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Matthew Higgins
has been researching, writing about, talking about, walking and skiing the mountains of the Australian Capital Territory's high country for two decades.
As a Research Fellow at the National Museum's Centre for Historical Research, Matthew is writing a book on the history of the ACT high country, with an emphasis on people's relationship with the mountain environment.
The project offers an opportunity to conduct further research and draw material together into a book aimed at the general public.
'Australia has precious little snow country and it is in the mountains that we see a really distinctive relationship between people and the Australian environment,' Matthew said. 'The mountains helped to shape people's lives in a whole range of ways'.
While many books have been written on the New South Wales and Victorian alps, few have focused on the ACT high country.
Mountain Days, Mountain Ways will concentrate on the post-settlement period and cover themes including:
- grazing
- brumby running
- surveying the ACT-NSW border
- fire and forestry
- water harvesting
- science
- skiing.
Mountain Days, Mountain Ways will focus on the Namadgi-Tidbinbilla area. It will also cover other places in the ACT and NSW, which have an historical relationship to the core area, including parts of Kosciuszko National Park.
Matthew will draw on dozens of oral history interviews he has conducted since the late 1980s, using the prism of individual experience to help to tell a broader story.
Mountain Days, Mountain Ways will be published by the National Museum of Australia Press. The book will include historical photographs and contemporary images – many taken by Matthew before devastating bushfires swept through the area in 2003.
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