– old towns, old cemeteries, old mines and ghosts –
We had decided to explore a little of Victoria’s gold mining heritage a part of our two week road trip through country Victoria. Daylesford was going to be our base for a couple of nights before we moved on to Chewton, near Castlemaine. We had already visited Ballarat and Bendigo in the past, so our aim on this trip was to confine ourselves to some of the lesser-known goldfield towns.
exploring daylesford
Daylesford itself is a nice place – clearly a favourite getaway for Melbournites. We set off early one morning and explored the town on foot – plenty of old buildings, churches, old shops and gardens to admire.
a loop drive through old gold towns
But there’s a limit to what you can discover in town, so when that’s exhausted you may want to consider some of the smaller surrounding towns for a day visit. We chose to do a loop starting at Creswick and finishing off at Welshmans Reef.
The total loop is about 240km – all in a day’s work when travelling around Australia – and very achievable within autumn daylight hours.
the road to clunes
We had decided to head off in the direction of Creswick because we wanted to stop at the Lambley Garden Nursery on our way to Clunes. Neither of us are gardeners, but my mum is and I was keen to buy her some seeds and bulbs from one of her favourite online nurseries to take back to Sydney.
As everything was still closed in Creswick at 9am (including the woollen mill…drats!…) we decided to only drive through and make our way directly to the nursery.
It was a wonderful crisp autumn morning and surprisingly we really enjoyed wandering through the gardens before packaging up our purchases and heading off to Clunes.
Clunes is a beautifully preserved historic town. One thing that Victoria is very good at compared to NSW is preserving its history. The next few days would prove to us that the state has a rich vault of historical architectural gems – shame on you NSW!
Clunes is one of only 15 officially recognised Booktowns in the world and hosts a major annual book event each May – unfortunately we had arrived just a little too late. It was also a Wednesday, which as it turns out is a real problem when visiting Victorian country towns because almost everything goes to sleep and only re-opens on Thursdays-Sundays.
No matter. It meant we could enjoy these places pretty much on our own. And the authentically preserved shopfronts were a delight.
We befriended the local woodworker whose shop (shown above) is almost directly in front of the State Savings Bank. He’s a lovely, friendly fellow with an Aladdin’s Cave of a shop chock-ful of ingenious timber creations. Worth taking a peek at!
talbot, amherst cemetery and the elusive historic chinese baths
Our next stop was Talbot. Smaller than Clunes but pristine and well preserved.
Once again, everything was closed but we knew that one place we could rely on was the nearby cemetery! Amherst Cemetery, just 2.5km from Talbot town is all that remains of what used to be the gold rush town of Amherst.
We spent about half hour rambling around the graves trying to spot the oldest one we could find – as it turns out, it was the grave of Dr Usher who had arrived in the early phases of the gold rush and had established a large practice amongst the miners. He died in 1859 being of “delicate health”. Most of the cemetery’s residents were immigrants from the United Kingdom, although there also seemed to be a few German gold diggers.
We had also read that there were some historic Chinese baths close by which looked really interesting. We turned right off the main road onto Possum Gully Road but after that things went awry! A word of warning – there is little or no mobile signal around here so make sure that you download the specific location ahead of leaving. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing what we did – driving around unnamed goldfields tracks and missing it altogether! Yikes!
Apparently, the baths are at the site of the original joss and bath house used by the Chinese miners at the local diggings. We may have missed the baths but even so, driving along these unnamed dirt tracks gave us a real sense of the devastation wrought on the landscape as each inch of soil was trawled by hundreds of miners intent on making their fortunes. A pastime which for some continues to the present day as we spotted at least three campers fossicking around the site – equipped with a little more technology than their forbears.
In the spirit of trying to visit as many painted silos as we could on this trip we passed by Avoca and snapped this one by Jimmi Buscombe before pressing on to our lunchtime destination, Dunolly.
lunch in dunolly
You can tell that Dunolly was a major town during the gold mining era. It’s thought to have had a population of about 35,000 around the 1860’s. There are still plenty of fine buildings to see and the Dunolly Historical Society has prepared an excellent online resource which allows you to compare the past and the present – which really helps to bring the town back to life.
Of course, the Museum was closed (the main theme of the day!), but we had been organised enough to download the files from their website beforehand and were able to take an informative and leisurely stroll around town in between munching on some very good pies and eclairs from the local bakery.
There are also a number of bric a brac stores – closed on the day. I would guess that it would be a lively place to visit on weekends.
revisiting schoolbook history at moliagul
When I think Victorian goldrush, I have an enduring memory of a grainy black and white photo in one of my school texts of a dapper Victorian gentleman next to an enormous gold nugget. I’m not sure why, but that image left a massive impression on me and defined the whole history of the Australian gold rushes in my mind. So I couldn’t resist the opportunity to visit the site of the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found in the world as it was only up the road from Dunolly.
