Thirteen of us travelled to Fryerstown which was the finishing point and, via a car shuttle, drove to the starting point in Castlemaine.
We walked past an old Secondary College (now closed) admiring the multi-coloured clay embankment along the path.Leaving the road onto the signposted Goldfields Track we began to follow the Poverty Gully Channel. This race (channel) was constructed in 1871 to serve both the goldmining as well as the domestic needs of Bendigo and consisted of an intricate network of channels covering many kilometres of country.
After 4.7km of walking along the channel, at times, carefully placing our feet in order to save the risk of a twisted ankle along some rough, stony flat sections and rougher uphill sections the Goldfields Track left the race.
After an easy uphill walk along a well-made road we headed off down to the Eureka Reef Memorial. The Eureka Reef boasts some of the earliest quartz mining relics in Victoria including a massive exposed quartz reef, foundations of Cornish crushing batteries and a mining village. Aboriginal rock wells are also present.
A pleasant 1.8km walk took us through 140 years of mining history to see the remains of many Batteries, puddling circles, cyanide tanks, cottage ruins and, particularly, a horizontal Cornish chimney.
Returning from the heritage walk we had lunch and Phil practised some of his physics learning to calculate the depth of the capped mine. The result: it took 3.4 seconds for a stone to hit bottom and at 9.8 metres per second per second acceleration speed of gravity the depth was 54 metres.
Leaving the Eureka Reef and walking along the Dingo Park Rd which ran parallel to a very long stone wall. Soon the clouds began to gather, it became darker and an eerie howling ensued from the forest. It began with one dog and,very soon, the numbers gathered, resulting in an unworldly cacophony of noise. A few of us were measuring up the nearest trees for climbing potential in case a horde of animals should come bounding towards us from over the hill. Luckily the howling soon ceased and many of us became braver when we saw that the dingos were safely locked away in their enclosures on the farm.
On we went past the Monk which is the highest point (459m) on the Track. We walked on towards Spring Gully where we saw some more extensive mine artifacts. There were many giant mullock heaps, bits of machinery and battery foundations. Spring Gully Mines was founded in the 1850s and by 1898 it was the district’s richest gold producer.
We looked across the Golden Gully near a fenced-off deep mine and noticed a feral cat, the same size as a fox, running through the undergrowth. It was a revelation to see it so big. We took the opportunity here to take our mandatory group photo.
The trail continued on past Spring Gully No 1 and joined a wide 4-wheel drive track. After a further 1.5 km a gate was reached. Past that we saw a large group of kangaroos with a very tall male looking very aware of us. Following road downhill we walked into the historic village of Fryerstown.
Fryerstown once boasted a population of over 15000 with 25 hotels and five breweries. Needless to say the current population is much smaller and the environment is very much quieter with no batteries thumping away on the various mining sites.
After calculating our walk to be 15.4 km long we declared it time to head off to our favourite watering hole: Das Koffeehaus in Castlemaine for coffee and cake.
