Despite the ravages of the recent terrible bushfires in the Alps, these slab huts have survived, either through the dedication of parks firefighters, staff wrapping huts in fire-proof foil beforehand, or fires luckily not extending to the huts.

Split by hand, often more than a century ago, many of them bearing the marks of the tools that formed them, the slabs are both part of the material culture of the mountains and part of the story of the people who lived in the high country.

Whether in ACT's Namadgi, Kosciuszko in NSW or Alpine in Victoria, slab buildings can be found and still visited today. Summer bushwalkers and winter cross-country skiers continue to seek shelter in some of these buildings which were a haven for previous generations of people who knew the Australian Alps as home.

Namadgi's slab-walled 1860s Orroral Homestead is today the park's earliest standing building. One of Kosciuszko's oldest, 1880s-90s Coolamine Homestead (then owned by Yarralumla's Frederick Campbell), was saved from near ruin in the 1980s through a conservation program organised by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

In Victoria's Alpine, Wallaces Hut of 1889 is the park's oldest cattlemans' hut.

Mountain people split the slabs from timber that was suited to the task. The best timber, where available, was Alpine Ash (Eucalyptus delegatensis) which, owing to its straight grain, split well with hand tools.

Early skis at Kiandra in the 1860s were made from the same timber.

After felling the tree with axe and crosscut saw, men set to work with the saw to cut the trunk to the desired lengths.

Using maul (a very large mallet) and froe (a long-handled, bladed splitting tool), they split the slabs off the lengths.

Then with broadaxe and draw-blade they worked the slabs to final shape. The broadaxe's other major job was squaring timber logs into corner posts and wall plates for the building.

The volunteer Kosciuszko Huts Association, formed in 1970 to conserve the huts of the high country (and celebrating its 50th anniversary this year), still uses these tools and techniques wherever possible.

Recently members gathered at a rural property near Wee Jasper to learn and practise these vernacular crafts.

It's this association, working alongside parks staff, that has helped keep not just the huts but also the skills alive over the passing decades.

In Victoria, a community hut conservation group also formed some years ago.

Slabs shrank with age, so to keep out those mountain drafts, people covered the interior sides of walls with newspaper, or if you had the money, with actual wallpaper.

In the ACT, Gudgenby Homestead was originally built in 1845, but was pulled down to make way for a new brick home in 1964.

Part of the original building has been re-erected in the grounds of the Namadgi Visitor Centre south of Tharwa.

Surviving newspaper dates can still be read on the slabs: June 22 1867 is the earliest I have spied on the remnant papers.

Over at Coolamine in Kosciuszko, paper was applied to the replacement slab walls as part of the 1980s conservation project.

Beforehand, timbermen Bill Boyd and Mark Garner worked crosscuts and swung broadaxes, adzes, froes and mauls and their slab-making was captured in a documentary filmed for the Australian Heritage Commission.

Titled Timbercraft, it was the first doco of its style in Australia and won awards.

In the uppermost reaches of the Thredbo River, stockmen Teddy McGufficke and brothers Dave and Noel Pendergast built Teddys Hut in 1947-48 from slabs that they cut further south on Tulon Creek.

They had to transport the slabs to the hut site on packhorses. Though it was a hundred years after Gudgenby was erected, the techniques of slab construction had not changed markedly.

Not very far away is 1935 Cascade Hut. Famous Australian author Elyne Mitchell skied here in 1941, chasing brumbies. The hut features in her 1946 book Australia's Alps and the area was immortalised in her Silver Brumby novels.

There are stories of drama too. Brayshaws Hut in Namadgi's south dates from 1903 and was home to Davey Brayshaw, part of the large Brayshaw clan that had grown up at nearby Bobeyan Homestead.

Much of the construction was done by Davey's brother Edward who was a skilled bush carpenter.

But on a later job in the bush, Edward suffered a bad axe wound and died from blood loss on the way to Cooma.

Drama came during the 2003 and recent 2020 bushfires. Wheelers Hut, a beautiful example of slab construction south of Tooma Dam, was almost licked by flames in 2003 but survived.

Orroral required staunch defending by ACT parks staff during the recent Namadgi fire.

Careless use of fire by hut visitors is just as serious a threat and many huts have been lost to large fires being lit in hut fireplaces.

Educating visitors to use care and common sense in the huts is still a central element of trying to ensure the longevity of these buildings. But Wheelers, Orroral and the rest mentioned above, plus others, continue to stand thanks to considerable conservation work by KHA and parks staff.

These huts are at once testament to the building skills of the mountain people, the mountain way of life, and the efforts of that dedicated band of people today who work to retain this key aspect of cultural heritage in the high country.