The nugget became known as the Welcome Stranger and it was discovered at Moliagul in 1869 by John Deason and Richard Oates just 3 cm below the surface. I mean – when you visit this place, you have to ask yourself just how incredibly lucky these guys were! Who would have thought! It’s just so unprepossesing. Nonetheless, the biggest gold nugget is the biggest gold nugget and quite rightly someone at sometime had the presence of mind to erect a monument in the middle of nowhere to mark the spot.
I’m sure this area was trawled to within an inch of its life after the find – no stone would have been left unturned as prospectors would have tried to repeat Oates’ and Deason’s success – alas to no avail.
tarnagulla… the town of abandoned churches…
I had come across a photo of a derelict church on the net while researching for our trip and decided I just had to take a look for myself. It turned out to be a reason for ambling through one of the more intriguing gold ghost towns in the region – Tarnagulla.
Now the good folk of Tarnagulla would probably be a little cross with me for calling it a ghost town – but on a Wednesday afternoon there was nary a soul in sight and everywhere we turned the place appeared close to derelict and lifeless. Clearly, that’s not the case, but it makes for an interesting introduction to this part of our blog.
The Church in question was easy to find. It’s located right next to the town’s old gold processing works. It’s in private hands so you can’t visit it close-up, not that you would probably want to, given its state of dereliction.
We continued across the road into town, encountering a small cafe – the only thing that appeared to be open – where we asked the tight-lipped lady behind the counter if she might have a map and information on sites around town. She silently took us to pad sitting on a stand at the side of the cafe, tore off a sheet and handed it to us. And we were on our way.
I’ve since discovered that the same map and walking tour can be downloaded here. And if you can get a good mobile signal it may be interesting to compare the photos in their extensive online gallery to what you see as you walk around the town.
We ended up spending about an hour exploring. The tear out sheet wasn’t all that informative but thankfully, the local council had placed small blue placards near the prominent sites which gave us a brief description and history of what we were looking at.
Commercial Road which seems to be the main street of the town is a good place to start, but be sure to turn at the end of the street and follow up the residential roads behind the main street. There’s a wonderful collection of old Victorian properties, now in a fairly precarious state.
But most astonishingly, you’ll be surprised by the number of churches this town hosts. We counted at least 5 substantial churches. It speaks to a fairly considerable congregation at one time in the town’s history.
Sadly, it’s not possible to visit any of them as they have all been sold and are used as residences. It’s a little surreal to spot washing lines, caravans and kids’ toys scattered throughout the church gardens! I’d recommend a visit if only to experience how a community deals with great fortune and decline without any evidence of the usual inauthentic tourist trappings.
maldon and then a beautiful sunset before heading home…
A stark contrast is Maldon, which has been set up as the quintessential goldrush tourist town. This was our third visit and because it was late on a Wednesday afternoon, mostly everything was well and truly shut!
We managed a devonshire tea at one of the few open cafes and a quick photo of the streetscape, which was undergoing major roadworks, and then left.
Nonetheless, from previous visits we know it’s worth a trip, preferrably at the weekend. There’s a walking tour that’s been put together by the local Historical Society. Plus a number of goldmining sites to visit in the area including a gold dredge at nearby Porcupine Flat and three mine sites. It would also make a nice day’s outing by train – there’s a steam train service that runs between Castlemaine and Maldon on limited days. It’s seems to be a major event. Earlier in the day we had came across crowds of people waiting at a railway crossing along the train route and we figured out that they were all there to take the perfect steam train photo as it chugged by! Maybe they had all missed out on tickets. There were a lot of them.
On our way back to Daylesford, we made time for one final stop at Welshman’s Reef. We had again seen an interesting image online of a Victorian house that was inundated when the Cairn Curran reservoir was created in the 1950’s. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the exact location and we naively thought that it might be down the only road that we had spotted branching off the main road. That road led us to the Welshman’s Reef Caravan Park.
Of course we didn’t find the house and as the daylight was fading we didn’t have the time to go and explore. But we considered ourselves very lucky nonetheless. It was a beautiful tranquil spot to enjoy the sunset. Again – not a soul in sight and all to ourselves.
our final take
We are expert at biting off way more than we can chew! So I would advise that you be more selective about the locations you would like to visit and spend a little more time at each one than we did. But it’s such an interesting route with so much to see and we would definitely recommend this drive. Just be sure to go between Thursday and Sunday!
