Australian High Country huts represent a bygone era of this country's pioneering history.
The huts were built in the Australian Alps by graziers, stockmen, foresters, miners, skiers and bushwalkers for shelter from the extreme weather conditions that can strike so unexpectedly in this beautiful and rugged area.
The Australian Alps stretch from Canberra (the capital city of Australia) through the Brindabella Ranges to the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales and along the Great Divide through eastern Victoria and are made up of eleven national parks and reserves comprising 1.
6 million hectares.
It's no wonder the huts are so popular with photographers when you see the building styles employed.
Alpine Ash, Snow gum and other local timbers were felled and hand-split slabs were used to build walls, lean-tos and furniture.
If available river stones were used for wall and chimney construction and bark, later replaced by corrugated iron, was a popular roofing material.
One of the oldest of the High Country huts is Wallaces Hut, situated near Falls Creek, Victoria - 356 kilometres from Melbourne, the capital of Victoria.
Built by the Wallace brothers in 1889 from snow gum slabs and woolly butt roof shingles, Wallaces Hut nestles in a beautiful grove of twisted snow gums.
It took the Wallace brothers around six weeks to construct the hut.
The snow gums sheltered the hut from the weather which could be wild and unpredictable even in the summer months when the brothers would take the family's cattle to the high country to graze on the alpine pasture land.
The hut and the surrounding snow gums survived a bush fire in the 1930s, thanks to the efforts of the Wallace brothers and their friends.
Due to this, the trees around the hut are unusually large and hide the hut beautifully in the surrounding landscape.
Wallaces Hut is now classified under the National Trust as having heritage significance.