17 September 2013 - Riverglen Holiday Park, Geelong, Victoria

You know what it’s like when your cute little grandchild does something absolutely naughty and then castes that lovable smile upon you and you just melt. (This does not happen very often as a parent because you are normally too jolly tired to see past the misdemeanour.) Well such are the birds who inhabit this park, they who rise before the sun and herald its rising with superb chorus. You cannot help but rejoice despite the annoyance of being woken so early. Still, if these are the only bothersome matters of the day, one can hardly complain.

The television news reported that wild storms had passed across the region through the night, wrecking wind damage and a month’s downfall in a day. Geelong managed to escape it all, so if for nothing else, we did well to stay here after all.

We spent the morning chasing around caravan and RV accessory retail outlets, treating the rig to two new awning pegs, two new levelling blocks and a shiny vent to cover the tree hole. The blocks replace those that have become rather flexible and ineffective, often having to be dug out of the soft turf by yours truly who deals with levelling matters. Caravans are not quite as bad as boats, which are often referred to as holes to pour money into, however they do still cost, or at least if you wish to keep them in pristine condition.

We drove to Curio in the north of the city, twenty kilometres north of Newcomb where most of the caravan service industries are located, to Geelong’s BCF. This chain gives the best value in gas refills however you do have to question the wisdom of driving for forty kilometres to save a few dollars! I reminded Chris that we should enjoy the journey rather than consider only the destination, and so we did, this becoming just part of a lovely drive tour for the day.

We found a shoreline reserve in Corio Bay, well south of the Shell Refinery, just south of the Phosphate Co-op and north of the Bulk Wheat Loading Terminal, all of this just east of Ford Motor Co’s factory. Slap bang in the middle of Geelong’s industrial area; it was a delight to find this peaceful spot, with views across Curio Bay to the Bellarine Peninsula and out beyond Point Henry to Port Phillip Bay. From here we drove south west across the city to Fyansford, an old part of the city one of our travel bibles had suggested worth a visit. I had conjured up pictures of heritage cottages and shops, all quite incorrectly. 

There are a couple of old pubs there beside the Moorabool River, just upstream from its confluence with the Barwon River. The old bridge, built in 1899, since replaced but still used as a footbridge, is of architectural, historic and scientific significance to Victoria. It is technologically significant as an example of the revolutionary concrete construction technology developed in Europe in the late nineteenth century and known as the Monier principle, this technique led to the increased use of concrete for many new structures. Whether Fyansford is worth a special effort probably depends whether you are interested in bridge construction or desirous of a lunch out in one of these old pubs.

We had hoped to access the Buckley Falls nearby, noted in minute print on our map, however after a couple of foiled attempts, ending up in private yards, we retraced our route to the top of the high hill above the Barwon Valley where we climbed the lookout and were offered a better map which showed the most likely access on the southern banks of the river.

Buckley Falls

The Buckley Falls are not promoted as a tourist attraction and the city map freely available to the tourist, does not show many road and street names, hence we could not have known that the falls are accessed quite simply by the road of the same name.

You may recall I mentioned the Barwon River as we passed through Winchelsea yesterday, and it is on this same river, which rises up in the Otway Range, and on which Lake Elizabeth is situated. We walked up to this naturally dammed lake in early 2012, although there it did not resemble the significant flow of water it is here in Geelong. This river is 160 kilometres long and flows on out to the Bass Strait at Barwon Heads, after passing through a wide wetland area, important as a Bird Area.

The Falls were in existence long before they were manipulated and shaped further by Europeans in 1876, when a weir and water race were built above the falls, to provide power for the Fyansford Paper Mill. They were named after the infamous William Buckley of whom I have written before and whose name has popped up on various geographical features around the area over the past few weeks. According to a delightful elderly gentleman with whom we engaged in conversation above the falls today, he who used to swim in the Devil’s Pool below our lookout, Buckley was actually found here at the falls. Nothing in the stories I have read about this escaped convict, who spent thirty two years with Aborigines from 1803, confirms this, but it is a good story.

The old Fyansford Paper Mill or whatever

Our two elderly companions high above the river told us that the factory above the river was once an ice-making factory, and yet again I have found nothing to suggest this is correct. Whatever the truth, the remains above the river adjacent to the outlet of the race forced water is reminiscent of pictures of mills beside rivers in England; quite charming.

We did find notes about past flooding of the river here; in 1995 the river level rose to 5.23 metres. This was a one in forty year flood, the previous major flood having occurred in 1952 when the water rose to 5.47 metres, then classed as a one in eighty year flood. The interpretative panels were erected before more recent floods, and I found a report in the local paper dated 14 January 2011 warning that the river was expected to rise to 7.5 metres that morning. Whether it did or not I am not sure, however the moral of the story is that in Australia, do not build close to a river, even if they flood only once in fifty years.

Back near the car park, we found a van load of Christian College kids all clad in wetsuits and life jackets, a long string of canoes, and an instructor giving “how-to” advice before they set out onto the river. We did not hang about to watch the launch, but instead drove back up to the city to look for my great-great-great-grandfather’s 1856 residence in O’Farrell Place, North Geelong.

This turned out to be quite a surprise, because O’Farrell Place is a tiny lane off Gheringhap Street, in central Geelong, not the north. Today the old buildings lie cheek by jowl with old buildings that may or may not have existed back in that day, and all are used for commercial purposes. This whole affair raised yet another question: Charles Lake’s daughter, who went on to produce my ancestors and I, was apparently born in Gheringhap, which today barely exists along the road to Ballarat. When we passed this tiny spot on the map early last year, I wondered what the Lakes were up to there, however after today’s discovery I do wonder if Emma was not born on the corner of O’Farrell and Gheringhap Streets, right here in Geelong, and that the information I have is incorrect. Thus are the challenges of genealogy and I will have to apply myself to this new mystery. A birth certificate should sort it all out.

As we pulled into camp, we wondered at the ominous clouds above, however even as I write this, some hours later, the sun is still shining and we are inclined to disregard the weather forecast for the morrow.