When Milli Gunner saw dirt and trees “surf” down the mountain above her house, she didn’t know just how much her life was about to change.
It was October 2022, and a landslide was making its way down the mountain at Bogong Village in Victoria’s Alpine region.
“I find dirt really fascinating, just the colours of it and textures,” she said.
“So watching it just trickle down like a waterfall was quite mesmerising, but also scary because we didn’t know the extent of it.
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“It was constantly moving.”
About two weeks later, Ms Gunner and her partner were told to evacuate their rental property, and took enough clothes for one week.
They would never live in that house again, and would spend the next five months living between towns while their property in Mount Beauty was renovated.
“We occasionally snuck into our old house in Bogong and just slowly started collecting our belongings,” she said.
“We were struggling to get any help in accessing those things, so we just sort of guerrilla-moved out of that place.”
It would take six months for the road to Bogong Village to re-open to one lane, and 19 months for the works to be complete.
A major road project
The Bogong High Plains Road landslide was a small disaster in an international context, but it was big for Victoria.
Dipal Sorathia, program director at Major Road Projects Victoria (MRPV), pointed out the landslide was taller than the Westgate Bridge, and the biggest on Victorian roads in 40 years.
“On a daily basis there were nearly 200 truck trips up and down the mountain to cart all this material away,” he said.
“This site was quite unique from a geologic perspective. It’s a very slow-moving landslip, it’s not one of those rockfall types of landslips.”
The road re-opened to a single lane ahead of last year’s snow season, and finally re-opened to two lanes of traffic at the end of May.
The road closure drastically reduced access from tourist thoroughfare Mount Beauty to alpine resort Falls Creek, devastating local businesses.
MRPV works included cutting the angle of the slope to try to prevent future landslips, and installing 7-metre-wide benches to capture sliding material.
Dirt rich
Forced to relocate as the landslide works began, Ms Gunner was also forced to pivot her PhD project in landscape architecture — and she started following where the dirt from the landslide was headed.
MRPV removed 600,000 cubic tonnes of material from the site, filling 30,000 trucks.
“I have an interest in material movement so I began mapping out where this soil was going and what new life the soil was living,” Ms Gunner said.
Some filled a local quarry and gravel pit, and some went to carpark and landscaping projects in Falls Creek.
Ms Gunner started collecting small amounts of dirt discarded in piles along the side of the highway, mixing it with plaster it to make about 100 cubes that she has now started giving away to community members as a tangible souvenir.
“It’s like a little treasure or artefact that is just in memory of the landslide,” she said.
“It’s another life for the material, just as it went to the quarry or became a carpark, I’ve been able to just make something out of it.”
Something to remember it by
Life may be back to normal for local residents travelling the Bogong High Plains Road, but some of them want to remember the period of upheaval.
Cubes have found their way to display cabinets in homes, and even into the classroom.
James Eggleston was an events supervisor at Falls Creek at the time of the landslide.
“It meant a lot of the work we’d put into summer had to be put on hold, it meant that access to work was limited … so maintaining that work was difficult,” he said.
He’s now a full-time primary school teacher, and the proud owner of one of Ms Gunner’s landslide cubes.
“We have a memento here at school about quite a major event in Falls Creek history … to take a piece of that history to share with the students we have here so we can always remember, as well, some of the difficulties that the community went through,” he said.
While there may be relief that the daily trucks carting dirt have ceased, Mr Eggleston said the workers would be missed in the community.
“We’ll feel that loss but it’s pretty nice driving up and down every day, and … I think everyone’s feeling a lot of the relief to know where it’s at with the pending winter season.”
Bogong Village has since been upgraded to ease the housing shortage for Falls Creek seasonal workers.
Falls Creek Chamber of Commerce president Michelle Lovell told the ABC she “did a jump for joy” when she saw the road was ready to open to two lanes of traffic, ahead of the resort’s snow season launch this weekend.
“It’s been a very long and arduous 20 months, that’s for sure,” she said.
“I think just all of the uncertainty … [about] the road and the village access definitely played a part in a lower visitation over the summer months.”