Spargo’s Hut in the Victorian Alps is being restored with help of namesake’s family

It has been almost 100 years since Neville Spargo’s grandfather and great-uncle built what has now become one of the oldest structures in the Mount Hotham Resort in Victoria’s High Country.

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Bill Spargo and his brother Cecil constructed the hut while Bill was working on the Hotham section of the Alpine Road in the 1920s. A keen prospector he then used the structure during his gold mining ventures.

Last week, Bill’s grandson, Neville, and his great-grandson, Ben, began restoration work on the hut with a group of volunteers who donate their time to preserving huts across the state’s high country.

“It’s not very often the group gets to work on a hut that still has strong family ties and links and have family members working on the hut with them. I think they said there has only ever been one other hut with that kind of scenario,” Neville Spargo said.

“It was an emotional time, that’s for sure. My son had never been to the hut before, so he was absolutely enthralled with it.”

Ben Spargo and his father Neville spent time helping restore the historic hut built by his great-grandfather and his great-great uncle in the 1920s.(

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Neville visited the hut with his father, Len, as a child and said returning to it last week brought back a flood of memories.

“When you walk into the hut, it is just like walking into a time capsule,” he said.

“It took me back to my first trip as a boy, I think I was about 12 and I went with my father Len Spargo and his friend.

“I remember it very well, my father actually made fruit scones in the fireplace.”

The work, which is ongoing, included the replacement of several poles inside the hut and the skillion roof, restoring the external chimney and “re-mudding” the stone fireplace.

Neville Spargo’s father Len as a child skiing on Mount Hotham.(

Supplied: Neville Spargo

) Preserving for the next generation

Graham Gales is part of a group of volunteers who, since 2008, have donated their time to preserve the alpine huts — working alongside the Victorian High Country Huts Association.

“We just love being up in the high country. Who wouldn’t want to be up in the high plains in summer when it’s hot?” he said.

“Part of it is [that] in our youth we were up there, and we got value in what we saw and what we did and it’s a way of leaving something for our grand kids, so what we know and experience about the high plains and history of the area, our grand kids can see and be part of.”

He said many of the structures in the state’s north east were built for cattlemen who had leases on the Bogong High Plains.

“They would go up with their animals after winter when the conditions improved, set up their cattle in the leased area where they could graze and they would build some temporary accommodation,” Mr Gales said.

“That temporary accommodation became huts which stayed there for quite a while and they’ve been there since — even though the cattlemen have long since gone and the leases have been revoked.”

Spargo’s Hut, one of the oldest intact structures in the Mt Hotham Resort, is State Heritage-registered and has been described as the “Mawson’s Hut of the Australian Alps”.(

Supplied: Graham Gales.

) Unexpected treasures uncovered

Along with restoring the huts, the group also has an archaeologist with them who records anything they find at the sites.

“We weren’t expecting to find much at Spargo’s Hut but then we turned up two big pick heads,” Mr Gales said.

“They just came up out of the dirt that was in the little side building.

“And when they were replacing a pole on the south-west corner, one of the blokes disturbed the dirt which had been under a piece of furniture that we had moved, and we found a toasting fork which was just a long stretch of twisted wire.”

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Mr Gales said the hut — which survived the 1939, 2003 and 2013 bushfires — was still in good condition despite it sitting on an “exposed little knoll”.

“It’s a fascinating hut because, unlike a lot of the other huts which tend to be just shells, this one has got a lot of the relics in it,” he said.

“It’s got an old bed. You can imagine a bed from 1920 [and] there’s a mattress up in the rafters as well.

“There’s all sort of things, like the hooks in the fireplace that you would’ve hung a billy on.

“This is one of the few huts that has a heritage value. A lot of the huts up there have been modified over time and they’ve lost a lot of their heritage significance.”

Thirty volunteers are restoring the hut, which was built in the mid-1920s.(

Supplied: Graham Gayles

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With the help of Neville Spargo, the group was also shown three of the four marks that identified the parameters of the original miner’s lease that Bill Spargo had around the hut.

“We can’t find the fourth because it is overgrown with vegetation, so we will have to do a bit more of an accurate search to find that one,” he said.

 “But just the sense that there are four little corner sets of rocks in the ground that are still there that have nearly been there over 100 years is quite incredible.”

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