Making tracks: One Eye Gully

Gold seekers from all over the world flocked to Ballarat after the August, 1851 discoveries of John Dunlop and James Regan at Poverty Point and as the numbers of diggers increased, the township of Ballarat was established. Initially, the Ballarat diggings were a rough collection of huts and canvas tents spread out along the creeks and gullies of the Yarrowee River, but as more and more people arrived - not just single men roughing it, but whole families including women and children - the tents gave way to timber buildings and then as mining practices moved on from shallow alluvial workings to more established deep lead mining, permanent, brick buildings were erected.
The early township grew up in a haphazard fashion around the sites where the miners pitched their tents and along the routes of the original bullock tracks. As a result, the Ballarat CBD as it exists today, was not the centre of town during the early years of the gold rush. Instead, East Ballarat near Golden Point and the Eureka Lead became the focus of activity. Businesses lined the old tracks which became the first roads.

The North Grant Hotel (1859), located on the south east corner of Peel and
Main Street (now Bridge Street), built mid-1850s. Image held by the State
Library of Victoria

The diggers arriving from Melbourne followed tracks which in time became Humffray St, Victoria St and Eureka St. Those who had taken the Burnbank Track from Buninyong past Yuille's homestead, found themselves on a track beside the Yarrowee River which led to what eventually became Grant Street, but probably it was more common for those making the last leg of the journey from Buninyong to follow a shorter track described by the historian WB Withers in 1888. The track he indicated was "on the eastern side of the creek that ran down past the Main Road Gullies to the Yarrowee".
He was of course, referring to the track which eventually became the Geelong Road out of Buninyong and which upon its arrival in Ballarat becomes Main Road. The early survey maps of Buninyong Parish clearly mark the southern portion of the old track which branched off from the Geelong to Buninyong Track near the current intersection of the Midland Highway and Lal Lal Street. From that point, the track to Ballarat skirted the township of Buninyong, followed a north westerly line to the outskirts of present-day town, then turned more northerly and passed between Mt Helen and another small peak to the east which at that time was known as Green Hill. Traces of Green Hill can still be found in the names of local roads.
It is near this point, close to Gear Ave and Federation University where Canadian Creek rises as a series of springs, flowing north to its confluence with the Yarrowee River near Golden Point. The track taken by those early diggers roughly followed the course of the creek, tracing a path down the gully to Ballarat. At that time, the upper reaches of the creek were known as One Eye Gully. It was not until later that the creek took on its present name which is attributed to an early digger by the name of Canadian Swift, one of a group of lucky diggers who discovered the sizeable "Canadian Wonder" nugget in 1853.
Canadian Creek and its tributaries (Specimen, Warrenheip and Pennyweight Gullies) were all the focus of gold mining activities during the gold rush and today still suffer erosion problems as a consequence, adding no doubt to the sediment load of the Yarrowee/Leigh River which in turn deposits its sediment into the Barwon. This however was of little concern to the diggers who arrived in their thousands during the 1850s, traipsing along the track from Buninyong.

The remains of gold workings in a gully which runs into Canadian Creek to the
north of Federation University

At present, I have not managed to find a map which shows the entire path of the track from Buninyong to Ballarat, so I am not sure of its exact course past Mt Helen, other than to say it continued on through Mt Clear to Golden Point where it became what in the early 1850s, was known as Main Street. A contemporary report from the gold rush era mentions that the track was "6 kangaroo miles" from the gully at the base of Green Hill to Ballarat (Geelong Advertiser, 25th August, 1852).
It was not long before the track became a surveyed road and such was the flow of traffic that by 1856 there were calls for tenders to build a plank road along this route from Buninyong to Ballarat. The work was completed by August, 1857 on what only two months later was referred to as the "main high road" to Ballarat. Survey maps along Main Street from 1857 also refer to the Plank Road which continued in use until 1868.

Looking along Main St aka Plank Road in 1859, although there is no sign
of the planks. Image held by the National Library of Australia

It was only a matter of months after completion however, before repairs to some of the planks were needed. A contributor to the Geelong Advertiser of 1st December, 1857 stated that it would be better to travel along the old bush road than to use the Plank Road in its current condition. From this reference it would seem whilst the new road followed a similar path, it was not identical to the original track, which presumably still existed simultaneously with the new road for some time at least. As far as I can tell, the "new road" which eventually became the plank road was still only a "proposal" in 1853.
In keeping with this, Surveyor William Urquhart's 1852 map shows shows a myriad of faint tracks criss-crossing the area between Golden Point and Bakery Hill, but none closely following the present line of Main Road, suggesting it was not surveyed until after that date. Neither however does he indicate the course of the track from Buninyong, although buildings are said to have existed along Main St as early as 1852 when Urquhart was surveying the area. These would have followed the course of the original track and presumably therefore determined, in part at least, the course of Main Street when surveyed.
Interestingly, several geological survey maps show Canadian Creek following and crossing Main St several times between present day Barkly and Esmond Streets, suggesting perhaps that this several hundred metre section of Main Street may have closely followed the original track. Today of course, the re-aligned Canadian Creek flows via a channel somewhat to the west and does not cross Main Road until the latter passes Clayton Street. Main Road however, has not moved since those surveys of the late 1850s.

