Mountain House Maintenance

Machine-read text (unproofread)

Read from the scans by software, so it contains mistakes. Typing it up properly would help blind readers: use Suggest an edit.

MOUNTAIN HOUSE MAINTENANCE After a year's respite a working party wended its way to Mountain House upon a wet, dreary Saturday morning I the routes were varied - that is - River Trail or Gentle Annie = neither very enticing on such a day. Mountain House was due for a face lift - or an uplift - or something. It required a coat of paint inside, repairs to the door, to the water tank and something just had to be done to the quagmire in front of. the hut which was running a close second to Pig Flats. It was a miscellaneous collection carried up the mount by the "Sherpas", Trev's Sherpas - two gallons of white paint, three 8 ft.lengths of copper down piping, soldering irons, shovels and picks - not for ice. Upon arrival the first job was to fit a length of down pipe into the guttering by the porch and attach it to the remaining two lengths by joints. This piping was buried in the ground, in front of the hut and well concealed at the bottom, with S tones, Enavel and earth, When finished it made a remarkable improvement as the water/does not lay around the hut but runs away well past it.

The painting was commenced on Saturday afternoon and finished on, the Sunday morning - the walls, ceiling and underneath of the top bunk all being painted white - to reflect and give as much light as possible. We are not sure however who had the thickest coat of paint - the hut or the girls! The water tank is now in first class condition and should remain so unless some bright spark hangs a heavy billy on the tap, which will break the joints - this seems to be an extremely bad habit of.Mountain House inhabitants. We found it necessary to disconnect the tap and scrape away the red lead and rotting packing the holes were then repaired and soldered and the tap rofittea(perfectily). We maintain its the neatest tank job for miles! The bank at the ridge side of the hut was cut back and the drain cleared. This drain was also dug deeper and graded in order to detour the water around the sides of the hut and over the bank, An improvement would be to have gravel spread around the sides. Grass seed was also sewn in an attempt to provide growth over the pipes and around the hut. Vast quantities of sods brought from old Mountain House were placed in front as an encouragement to the grass seed. We also found time to make a corduroy track for about two yards from the porch back to the bank to save this eternal "slopping around" before entering the hut. Late Sunday we downed tools, hied ourselves to Bannister and thence to Wellington compensated by the thought of a job well done, T.Walsh.