Published Resources Details
Conference Paper
- Title
- Routing Ligar - developing a shortcut to the Kiandra Goldrush
- In
- Australasian Engineering Heritage Conference: AEHC 2022
- Imprint
- Engineers Australia, Barton, ACT, 2023, pp. 49-61
- Url
- https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.836782438205160
- Subject
- Chronological Classification 1788-1900 Applied Sciences Engineering and Technology
- Abstract
Within the Snowy Mountains "Ligar's Route" is a local legend - purportedly one of the most famous migratory tracks across Southeast Australia, developed by the Victorian Surveyor-general Charles Whybrow Ligar to provide Victorian miners on the Ovens Goldfield direct access to the Kiandra Goldfield, high in the Snowy Mountains of NSW. At the onset of winter 1860, the expectation arose that there would be 100,000 miners arriving at Kiandra in the Spring, mostly from Victoria and South Australia. These two colonies immediately despatched their Surveyors-general to identify the 'most practical routes' for their colonists to travel to the diggings and return home with their golden wealth. Major Arthur Freeling of South Australia took the approach of following established shipping routes and roads, townships and staging posts, to ensure safety and ease of travel for his colonists. Ligar took an alternate approach, avoiding established networks. Supposedly it was a shortcut, running from Beechworth to the Upper Murray and then across the heart of the mountains. The mapping of a road suitable for drays along this line was heralded in the Victorian and NSW press, but fresh research indicates the purpose of Ligar's Route was far more political than practical, and that Ligar himself only travelled part of the route prior to announcing its success. Timing was everything, the truth flexible, but why? This presentation will describe the socio-political struggle between NSW and Victoria in which the route was established, the line of the route and the potential for the highest sections of it through the Kosciuszko National Park to be followed today.
- Source
- cohn 2023
Related Published resources
isPartOf
- Australasian Engineering Heritage Conference: AEHC 2022 (Barton, ACT: Engineers Australia, 2023), 133 pp, https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.9781925627695. Details