Travelling with MM: May 2024

Day 1 -155km to Glenlyon

We are out for a mini Buster Adventure before winter is in full swing. It was a beautiful sunny day as we drove out of Melbourne and into the gorgeous countryside. We stopped for a cuppa in Trentham. It a quaint little town with lots of beautiful deciduous trees which looked very colourful at the moment.

There were plenty of choices for cafes along the main street along with an old fashion pub.

Just out of town were the falls but it wasn’t flowing much an indication of the lack of rain lately.

Then onto a new spot for us at Glenlyon. It’s in the Mineral Water area around Hepburn.

There was a great free camp here next to the recreation reserve.

After we parked up we walked along the upper Loddon River which is just a creek here. Tasted the local waters- not bad from one of the many pumps scattered around the district.

We enjoyed the glorious sunshine then later we were surrounded by mobs of big grey kangaroos.

The night was extremely peaceful… not a sound to be heard!

Day 2 -108km to Maryborough finishing near Dunolly

Today’s adventures saw us heading to Maryborough. We popped into Newstead and used the dump point.

Futher along the way we stopped in Carisbrook, located on the Pyrenees Highway. We had a look at the log lockup built in 1852.

Although it’s a small township there were also some interesting bluestone buildings.

Only another 7km away was Maryborough which had been a hugely successful gold mining town during the mid 1800’s resulting in a population explosion to 53,000.We began our visit at the magnificent railway station built in 1890.

The platform was huge and is one of the longest platforms in Australia!

The tourist information office was located here and along with the usual brochures there was also a short film being played re the worlds largest gold nugget the 'welcome Stranger'. (more on that later)

There were numerous significant building built in town to reflect the wealth generated from the gold found here. One of these was the Bull & Mouth Hotel which was very modern for that period and included piped hot water and a telephone system.

At McLandress Square there were 3 impressive buildings together - the Court House, Post Office and the Town Hall.

Around the corner was the Old Fire Station with a terrific bell tower.

We drove up to Bristol Hill. The tower here was built to honour the town’s early pioneers and prospectors.

We couldn't resist a climb to the top! Reminded us of Europe.

Views over Maryborough...its quite a large town.

Views over to the surrounding hills.

We went to have a look at a campsite in the Paddy Ranges not far from town but although it was fine, we decided to keep going and not stay there. 8km north was the small township of Timor, that had once been a thriving gold town with a population of 27,000 and 38 hotels along with the other essential businesses. Today there isn’t much left from this era. The school built in 1873 is still being used.

We went to see one of the remaining arches of the Grand Duke Mine which yielded 6125kg of gold during 1869 to 1896. The granite arch was built to house 2 Cornish steam engines that needed to pump 2000 gallons of water per minute out of the mine! It constantly amazes us the effort to build huge structures that for whatever reason only lasted a relatively short time.

From here we drove towards Dunolly, staying just out of town for the night at the Daisy Patch campsite.

Day 3- 39km from Dunolly via Moliagul to Bealiba Resevoir

It was a fresh and sunny morning as we drove out of camp to Dunolly, another town in the Golden Triangle, the most prolific large gold nugget producing area in the world. In the 1860’s the population reached 35,000. We wondered the streets to admire some of the historic buildings that remain from its boom days.

Of course we couldn’t go past the bakery without sampling its wares. Unfortunately the pies weren't as good as we remembered them.

We continued on to the Moliagul historic area where The Welcome Stranger was found in 1869. It is the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found in the world. It was too big to be weighed on the bank scales (69.3kg. They had already removed about 39.6kg of quartz and ironstone surrounding the gold nugget).

We did the discovery walk along an overgrown track through the forest that had once been the gold fields area.

In the township there is a memorial to John Flynn, founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service as he was born here.

We then drove through some rich pastoral area to Bealiba Reservoir and realised we had been here before (2018). We parked up in the same spot and enjoyed a beautiful afternoon in the warm sunshine. After a stroll around the lake we got the drone up. The day ended in front of the fire watching the sunset over the water.

Day 4- 63km Pyrenees Range

It was hard to leave this lovely spot nevertheless we ventured on to explore another little part of Victoria we have not been to before. The GPS took us down the backroads past some fertile pastures we then crossed over the Sunraysia Highway just above Avoca.

To our surprise the fields turned into vineyards located at the foot of the Pyrenees Range.

We found ourselves a level spot at the Waterfalls Campground.

Later we set off on a short walk to the falls and it was quite evident by the dry creek bed that we would not find any water cascading over the granite rocks today. The bird life made up for it with lots of variety flitting around. We especially like a very pretty little red breasted bird. After doubling back we explored a little further on one of the tracks before returning to Buster.

As the sun set behind the nearby hill the kangaroos came out to graze. All in all it was a pleasant and peaceful stay.

Day 5 - 98Km to Lake Burrumbeet

The next morning we stopped in Avoca which had a some lovely old buildings.

We were amazed by the Primary school building.

There was also some Silo art near the old train station.

and some guy with an inventive streak making lots of fun metal objects.

We liked the Anzac memorials.

We enjoyed a cuppa at the free camp along the river which is just behind the main street.

There was also a Chinese garden here.

Along our way Mark couldn’t pass up the opportunity to replenish our firewood supply.

We then headed to Lake Burrumbeet, not far from Ballarat. We are amazed at the huge free camp here and found ourselves a lovely water front spot. Unfortunately the weather has turned and there was no sunshine to warm us up. We managed a couple of walks between showers and then settled in for the night.