The lower, channelled reaches of Canadian Creek flowing towards the Yarrowee
River near Poverty Point

Making tracks: to Golden Point

On about 21st August, 1851 gold diggers John Dunlop and James Regan, unhappy with the meagre finds and large numbers of people flocking to Hiscock's Gully, decided to try their luck further afield. It was about 6 or 7 miles distant, at what is now known as Poverty Point that the pair struck gold. Thanks to Geelong Advertiser reporter Alfred Clarke, news of their find was soon public knowledge.
At the time of the discovery, Clarke was making regular reports from Hiscock's diggings. On 25th August, he stated that parties were out searching and that gold had been found on Yuille's run towards Warrenheip as well as several finds in the gullies nearby Hiscock's.

Monument marking the approximate location of Dunlop and Regan's gold
discovery at Poverty Point, on the bank of Canadian Creek near Clayton St,
Golden Pont

Gold it seemed, was everywhere. Within a day or two of Dunlop and Regan's find, two other groups of prospectors struck gold less than a mile to the north west, on the opposite side of the point to which Dunlop and Regan were working. This site was given the name Golden Point and in those early days of alluvial gold finds, was considered to be the site of the "main diggings".
Naturally, all parties involved were keen to keep their discoveries quiet, making it difficult to determine who was where first and when, as discovered by a commission set up to establish who - if anyone - was entitled to claim the government reward offered for the first to find gold in the region. The credit for the first discovery and the reward went eventually to Thomas Hiscock for his find near Buninyong, which it was claimed, was part of the same goldfield as the later finds at Ballarat.
If the prospective diggers rushed to Hiscock's Gully, they positively stampeded to Golden Point. By early September, the Geelong Advertiser claimed, there were over 100 prospectors at Ballarat. Within a year of the Poverty Point discovery, there were 20,000 diggers on the field.

An engraving of the Golden Point diggings as depicted by D Tulloch in 1851-
1852. Image held by the National Library of Australia

As news spread, diggers came from all over the country. They followed the bullock tracks from Melbourne, from Geelong and from South Australia via Portland Bay, travelling any way they could. Many of these paths which converged on the diggings can still be seen in the irregular lines followed by a number of the roads in East Ballarat and surrounds today.
Roads such as Humffray St, Main Rd and Eureka St were originally bullock tracks. Humffray St was the main track from Melbourne, running along the southern bank of the Yarrowee River, Main Rd (more of which in a future post) brought diggers from Buninyong up the east side of the Buninyong Ranges and of course, the track which crossed Winter's Flat, past the Yuille's homestead and skirted around the edge of Yuille's Swamp.
Interestingly, a map produced in 1852 from a survey conducted by government surveyor William Urquhart shows two tracks along the Yarrowee from Yuille's station; one along the east bank of the river and the other along the high ground to the west, roughly following the alignment of Armstrong St. The tracks converged on the east side of the river at a point near the present intersection of Cameron and Grant Streets before following a curving path to the north of the modern alignment of Grant Street.

A section of Urquhart's 1852 survey map overlaid on Google Earth. Blue lines
show the tracks from Yuille's and Burnbank, red lines show the present course of
Main Rd and Eureka St. Yellow shows the main diggings at Golden Point as
indicated on Urquhart's map. Green includes Poverty Point. Image held
by the State Library of Victoria  

The original line of the bullock track can be seen in the sketch below from 1856, with the steep banks of the Yarrowee also visible at the bottom of the picture. Even with five years of occupation by the diggers, there appears to be little in the way of permanent buildings in the vicinity. Writing in July, 1888 for the Ballarat Star, historian WB Withers noted that the first brick building in Ballarat East was not erected until 1857-8 at the corner of Main Rd and Humffray St. He also described the diggings as enclosed by the green line on the map above.

A depiction of Grant Street, Ballarat in 1856, looking east from Lydiard St.
Image held by the State Library of Victoria (click to enlarge)

Today, Grant Street is unrecognisable as the bullock track it once was. During the 1860s and subsequent decades, the Yarrowee River through Ballarat along with surrounding creeks were progressively formed and lined with bluestone and brick to control flooding and erosion, changing the landscape further. The end result was a series of channels more akin to storm water drains than a recognisable river system.

Looking east along Grant Street July, 2012 at the Yarrowee River bridge

The section of the Yarrowee in the image below forms the western boundary of the diggings as described by Withers and shown in green on the map above. In 1852 when Urquhart conducted his survey, he described the area as a rich, grassy plain.

Yarrowee River looking north east from Grant Street, April 2012. Canadian Creek
can just be seen in the distance entering the channel from the right. Image
courtesy of C Stevenson

 By the time the diggers had effectively torn the area to pieces in their frantic search for gold, the scene looked vastly different. The once grassy flats were dotted with tents and temporary timber buildings, the ground was riddled with shafts dug by the miners and everywhere were pools of sludge, created by the miners as they washed the dirt to extract every last ounce of gold they could find.

Golden Point in 1857-8. Image held by the State Library of Victoria