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

Making tracks: beside Yuille's Swamp

When gold was first discovered at Hiscock's Gully in August, 1851, the track from Geelong led to Buninyong. There was no town at Ballarat. At the time, the only European settlement in the area that would become Ballarat, was a squatting run. It was occupied in 1838 by 19 year old Scottish settler, William Cross Yuille and his cousin Archibald Buchanan Yuille who had left their earlier run on the Barwon River at Murgheboluc after coming into conflict with the local Wathaurong tribe.
In March, 1838 therefore, they selected 10,000 acres north west of Mt Buninyong on the shores of a swamp. This run which in today's terms included the inner suburbs of Ballarat and extended south as far as Sebastopol was known as "Ballaarat". When William Cross Yuille first arrived (shortly before his cousin), he camped on the edge of what was then known as Black Swamp. Soon it became known as Yuille's Swamp and today is recognised as Lake Wendouree.

A memorial erected in 1938 on the banks of Lake Wendouree
(near the end of Pleasant St) commemorating the arrival of
William C Yuille, the first European to live in the district

Whilst William remained only a short time in the district before heading to New Zealand in 1840, his cousin retained the license for the run until 1857. One of his nearest neighbours was Henry Anderson who settled at what became known as Winter's Flat at about the same time. He named his 26,000 acre run "Waverley Park" and built a homestead near the junction of Woolshed Creek and the Yarrowee River. He did not remain long in the district however and in 1842, sold out to John 'Jock' Winter who renamed the run "Bonshaw".

Photo of William Cross Yuille, taken in 1894. Image
held by the State Library of Victoria

The homestead built by Anderson however, was taken over by Archibald Yuille who also began constructing a more permanent house on the property. With the coming of the gold rush however, Yuille abandoned his plans for the run and by 1852, had left the district.
The site of the homestead was described some years later in The History of Ballarat from the First Pastoral Settlement to the Present Time (WB Withers, 1887, 2nd Edition)

Down the valley of the Leigh where the Sebastopol streets and fences run over the eastern escarpment of the table land, may still be seen the sandstone foundations of a station begun by the Messrs. Yuille, whom the coming of the first hosts of gold-hunters scared away from a place no longer fit, in their opinion, for pastoral occupation. Those unfinished walls are in a paddock overlooking a little carse of some four or five acres by the creek side, owned by an Italian farmer, and close to the junction of the Woolshed Creek with the main stream in the valley.

In today's terms, the homestead site would have been situated at the end of Bala Street in Sebastopol and the "little carse" later owned by Mr J Grenno forms part of the wetlands next to the river, through which the Yarrowee Trail now passes.

Sketch of the homestead on Woolshed Creek, built by Henry Anderson and later'
occupied by Archibald Yuille. Image held by the National Library of Australia

When the Yuilles first arrived however, there was no Sebastopol and no Ballarat township.The tracks made by their bullocks and those of the other squatters spreading out across the region became the road from Buninyong. The branch of the track which led to the Pyrenees region near Avoca, passed only a stone's throw from the Yuille's homestead. In time, this section of the track became Albert Street; now one of the oldest roads in inland Victoria.
After passing the Yuille's homestead on Woolshed Creek, the track followed the ridge line above the Yarrowee River before curving away to the north - somewhere near the intersection of Grant and Moyle Streets - taking a path to the east of Lake Wendouree towards the Pyrenees.
At that time, Yuille's Swamp really was a swamp, teeming with wildlife and a summer camping place for the local Wathaurong people. After the town of Ballarat was established however, earthworks were built and modifications were made in order to provide a water supply for the town, resulting in the lake we see today.

The view across Yuille's Swamp (now Lake Wendouree) from the site of W.C.
Yuille's first camp

Whilst the very first gold diggers to spread out from Hiscock's Gully to search the creeks and waterways of the area may have forged their own paths through the bush, those who came after them, followed the bullock tracks and stock routes used by the Yuilles and other squatters in the area.
The track to the Pyrenees district also led to the town of Clunes, where gold had been discovered a few weeks before Hiscock's discovery at Buninyong, so some of those disappointed at Hiscock's Gully, decided to try their luck at Clunes instead.
Others, upon hearing the news, rushed to investigate the new find by Dunlop and Regan only a few miles away on the Yuille's Ballarat run.  Taking to the track once again, they made the much shorter journey to Poverty Point, taking with them their pans, cradles, tents and what supplies they had, hoping this time to strike it rich.