.
In fact, within weeks of the decision to go ahead, there were men deep in the mountains, out of sight of the communities on the Monaro. Men from foreign lands, wide-eyed at their surroundings and following the instructions of a wiry, old man, white-haired under a battered 'mounties' hat, as they explored the deepest ravines and steepest ridges.
Just as the high country people had yet to meet the strangers treading their territory, the newcomers had no concept of the community they had entered.
Just a few months earlier, Milisov Tsarevich, had been working his family's small, mixed farm -- a random collection of chickens, pigs, cows, a few sheep and lambs -- about a hundred kilometres north of Belgrade. Like thousands, he one night escaped across the border in search of freedom and in 1949 the refugee pipeline deposited him in Australia.
He and others chosen to work as chainmen for surveyors have been taken straight from their ship when it docked in Melbourne,t to the mountains. The speed of the change made the strange surroundins even more surreal. Nothing was familiar. Perhaps it was all part of a dream they were sharing -- bush cooking by an open fire, the exotic smell of eucalypts, the strange animals they had no names for. And yet they felt they belonged. If they had any fears they were not of the dream but only that the dream might end.
The bush, in which a person could be lost in moments, frightened even the bravest. But it is understanding, not courage, which makes it a friend. For a chosen few, the mountains wove their ancient spell. Milisov, the farm boy from beyond Belgrade, was one of them. He adjusted to its moods; its melancholy greens when embraced by thundery skies, its radiant valleys touched with afternoon gold; the orchestra of the night and the silence of the dawn.
Milisov saw nothing in the bush but lavish and breathtaking splendour.
For some, like Milisov, it was several years before the stranger in the mountains and the Australian on the plain met face-to-face. But by then, the man who had arrived shy, gaunt and hollow-eyed would be gone; in his place a bushman with a knowledge and love of the country as profound as that of any high country stockman. The meetings were friendly, with, in Milisov's case, the typical Australian response after the introductions: "Mind if we call you Jacky, mate ?" And Jacky it remained.
Sixteen-year-old Boyd Mould was staring with a stolid expresion out through the carriage window as the train carried him home from school holidays in Sydney. Normally he would have had the carriage to himself. Now it was full of strange, in fact very strange men, who smelled absolutely awful. It would be some time before he recognised the pungent odours as garlic and spiced sausages.
Boyd had heard of the Snowy Sheme but only through oblique references by his father and neighbours about whether or not it would affect their mountain grazing leases.
Boyd hoped not. He fully intended to be a grazier in his own right when he left school. The thought of losing what they all felt was theirs by right was intolerable.
He couldn't comprehend a world not bound to the Apine musters. Besides, how did the Government expect them to be able to maintain viable stocking rates if they couldn't use the alps to rest their pastures ?
What would happen to the stockmen and characters like old Charlie Spencer, whose grandfather, James Spencer, was accorded the honour of being the first man to take stock into the mountains, way back ... well, it was more than a hundred years ago, he knew that.
Besides, Old Charley was a bit of a legend himself. God, he made them laugh. Old Charley had a withered arm, smashed after a fall on a horse. Now when he rode he wore a coat so he could tuck the useless hand into the waist pocket. But when he galloped, it always came out, flapping uncontrollably and often flying up to hit himself in the face. The boys laughed all right, fit to bust. Boyd grinned through the dusty glass.
The stockmen were the people who belonged on the plains, not these strangers who couldn't even speak English. He remembered the story his dad Reg told about a night he camped with Old Charley and chuckled quietly to himself despite his uneasiness.
As was often the case, the campfire talk got around to dogs; exploits of the best working dogs they had owned and the tribulations they had suffered at the antics of the more useless mongrels.
Charley was poking the fire with a stick, sending a fine spray of sparks into the night: "Actually Reg ... I'd like you to come around one day and have a look at a young pup I've got. I want to know if you think he'll be any good as a worker."
Boyd's father was modest. He gazed thoughtfully at the flames licking the dead branches in the centre of their fire: "Well, I'm not really an authority on these things Charlie."
"'Course you are. You've always got a good dog. Come on, come around and tell me what you think of 'im."
Reg reluctantly agreed and a week or so later called in to give Charlie his verdict. Charlie waited anxiously.
"Well ... what do you think?"
Reg shrugged: "Well. He's a friendly little fellow all right. You should be able to teach him something ... plenty of width between the ears; shows he's got some sort of a brain ..."
Charlie spat contemptuously: "Ah strewth, that buggers it then. He'll never work if he's got any brains."
The story was told and retold around at least one campfire on every muster. Everybody knew old Charlie and laughed. Funny as a headless chook but a good bloke, was Old Charlie.