Day 187 - Mt Tarrengower to Vaughan Springs (Via Castlemaine and Chewton)

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After a pleasant camp at Mt Tarrengower, we were fresh and ready for more tours of the goldfields. First port of call though was the Castlemaine dentist (to assess a damaged tooth)! We celebrated surviving the dentist with morning tea (including something sweet of course) and then drove around Castlemaine checking out all of the lovely old buildings. We stopped at the Castlemaine Market building (which is now unfortunately a visitor information centre) and took some photos before driving up to the hill and inspecting the old jail site.

Castlemaine was a central area from where smaller rushes (in what became outlying suburbs) occurred. We drove out to Chewton and then out in to the bush a short distance to inspect the remains of the Garfield Wheel. There are only the stone supports remaining now but when this water wheel (and the mine) were operational in the 1880's the timber wheel was the largest in the southern hemisphere. It was 70 feet tall with 220 buckets and each bucket held 10 gallons (each bucket 45 litres totalling 10,000 litres). The water wheel provided the power to operate a 15 head stamper ( a crusher to crush rock to a size where gold could be easily extracted) and other equipment on the mining site. It is said that the sound of the battery (running 24 hours a day 6 days per week) could be heard clearly six kilometres away in Castlemaine.

Unfortunately, this site is unprotected (read unfenced), and, in time, the stone supports may be damaged or taken away. Other important historic goldfields sites are now fenced to discourage vandals and souvenir hunters. Let's hope that this site is appropriately protected soon. It's one of my favourite places in all of the Victorian goldfields.

Afternoon tea at the Chewton bakery was excellent and then it was just a short drive to our camp site at Vaughan Springs. This is a little park (with mineral springs that you can pump from the earth). Above the park are sites for half a dozen self-contained vans or mobile homes, but we were the only ones staying. There were lots of birds and I think it was here that we decided that maybe a bird travelblog might be a possibility...

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Photos

Castlemaine Market building
showing the side (rear) view of the building where the individual stallholders had access to their part of the market

Drinking fountain, Castlemaine
includes troughs for horses and dogs!

Chinese Bank, Castlemaine
The Chinese had their own bank in the gold rush days

Gold Discovery cairn
The inscription reads:
Robert Ottery and party found their first gold near this spot after tramping barefooted from Williamstown (a Melbourne suburb) on Feb 11th 1852. A resident of Chewton for 65 years.

Red Browed Firetail
at Vaughan Springs