Cold and damp conditions greeted 26 volunteers from Bushwalking Victoria’s Bushwalking Tracks and Conservation group (BTAC) and members of the Friends of Baw Baw National Park (FoBB) as they carried out maintenance activities on walking tracks in the park. This joint activity has become a regular and popular event on the BTAC and FoBB calendars. This year’s event was even more popular than ever, despite the conditions, as volunteers had free access to extremely comfortable lodge accommodation for the duration of the event; this was provided by the Mount Baw Baw Alpine Resort. A further carrot was provided by Parks Victoria who sponsored the event dinner on Saturday night. Thank you to these generous supporters.
With an enthusiastic and hardy group we were able to achieve significant track clearing progress along the Tanjil Link Track to Phillack Saddle and then in both a north and south direction along the Australian Alps Walking Track (AAWT).
Key achievements:
- 26 volunteers joined the activity.
- 4,000 meters of track cleared from the National Park boundary with the Alpine Resort in a northerly direction, this includes all the Tanjil Link Track.
- 3,000 meters of track cleared from Phillack Saddle in a southerly direction towards Mount Erica.
- 15,000 meters of track from the Alpine Resort boundary towards Stronach’s Camp was cleared of fallen logs.
- Two boardwalks on the Tanjil Link Track were repaired.
- 19 water bars and drains were cleared.
- 749 volunteer hours contributed.
- Including 49 hours of event management and 172 hours of volunteer travel time.
Two AAWT end to end walkers, who decided to break from the hike for a few days while the weather improved, decided to join our group for two days. We were very appreciative of the energy of these young volunteers.
The event attracted four first time volunteers and we welcomed back two volunteers who we had not seen for a number of years. The remainder of our volunteers are the group of diehards we unflatteringly call the “repeat offenders”.
Sunny Sunday’s picture:
In addition to providing lodge accommodation the Mount Baw Baw Alpine Resort provided the services of two of their employees and an ATV to transport our equipment to the work site on Thursday afternoon and return it to the Resort on Sunday night. Thanks to James and John.
Weather Conditions for the Event
Just in case you want to know how hardy our volunteers are, check out the temperatures over the 3 day volunteering event. While Friday and Saturday were cold and wet we were lucky that the vast majority of the rainfall occurred at night when we were tucked up warm inside the lodge.
| Date | Rain Fall mm | Min Temp oC | Max Temp oC |
| Friday 31/3/2023 | 12 | 2.3 | 5.3 |
| Saturday 1/4/2023 | 39 | -2.0 | 4.9 |
| Sunday 2/4/2023 | 1.8 | -0.9 | 10.2 |