Branching out - Mout Doran

From the rich reefs at Steiglitz on Sutherland's Creek to the deep gravel leads at Morrisons on the Moorabool River West Branch or Dolly's and Tea Tree Creeks, there was plenty of gold to be found for those who were willing to work for it during the Victorian gold rush.
And plenty were.
Of course, it wasn't just on the river and the larger creeks that the prospectors tried their luck. Every little gully and streamlet was scoured in search of gold-bearing soil and rocks, so as claims were taken up at Dolly's Creek, Tea Tree Creek and other nearby diggings, prospectors began to look further afield. One of the places they looked to was Mount Doran, a few miles to the north of Dolly's Creek and now part of the Lal Lal State Forest.
The workings around Mount Doran date back to 1858 and were most active throughout the 1860s. Recently I had the opportunity to investigate some of the area - in particular, a disused mine about 1.5km south of Bungal Dam. Our route in took us along rutted 4WD tracks, past the crumbling remains of a chimney, whose original purpose I have not be able to determine, but which I assume belonged to an early settler.

Chimney ruins

By the side of the track and scattered throughout the bush through which we passed were the overgrown remains of mullock heaps and shafts surrounded by scattered debris.

Abandoned mineshaft entrance

More diggings

The mine of interest on this occasion consisted of a series of tunnels which extend into the side of a gully near Champions Hill and I suspect it is typical of the type of "cemented lead" which was excavated in the area. Entry is via a small opening which has silted up over time. Several trees have also grown up near the entrance.

Mine entrance

As mentioned above, gold-containing soil and rocks would have been hewn from the tunnels by hand, carried out and then sluiced or puddled to extract the gold. Whether this was done onsite or the raw material was carted elsewhere for washing, I could not tell. The gully in which the mine is located was steep and in wet weather may well have some water, especially if it were dammed, however it is not a creek and certainly there was no water flowing when we were there. This along with other gullies in the area drain into the west branch of the Moorabool, less than a kilometre away.


Gully running past the mine

As there were several passages branching off the main tunnel and even a ventilation shaft which extended up several metres from the roof at one point, I can only assume that the mine yielded enough workable material to make the miners' efforts worthwhile.

Main branch of the tunnel

Deeper inside the tunnel

From local descriptions, such a mine would have been worked by a small group of men, possibly taking shifts and working by hand to dig and extract the rocks and soil. The number of branches off the main tunnel indicate that the miners were able to follow the lead in several different directions back into the hillside, stopping as the gold ran out.

Dead end branch

In some places there was timber although whether it was used for structural purposes or perhaps as part of a trolley system I couldn't tell. Clearly the mine has not been in use for many decades - probably more than a century - however people have remained aware of its existence right to the present day. This is attested to by the graffiti on the walls of one branch of the tunnel which dates back to 1928 and was for me, one of the most surprising features of the mine.


The earliest graffiti I could find from Jan 7th 1928

C Birkett Lal Lal, K Fisher Geelong, J Davis Geelong, Jan 27 1933

A quick Google search indicates that the Birkett name has been associated with Lal Lal since at least the earliest years of the 20th century when a Clive Birkett was born there 1903. Whether one and the same, I know not.



Who were the Bounds?

Once again, a quick Google search turns up the Bound family in Lal Lal as early as 1914 when Alfred Charles Bound was born there. Even today there is a Bound Lane in the town and looking at the handwriting above I suspect we are looking at generations of the Bound family visiting the mine.

In addition to these examples there are names from 1945, 1980 and even one from 2014, creating what is possibly one of the most obscure genealogical records I have found to date.



Branching out - Dolly's Creek

In contrast to the big company mines in the Steiglitz area, gold digging further up the Moorabool Valley was less lucrative and was centred on working alluvial drifts rather than quartz reefs. This was certainly true of the diggings at places such as Morrison's, Dolly's Creek, Tea Tree Creek and Mount Doran.


Worked ground at Dolly's Creek

The Morrison's diggings took place initially on the west bank of the Moorabool River where miners followed leads under the more geologically-recent flows of basalt, extracting auriferous gravels which were then worked using sluicing boxes and puddling machines to extract the gold.

Miners using a sluice

Nearby Dolly's Creek - a tributary of the west branch of the Moorabool River which ran into the river above what is now the township of Morrison's - was also worked in this fashion by the late 1850s.


workings at Dolly's Creek

The diggings at Dolly's Creek were known as a "Poor man's field". Yields provided a steady wage for hard work but no great riches. As a consequence, Dolly's Creek attracted Chinese miners who by the 1860s were the dominant workforce in the area.  Opium cans found at the Dolly's Creek diggings attest to their presence.

