With Eve Lamb

Coliban Water Channel Walk, 9km section.

There’s some beautiful country up around Sutton Grange and Mount Alexander (Leanganyuk) and today we’re going to sample a handsome piece of it.

After driving to the designated meeting spot, my sturdy walking accomplice, Paddy H, and I join the Great Dividing Trail Association walkers for a 9km hike along a section of the Coliban Water Channel. This is a concrete structural fete that would almost certainly verbally activate even the most reticent of civil construction engineers.

First up we leave some of our cars at our meeting spot on the Harcourt-Sutton Grange Road – which will ultimately become our finishing point for today’s walk.

We now car pool, and ferry some the cars a few ks to the actual start point of today’s walk at Earls Grate, an important Channel structure used for catching and clearing debris and potential contamination, located off the Faraday-Sutton Grange Road, just a tad east of the Mica Grange Garden and sculpture park.

The walk ahead is fairly flat with a rise and fall of 225m and is being led by two GDTA stalwarts Mick Evans and Ed Butler who begins by telling us a bit about the historic, but still used, Coliban Water Channel itself. 

The Channel was built in the nineteenth century to meet the water needs of Bendigo, a city rich in gold but very poor in water. Designed by J M Brady and completed in its first stage in 1877, it had the Malmsbury Reservoir as its water source.

Ed tells us that all up it’s a 70km walk with many original bluestone structures along the way. It’s been expanded over the intervening 150 years and still serves a major water need, but today it’s pretty much bone dry.

We set off,  contouring around the eastern flank of Leanganyuk (Mount Alexander) and the sprawling, undulating landscape is impressive with its granite outcrops.

“So, 70 km all up,” I muse aloud to Paddy H as we stride along with the group as it strings out along the Channel path.

“What!?” Paddy H’s face is ashen and I realise he didn’t quite catch the detail of Ed’s informative talk just before we set off from Earl’s Grate.

“That’s the total distance the Channel walk covers, not what we’re walking today,” I soothe. “It’s just 9km today.”

Relief issues across my walking accomplice’s sun-tanned features.

“It’s a pretty impressive engineering fete,” I say.

“How can you tell an engineer is extroverted?” my walking companion asks.

“I don’t know.”

“He’s the one looking at your shoes when he talks to you!”

In the months since we’ve been joining the GDTA for some of its scheduled walks I’ve discovered that the easy, companionable, and frequently informative chit-chat is a pleasant aspect of participating in their program.

Today’s walkers have travelled from locations including Daylesford, Ballarat, Castlemaine and Clunes.

“Did you do a test run for this walk?” I ask one of today’s leaders, Mick Evans, as we stroll along.

“Yes,” says Mick. “We’re a pretty relaxed group but we always do a reconnaisance visit before we lead a walk.”

A bit further along I chat to a retired nurse who tells me a bit about her former demanding work and her current work running a couple of B&Bs, before we move onto food and cooking.

Further on, a walker from Leonards Hill and I talk birds. She tells me about peregrine falcons roosting in the city as I spot a wedge tail eagle gliding about Leanganook’s sunny outcrops.

The views across the plains, although in dire need of rain, are fairly magnificent and at about the half-way mark we all pull up for lunch at Byrnes Tunnel, blasted through granite as part of the water course.

It’s a decent stop for lunch, and everyone kicks back for a while and relaxes before we cover the last few ks, admiring bushland and a young olive grove along the way, to finally finish at our initial car plant site.

“Great spot and I never would have seen it if we hadn’t done this GDTA walk,” Paddy H announces as GDTA members, well satisfied with today’s leisurely adventure, disperse issuing farewells and reminders that there’s some good walks coming up on the program ahead.

Words, Video and Images: Eve Lamb

with Eve Lamb

Muckleford Heritage Walk. 10.5km. Muckleford Nature Conservation Reserve.

Today my trusty walk companion, Paddy H, and I are joining the Great Dividing Trail Association walkers to tackle the 10.5km Muckleford Heritage Walk.

Drawn to its handy ongoing program of led walks, I joined the Association last year. Today, GDTA member and experienced bushwalker, John Lewis will be our walk leader. But members with different specialisations and areas of interest lead different walks that are offered on the GDTA regular events program throughout the year.

At 9.30am, a total 24 walkers – most of them GDTA members plus a small handful of non-member guests – rendezvous at the Red, White and Blue mine site in the Muckleford Nature Conservation Reserve.

The historic mine is worth a look. It features an intact poppet head, a mine shaft, machinery site, mullock heap and dams. The poppet head was originally from the Bendigo Deborah United Mine.

After general chitchat, participant tick-off, a brief introductory talk by our walk leader, and lending Paddy H the requisite $10 (guest insurance and registration fee) that he forgot to bring, we shoulder day packs, apply walking poles and set out.

The time is roughly 9.45am, the sky, blue and fair. But the multiple tannin-coloured puddles strewn about the bush track testify to the recent sorely-needed rainfall that has briefly blessed this parched place.

As we start to cover ground the group strings out along Bells Lane Track. Yet with the walk leader up front and two designated “walk whips” leading up the rear and keeping an eye out for any stragglers forced to heed the call of nature, it consistently remains connected, wending like a colourful serpent through the sun-splashed box-ironbark forest.

