trig and fire tower on Mt Comboyne NSW

IMG_0922 S31° 34' 47" E152° 33' 00" This road has been closed for a couple of years.... see www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/la/qala.nsf/18101dc36b6383... 4015—MOUNT COMBOYNE TRIG POINT AND LOOKOUT Mr John Turner to the Minister for Education and Training, and Minister for Women representing the Minister for Primary Industries, Minister for Energy, Minister for Mineral Resources, and Minister for State Development— Is access to the trig point and lookout of Mount Comboyne open to the public? If not, why not? If not, how long has the trig point and lookout been closed to tourists and the general public? If not, is the lack of access advertised by way of a road sign or on the State Forest's website to inform the general public? If not, why not? Is the Minister aware visitors from Sydney and Melbourne recently travelled to the trig point lookout of Mount Comboyne but access was denied because of locked gates across the road? When will the gates be reopened to tourists and the general public? Answer—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No. While the area was used by many bone-fide four-wheel drive enthusiasts and other recreational users, it was also victim to excessive vandalism and misuse. This rendered the fire lookout tower, which is a strategic tool in fire management of the region's State forests, unsafe for use. Additional vandalism had occurred to the Forests NSW radio repeater, which is used to service the whole of the region and is an important tool for the safety of staff. To preserve the safety of the tower operators and other staff, the gate was locked and access permitted to walking traffic only. Comboyne Trig Road and Trig Point have been closed for approximately 1 month coinciding with the restoration of the fire tower and the upgrade of the road. The restoration of the fire tower and Comboyne Trig Road cost in excess of $10,000. A sign was erected in the area approximately two years ago advising of the intention to lock the gate. See above. No. Gates will not be open to casual tourists due to safety risks to visitors, and due to excessive vandalism to the fire lookout tower and the radio repeater. A number of other vantage points are available in the region, including North Brother Lookout (picnic and toilet facilities available), Bago Bluff Lookout (Pine Hut Road, Bago NP), Rawson Lookout (Borganna NP), Newbys Lookout and Flat Rock Lookout (Coorabakh NP). These all provide views of Camden Haven and surrounds. www.exploroz.com/interact/UHFRepeaters.asp?State=NSW&... Check this trig too! From www.westprint.com.au 14/12/18 Friday Forum Townsend Corner Townsend Corner is the junction of the Murray River with the Black-Allan Line at the eastern end of the Victorian – New South Wales border. I hadn’t heard of this before and so I have done some research. Jo. This Information came from a paper written by Nadia Albert on behalf of the Office of the Surveyor General of Victoria. Prior to the 1870s, some survey work had been done in the area of the Black Allan line, most notably that of Surveyor Thomas Scott Townsend (1812-1869) under the leadership of NSW Surveyor General Major Sir Thomas Livingston Mitchell. Townsend led his party of ‘free-men’ (ex-convicts) and bullocks under difficult conditions, ‘days being generally excessively hot, the nights severely cold.’ To ascertain what he believed to be the nearest source of the Murray to Cape Howe, Townsend surveyed the Great Dividing Range. This was not an easy task given the ‘large number of springs and rugged, densely timbered terrain,’ and it required that ‘every water channel and every minutest bend of the range [be investigated] so as to leave no doubt as to the particular source sought for.’ From this Townsend made a reduced plan to indicate the straight line to Cape Howe. At the expedition’s end, Townsend’s equipment was in a ‘mutilated state:’ his men and bullocks were not much healthier. In 1866 the Victorian Parliament deemed Townsend’s marking of Cape Howe insufficient, and so in 1869, a conference was held to geodetically survey the twenty kilometres of Cape Howe, and to decide the exact position of the boundary end-point. It is believed that this survey was never completed or maybe never undertaken. The Age Nov 24, 2004. With its restoration of a historic survey cairn near the source of the Murray River complete, a team of 16 surveyors has ended 153 years of unfinished business between Victoria and NSW. The team, from the Victorian Surveyor General's office, RMIT's geospatial science unit and volunteers from the Institution of Surveyors finished restoring the 134-year-old monument. The team's work paves the way for a formal recognition of the straight-line part of the border. A draft proclamation was begun in 1874 but never invoked. The land boundary, as distinct from the Murray River boundary, was agreed to before the colonies separated in 1851. The border begins at the official source of the Murray - a two-metre-wide patch of wet ground - on the north-west slope of Forest Hill, near Mount Kosciuszko. It then drops east-south-east for 155 kilometres in a straight line to Cape Howe. RMIT lecturer and survey team member Ron Grenfell said there had been intense rivalry between the two colonies from the start and NSW usually triumphed. Before they had even split, the southern colony had already lost the rich farm country of the Riverina and rights to tax the lucrative Murray River trade. The original border was to have been the Murrumbidgee River, which would have ceded to the southern colony a large tract of land, almost as far north as Canberra. "Victoria would have been huge," Dr Grenfell said. The discovery of gold at Delegate, and the question of which colony it lay in, prompted the first survey of the line from the Murray to Cape Howe nearly 20 years after the colonies had split. Surveyors Alexander Black and Alexander Allan forced their way through some of Australia's most rugged terrain to finish the two-year survey in 1872. Black, a Victorian, laid the marker stone so that it faced Victoria. The straight segment of border was named the Black-Allan Line in their honour. Even though it owns Delegate, not everything has gone NSW's way. When Dr Grenfell and a team of RMIT students surveyed part of the Black-Allan Line in 1984, they discovered an error that meant NSW had for decades been repairing a Victorian stretch of the Princes Highway just north of Genoa. It was only a 14-metre stretch but, after the loss of the Riverina, the Murray watercourse and the gold at Delegate, it was, for Victoria, a symbolic victory. And from the Bombala Times Feb 21, 2006. AFTER a wait of more than 130 years, the eastern straight-line portion of the NSW and Victorian border was formally recognised last Thursday, February 16. Parliamentary Secretary to the Victorian Premier, Bruce Mildenhall completed a dedication to Townsend Corner, which was named after early explorer, Thomas Scott Townsend who found the source of the Murray River nearest to Cape Howe. Officially naming Indi Springs of the upper reaches of the Murray, NSW Minister for Lands, Tony Kelly then explained the Aboriginal origins of the title, with 'Indi' meaning ‘something far away, or belonging to the past'. Below is a photo of the post at the Eastern end of the Black Allen Line (you refer to it as Townsends Corner) and the stone cairn on the first peak about a kilometre East of that point. The trail of stones marks the direction of the border line. This cairn was rebuilt about 7 years ago. Peter.