Quartz-containing rock, Dolly's Creek

Even today, there is interest in Dolly's Creek and any gold which might still be there, with recreational prospectors still working the creek bed and surrounds on a regular basis. During my wander along the section of the creek near Forest Road - which is currently completely dry with the exception of a few puddles - there was evidence of recent working.

Looking along the watercourse with a hole indicating signs of modern prospecting

 Then as now, access to water was a big issue in the area. Enough so that claims were abandoned sometimes not for lack of gold, but rather for lack of water to wash the soil to extract the gold. To this end, in the early 1860s a dam was built on Lal Lal Creek about a mile and a half above the falls of the same name. Water from the dam was then carried via a channel some 5 feet wide and 2 feet deep to the diggings. The channel was operated by the Moorabool Waterworks Company (aka the Lal Lal Waterworks Company) and initially carried water only as far as Dolly's Creek, where it entered a holding dam before being diverted into several smaller races, directing water to where it was most needed. By 1863 the channel had been extended to reach the diggings at Morrison's and Tea Tree Creek as well.

Dolly's Creek

To reach the diggings, it was necessary for the channel to cross the Ballarat-Geelong Railway line (built 1862) first at Lal Lal and then again near Mt Doran to the south. It was also necessary to tunnel through about 300m of rock to the south of Lal Lal township, to complete the project.  Remains of the channel may still be seen in the vicinity of Lal Lal today but according to one source, whilst the tunnel still stands, both ends have collapsed preventing access.
At this stage, I have not investigated the channel and have only spent a small amount of time at Dolly's Creek, but am keen to take another trip to see what I can discover.

Pedal Power

It's summer in Geelong and sporting events abound. Some are local, some are national and some are international. Yesterday, one of the bigger shows around rolled into town: the Jayco Herald Sun Tour. The tour is Victoria's oldest road cycling stage race and is listed on the international cycling calendar. The arrival of the 2011 edition of the tour, finishing up Deviation Road beside the Barwon was the subject of one of my previous posts.
This year however, things were a little different. Instead of October, the event was moved forward to February and (unfortunately) there was no stage finish into Geelong and the Barwon was not on the route - although the Moorabool was, albeit briefly. So, after Wednesday's prologue in Melbourne, the first stage got underway at 10:30am along a sparkling Geelong Waterfront - but I wasn't there to see it.
Instead of fighting with the crowds in town, I opted to catch the peloton on the outskirts just outside the neutral zone and where the racing really began. Co-incidentally, it was also the point at which the riders passed between the Moorabool River as it flows from Batesford and that earliest of squatting runs taken up by John Cowie and David Stead, now the site of Kardinia International College at Bell Post Hill.

The entourage preceding the riders through Bell Post Hill

I arrived early and watched as first a string of officials streamed past - judges, timer, race director, tour guests, chief commissaire, a flotilla of marshalls and media in cars and on motorbikes, all escorted by a sizeable contingent of Geelong's finest law enforcement officers. The riders appeared over the hill en masse, with the first attempt at a breakaway already happening as I watched, with one rider off the front of the bunch by several metres.

The peloton as the race got underway

As fast as they arrived, they were gone again with their support cars and yet more police cars bringing up the rear.

The Peloton a Bell Post Hill with the Moorabool Valley behind

For them, it was out to Anakie and Staughtonvale via some steep-ish hills before heading across to Yendon and into Ballarat for the stage finish.

And then they were gone (note the attempt at an early break at the front)

For me, it was off up the highway in air-conditioned comfort to my next vantage point on the Yendon-Egerton Road where I had lunch and settled in to await the arrival of the peloton, or what remained of it after two and a half hours of solid riding, including a sprint and two hill climbs with temperatures rising to the mid-30s.
So why there you might wonder? Because this was the point at which the route crossed the Moorabool River - or to be specific, the Moorabool River West Branch. I had been there on one other occasion to snap some photos of the historic bluestone bridge which spans the river at this point.

Bluestone bridge over the Moorabool West Branch on the Yendon-Egerton Road

I doubt that this particular piece of history was of great interest to the cyclists, who began to arrive almost on schedule a little after 1pm. As before, there was the usual swarm of lead vehicles before a much-reduced bunch swept down the opposite bank and across the little bridge, passing my position as they made their way up the opposite side.

The lead riders and their support vehicles cross the Moorabool West Branch

In addition to the odd toot from the lead vehicles, I fancy I may there may even have been a quick grin or two from the bunch as they headed past - or was that just a grimace of pain?

