Daughters of cattleman Bill Bootes and his wife Joan, Anne, Trish and Jane returned to Gudgenby Station in the foothills of Yankee Hat range for the holidays to reminisce about their childhood.

As school girls on horseback they became so proficient at mustering cattle, branding and weaning were timed to coincide with their holidays from boarding school.

Nestled in the foothills, Gudgenby Station homestead overlooks the headwaters of Gudgenby River, Hospital Creek from the east, Bogong Creek from the south and Middle Creek from the west.

Thirty years ago it became part of Namadgi National Park, a triumph for the wilderness people who spent years lobbying the Commonwealth to resume and reclassify its natural beauty from commercial to community.

Filled with misgivings at the time, Bill Bootes, a third-generation mountain cattleman, had wanted the land to continue to be grazed conservatively to keep down weeds and rabbits. He had spent six months every year digging out weeds and six months controlling rabbits. "They (successive governments) were biting off more than they could chew," Jane said.

In recent years the ACT government has restored and re-opened cottages in the mountains, and among the first people to return are the children of high-country cattlemen. The three sisters now reside in Canberra, and north of the ACT in NSW.

"The rangers make us feel really welcome," Anne said. "It is nice we came back. I'd love to be up here with some cows. This was our valley. We spent most days on our ponies or playing on the river."

Gudgenby's gift to the girls was the freedom to ride around the paddocks all day, every day, Anne said. "We had various girl friends and cousins come out, and they would spend all their time riding with us. I also learned to drive the old Land Rover around the paddocks."

Trish said: "We would go out on our horses mustering. As we got older, that became our jobs. We'd bring in a paddock [of 60 or more cows with calves]) and bring them to the yards. They would get sorted, the calves would be marked."

Anne said the girls would play with the bull calves to quieten them down.

Without electricity, they used a kerosene fridge, petrol iron and wood fire stove in the kitchen. At night their father would sit by a Shellite lamp and write his diary, while the girls and their mother would sit by another lamp sewing, or playing board games.

Winters froze them to the bone. They broke ice in the river so the cows could drink. "If you took a glass of water to bed, in the morning it was frozen solid," Jane said.

Anne said they lived in the kitchen. "We'd fill a hot water bottle and run for the bedroom."

In the workers' huts they could get a cup of strong black tea with six teaspoons of sugar, and from their father's offsider, Granville Crawford, who milked the cows each morning, the most fantastic stories, which left them wide-eyed. Like the one about the two men flying to the moon the night before - for a drink.

Trish said: "We would kill plenty of snakes with 8-gauge wire. Poor old mum - she had beaten this snake, a copperhead, and Granville Crawford told her snakes didn't die until sunset, so she kept her eye on it for the rest of the day."

Mr Bootes had started setting up the girls in the cattle business, first with a jersey cow and then a short-horn hereford cow, Tinkerbell. They sold Tinkerbell's bull calves and raised her female calves, Annabell, Daisybell, Clarabell and Lulubell.