We stroll along in easy conversation, walking companions and topics of chit-chat changing up along the way.

There are 3.5 hours generously allocated to cover this 10.5 loop that meanders through the forest and takes in three mine sites: the Red, White and Blue Mine, Frenchmans Reef, and Dunns Reef.

The GDTA walk description we’d received via email as part of registering for this ramble informs that:

Muckleford Forest is an ancient landscape occupied, for tens of thousands of years, by the Dja Dja Wurrung. Then Major Mitchell passed through the area in 1836, and pastoralists soon followed, to squat and establish sheep runs on the grasslands.

Following the discovery of gold at the foot of Mt Tarrengower in 1853, miners spread through the region in pursuit of gold, and the scars of early mining are evident throughout the forest.

“It’s called Tough Guys Book Club and there are two overarching rules. Don’t talk about work and don’t be a Dickhead…” I can hear Paddy H, from somewhere along the track, relishing a captive opportunity to recruit new members for his beloved book club.

I find myself chatting away to long-time GDTA members, like president Tim Bach, who tells me about some appealing walks coming up on the agenda ahead, about walk publications the GDTA has produced already, and more that are in the works.

Other members tell me about fav walks they’ve done, the wealth of knowledge held by fellow members whose personal areas of expertise traverse geology, history and ecology.

Others share esoteric walkers know-how, like how much to expect to pay for a pair of quality walking poles, plus pole pitfalls to avoid at the point of purchase.

Much of John’s introductory talk focused on the area’s considerable mining history. We swing right and take a very gentle climb to stop for morning tea atop the quartzy outcrop that is Frenchmans Reef. The conversation again swings round to the shiny yellow stuff as 24 backsides are planted on or against various natural bushland features while thermoses are dug from daypacks.

“Is this lunch or morning tea?” one walker wonders

“Morning tea. Lunch is later,” someone says… And we’re soon moving again, stopping along the way to check out points of interest that include:

• An iron grill-protected mining tunnel through rock in the middle of the bush
• various ferrous pebble deposits where, particularly following rainfall, gold is apparently far more likely to congregate.
• the sweetly dappled day-bed of a wallaby
• A tiny pond full of frisky frogcall.

More than 300 plant and 50 bird species are reported from the Reserve, according to the GDTA walk description for today’s loop that’s rated “easy” as it only involves an overall elevation gain of less than 200m.

And a fair bit of this cameo incline occurs as the group gambols up the gravelly girth of Dunns Reef where we stop for lunch admiring a view across to Maldon and Mount Tarrengower to the north west.

From here we take the Red, White and Blue Track to complete the loop and arrive back at the Red, White, and Blue mine site with GDTA members already looking forward to their next outing planned for May – the 10.5km Coliban Water Channel Walk.

GDTA track builder, life member and naturalist, Richard Piesse, died peacefully at Peter Mac Hospital on December 28, 2024, after a long battle with melanoma, aged 82.

Richard managed the building of both the Lerderderg and Leanganook tracks on behalf of the Great Dividing Trail Association (GDTA)

He had great knowledge of central Victorian plants and initiated a flora guide for the Castlemaine Field Naturalists Club.

In 2013, he won Bushwalking Victoria’s Distinguished Service Award (Gold) for his role in advancing the development of recreational bushwalking in Victoria. He was a founding member of the Old Scotch Collegians’ Walking Club.

Richard was a contributor to our community in many  ways: as a member of the Great Dividing Trail Association, the Field Naturalists Club and the Friends of the Box Ironbark Forests and as a volunteer for the Chewton Domain Society and the Castlemaine Tourist Information Centre.

His detailed knowledge of the natural history of the Goldfields region made him an invaluable contributor to field guides of the area and a knowledgeable leader for many bushwalks in the region.

Richard moved to Melbourne to be close to his children some years ago. He had been sick for some time, but this did not stop him from regularly travelling by train to Castlemaine to volunteer in the Tourist Information Centre or to go on bush forays with Field Naturalists and FOBIF.

As late as last March, Richard attended the Blackwood launch of the GDTA’s interpretive signage project on the Lerderderg Track.

Richard loved our local bush and was a knowledgeable and engaging companion to have on our many bushwalks.

He was always ready to provide advice to volunteer organisations and land managers about maintaining, developing and protecting our natural heritage.

His passing is a loss not just to his family and friends, but to the wider community as a whole.

Richard leaves behind two daughters, Fran and Cecilia, and many grandchildren, who he absolutely adored.

His family held a private funeral and planned to scatter his ashes on Mount Alexander/Lianganook, which was, for him, a happy place.

There are two memorial services planned for Richard; a family memorial will be held in The Gleeson Centre in the Darebin Parklands, Separation Street, Alphington on Friday, February 7, from 1pm.

On Saturday, February 15, the Castlemaine Field Naturalists Club will host a memorial in the Former Tea Rooms at the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens starting at 3pm.

His knowledge, his friendship and his contributions will be long remembered.

This obituary & Images: Supplied GDTA