The boys from Garmin-Sharp including - I believe - the then race leader Jack Bauer
(yellow left) and Orica GreenEDGE's Simon Gerrans (yellow right)

 Either way, the group of about thirty riders was dominated at that stage as expected by the big guns of Garmin-Sharp and Orica GreenEDGE. Following them, a lone rider from Team Budget Forklifts was trying to cross the gap with three riders - two from Rapha Condor JLT and one from the Synergy Baku Cycling Project team - in pursuit.
The next group to pass were being lead out by the UHC Pro Cycling Team and some of the African Wildlife Safaris Cycling Team with a few of the Avanti boys, a couple of the New Zealand National Team and a Cannondale rider thrown in for good measure.

Follow the leaders! The second group of riders crossing the Moorabool

A third and a fourth group followed and then one final rider who was making hard work of it up even this relatively small slope. I didn't get a photo but suffice to say you know it's been a hard day at the office when you are being lead out by the sagwagon!
A later reading of a race report informed me that it had been the plan of Orica GreenEDGE to use the parts of the stage where wind was likely to be a problem to break the peloton apart - a plan which at that point seemed to be working.
The end result I read however was that the Orica boys couldn't manage to shake Team Garmin-Sharp and it came down to a bunch sprint for the line in Ballarat in which Garmin-Sharp rider Nathan Haas just edged out Orica sprinter Matthew Goss.

Branching out - Moorabool Falls

And then one became two...
I am definitely not a geologist, but there is something rather cool about the fact that a waterfall can be in one place in one era and can then wind up a couple of kilometres upstream the next. Or, in the case of the Lal Lal and Moorabool Falls, can end up in two different places on two separate waterways.

Confluence of the Moorabool River West Branch and Lal lal Creek at the
top of Bungal Dam

Having finished our lunch and looked to see what von Guerard found so interesting about Lal Lal Falls that he was moved to paint them in 1853, we jumped back in the car and zipped round to Harris Road to the start of a walking track which leads to another nearby waterfall. This second feature of the landscape is the Moorabool Falls, located on the west branch of the Moorabool River, a short distance above its confluence with Lal Lal Creek.
My last post described how the Lal Lal Falls have been busily migrating up the creek, cutting through the relatively recent basalt lava flows of the last few tens of thousands of years. Meanwhile, over on the West Moorabool, the Moorabool Falls were busy making progress of their own, working their way through a different part of the same basalt flow.

Granite Falls, a series of cascades which flow over granite remains about
400m up the Moorabool West Branch from its confluence with Lal Lal Creek

In fact, a little research tells me that the two falls were originally one and the same. A few million years ago, water flowed over the edge of the basalt at a single "knickpoint" in the west branch of the Barwon. Some more research and I now know that a knickpoint is the point at which a sudden change occurs in the slope of a river, being much lower downstream of the knickpoint where water has carved a deeper path. It is often associated with "headward erosion" which is caused by the flow of water at the mouth of a stream eroding the riverbed.

Moorabool Falls, April 2012

In the case of the Lal Lal and Moorabool Falls, headward erosion began at a single knickpoint below the junction of Lal Lal Creek and the Moorabool West Branch. Over time and as the erosion reached the confluence of the two streams, the single waterfall, divided into two and the erosion continued up both branches. That which occurred in Lal Lal Creek has so far moved over 1,600m to the present site of the falls, whilst the erosion of the West Moorabool has traveled some 1,400m upstream to where the Moorabool Falls are now.

Moorabool West Branch just below Moorabool Falls

These falls are not so large as the Lal Lal Falls, dropping only 27m in total, nor do they have the striking basalt columns of the other falls. This is because the lava at this point cooled more quickly and unevenly than elsewhere.

West Moorabool between Moorabool Falls and Bungal Dam

Our walk to these falls also provided me with another piece of information. One which is slightly at odds with a previous post. The information board at the falls informed me that Moorabool was a Wathaurong word possibly meaning "mussel" or perhaps "stone curlew". A source I referred to in a previous post, indicated that the name was derived from the Wathaurong word "moora" meaning ghost. Another alternative it gave was that Moorabool may also refer to a nocturnal bird called a "cooloo" which could not be seen but whose call could be heard. Bush Stone-curlews are predominantly nocturnal birds whose breeding call is a long drawn out wail described as sounding like "werlooooo", so perhaps these two sources were not so much at odds as they might first have appeared.
I have never seen a Bush Stone-curlew, nor do I know if they were ever found on the banks of the Moorabool River.