One might have thought it would make sense to make use of our new Metcards, purchased at Werribee’s railway station yesterday, however the day was put aside to deal with “issues”, as some days must be. Looking back over the day with my rose-coloured spectacles on, as Pollyanna types are bound to do, the pluses were greater than the minuses. We had arranged for a call customer service person to ring us from New Zealand at 1300 NZT, 11.00 am ours, so hung about camp with our paperwork and documentation at hand, preferring to deal with this in the peace and quiet of our own space rather than a random time in a rail carriage or an art gallery.
I made the most of the
down time after breakfast by attending to a large load of laundry. As I walked
down to the laundry block, I was met by three stooges, actually the park
manager and his two assistants, who remarked that I looked like “a women on a
mission”. Indeed I was, and I responded that I was actually more “an optimist”
given the rain showers of the morning and the dark clouds still lurking about.
It was probably just as
well our man in Auckland did not call, because I spent the morning and the
middle of the day rushing back and forward between the camp clothes lines and
those I put up under the awning. I had packed lunch in the vague hope that we
would be free to head off out somewhere by 11.30 am, however we ended up
bringing the eski back inside and having lunch more formally at table. And
still the telephone did not ring. I sent email reminders, several in fact, but
nothing. It is a pain that a new insurance policy requires direct question and
answer sessions; I guess it keeps everyone honest.
As we were finishing
lunch, a couple arrived with a very old caravan and sturdy looking vehicle, and
set up beside us along the back fence. I learned that they were here for just
the one night, preparing to cross to Tasmania tomorrow evening, and so asked
twenty questions about how they intended to deal with the time in between
checking out and boarding the ferry, given they were towing such a rig and that
they were regular Bass Strait travellers. We spent some time chatting; too long
in fact, because we should have headed off a little earlier.
Giving up our wait
after two hours, we headed west in pursuit of the Werribee Gorge, or more
particularly, the Information Centre at Bacchus Marsh to learn how to get
there.
The route north on the
Western Freeway passes through Melton as much as any freeway passes through
towns, and then swoops down into the valley of Bacchus Marsh, where the
Lerderberg River converges with the Werrebee River; we passed through the bare
skeletons of fruit trees and great cultivated fields sprouting green and burgundy
lettuce. We had visited this place when we were last in the area, and it was no
less attractive. The main street of Bacchus Marsh, entered through a long
avenue of trees, is quite charming and the Information Centre was familiar,
also visited on our last trip.
Chris had heard that
the Werribee Gorge was beautiful and a brochure I picked up yesterday confirmed
that. That same brochure explained where the river rose, and that it flowed
through “the beautiful gorge” after being joined by Pykes Creek downstream of
Ballan. The map on-line was not very helpful at all and our TomTom had no idea
of what we were talking about. The very elegant and delightfully friendly woman
in the Centre was most sympathetic to our quandary and had seen the gorge
herself, on a lightening bus tour, but as to the names of roads? She did have a
copy of the Victoria Parks brochure, the same I had seen in pdf format on line, and we said we
wanted to actually walk near the river rather than the hills above. The
brochure suggested, to all of us, including her, that this required access from
the west. After pulling out three maps and a small local directory booklet, and
hunting around for some time, she suggested a particular route, but none of the
documents to hand actually confirmed these instructions. We left ready for an
adventure of some kind, even if it did not include a visit to the Werribee
Gorge State Park. Chris has much to say about wombles who sit in their offices
writing instructions for those who venture out into reality, and these were repeated
here today, although not in this blog, nor to the lady at Bacchus Marsh. Was
the road sealed? She had no idea and
little memory of any detail of the park, so off we set to find out for
ourselves.
We travelled up Dogtrap
Road and Ironbark Road as instructed, adjacent to the railway that runs well
west of the Freeway, the narrow strip of one road sealed and the rest gravel.
We came to a layby at the edge of the State Park where one could park and
undertake a couple of walks, but neither of these were the River Walk, so we
pressed on and soon found ourselves far to the north west of the area where we
expected to find the beautiful gorge. Finally we arrived at Ballan, a
surprisingly vibrant little country settlement with a population of about 1,800
people and obviously settled by Europeans in the same early years as so much of
Victoria. We called into the busy IGA store to buy a couple of provisions then,
having given up on the day’s goal, found our way out to the Western Freeway and
rather than continue on to Ballarat, we turned back toward Melbourne. This section
of the Freeway was new to us so we made the most of the refreshing landscapes
as we joined the hundreds of Victorian’s rushing toward their State capital.
Near Pentland Hills, we
spotted a sign for the State Park and decided at the last minute to call into
this, the eastern section of the park, so we could say we had at least seen the
Park even if it were a less impressive section.
How wrong we were! Firstly
we drove into the Quarry Picnic Area and found ourselves in lovely woodland
then discovered that the Miekles Point Picnic Area which we had been seeking
from the west, was right here, accessible by a narrow steep dirt track which
wound its way down the hill beside Kelly’s Creek, to a lovely spot beside the
Werribee River.
It had rained on and
off since setting out for the afternoon and was threatening to do so again. I
suggested we take umbrellas and wander along the trail for no more than half an
hour, for as long as we were comfortable. So we set off and soon found
ourselves following the remnants of a very old aquaduct.
McFarlane’s Water Race,
a private irrigation race, was constructed on the south wall of the Werribee
Gorge in 1906. Dynamite was used to
remove great sections of cliff face to create a bed for the 2.5 mile long water
race. Mr McFarlane intended to irrigate one hundred acres to produce dried
lucerne chaff for Melbourne’s poultry food market. Few remains of rock walls
and cuttings are visible, at least not from the opposite bank of the river.
A second concrete water
channel was constructed by the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission between
1926 and 1929 to supply water to expand the supply of irrigation and domestic
water to Bacchus Marsh. Hundreds of tons of rock were blasted away falling into
the gorge below, sluice gates were installed to control the flow of the water
and concrete bridges crossed the channel to divert storm water to the river. It
provided gravity fed water until in 1956, a landslide put it all out of
commission.
It was this second
channel, much of the original construction still evident, that our route
followed today along the length of the gorge. Although we had intended to only
sample the walking possibilities of the park, we were so taken with the scenery
and the beauty of the walkway, we found ourselves walking all the way to the
end and back.
The Werribee Gorge
State Park protects a 575 hectare island of natural vegetation dominated by
Stringybark and Box Gums surrounded by private farmland. Although much of the
Park’s vegetation has been modified by past mining, timber cutting and grazing,
the steepest sections remain in a fairly natural state.
The almost 200 metre
deep gorge, one of the deepest in Victoria, shows evidence of glacial history;
there are glacial scrape marks and rocks with polished surfaces that give
evidence to this, at least to geologists. Because of its outstanding scenery
and geological scientific interest, the gorge was made a public reserve in
1907, and then in 1975, declared a State Park.
I have already
confessed that I become rather overwhelmed by geological jargon and tend to shut
off, however the varied shapes on the cliffs high above us were quite
impressive, exposing an uplifted and folded seabed, anticlines, upward folds
and synclines, downward folds, Ordovician sandstones and slates, or so we were
advised.
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| Walking the Werribee Gorge |
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