Mt Ellery

By Errinundrian standards, Mt Ellery is an singular place. Here, people don’t live in trees like the inhabitants of the vast central plateau. Nor do they live in buildings like the inhabitants of the northern plains or the Snowy River valley. They live underground. But like so many other people in this green nation they chose their mode of living for the best environmental and aesthetic reasons.

At just over 3000m above sea level, Mt Ellery is the highest peak in the nation. The granite tors on its summit loom above the surrounding rainforest clad plateau. On its sides nestle many towns and villages such as the well-known football loving Ellery Camp, Goongerah and Goolengook. Just below the summit is the city of Mount Ellery.

And when I say just below, I mean directly below. In order to preserve the beauty of their mountain home the Mountain Folk, as they call themselves, have mined a city into the granite heart of their home. The red and grey Mount Ellery granite is prized all over Errinundera and indeed the world. The ancient city of Milosis (now McKillops Bridge) is entirely built of the finest Mount Ellery red granite. So the building of the other cities went hand-in-hand with the excavating of the city of Mount Ellery. Granite mining is now strictly regulated ensuring that the price remains high and that it matches the growth of the city. The Mount Ellery Mining Co-operative is fully owned by, and a nice little earner for, the city council or, in other words, the city inhabitants themselves.

Eight years ago, in order to not fall behind its rival cities in the Errinundrian Football Association, the City of Mount Ellery decided to build the largest and most modern stadium in the nation. At the time the largest stadium was the 32,000 seat Frosty Hollow Stadium. Clearly, something of this order of magnitude could not be built on the outside of the mountain but, equally clearly, the engineering challenges in building it underground were daunting. A 52,000 seat capacity ground was calculated as the largest practicable and a seven-year excavating and furbishment program was anticipated. Unfortunately for the ambitions of the Mountain Folk, the northern city of Bonang built a 90,000 seat above ground stadium and First Creek Falls has started construction of a 64,000 seat stadium a short distance downstream from their city.

The major advantage of an underground stadium is obvious: weather has no effect on the games. In winter the temperature outside can be minus twenty degrees Celsius but patrons will be snug and warm away from any blizzards in an environment where the temperature varies by less than 2 degrees all year round. Similarly in summer, there is no trace of the hot north wind that can bedevil the nation.

Ellery Cavern being prepared for the official opening.

In typical Errinundrian bloody-minded fashion, the local administration is determined to have a natural grass playing surface. This has created considerable difficulties. The solution is to suspend enormous sun lamps from the ceiling that, during daylight hours when the ground is not being used, are lowered to only one metre above the grass. Automatically computer controlled, the lights imitate exactly the brightness and wavelength of light falling on a actual spot in the outside world.

The Mountain Folk are generally viewed by other Errinundrians as being somewhat closed and inscrutable. Some theorists suggest that living in artificial light for 24 hours a day has made them a bit odd. But what is odd to an Errinundrian? Who knows? In practical terms it means that it’s not considered polite to just walk into someone’s house as you can elsewhere in the nation. On the other hand, if you start talking to the Mountain Folk sitting next to you when you’re watching a World Cup Match in the stadium the odds are you’ll be invited home for dinner.

Politically they are as rabidly green and left wing as anybody else in the nation. Due to the constant temperature in Mount Ellery only the warm lowland towns and cities such as, Lilly Pilly Creek, Bemm River and Martin Creek rival its nudity rates. As in the rest of the nation, cars are banned here. There is a heart-in-mouth monorail system that travels at high speed up, down and around the multilevel city. The locals call it the Big Dipper. Visitors invariably get lost as, unless you grow up there, coping with the concept of a three dimensional city is usually beyond the mental capacity of normal people.