January 19th, 2025Walks of the Central Highlands

with Eve Lamb

The Three Lost Children Walk. Daylesford-Musk Creek 15 km (Part A)

The first day of 2025 dawns sunny and mild, temperature in the mid-20s with a promise to reach no more than 28 degrees. Ideal bushwalking. Too good to pass up.

I check in with my trusty walking companion, Paddy H, and we decide it’s more than time to tackle the famed Three Lost Children Walk. This bushland walk covers 15 km starting in Daylesford, taking in part of Hepburn Regional Park and part of the Wombat State Forest. It ends at Wombat Creek Picnic Area near Musk.

It commemorates the tragic tale from Daylesford’s gold-rush era when three small boys (William Graham,6, his brother Thomas, 4, and Alfred Burman, 5) wandered away from their homes in Daylesford on June 30, 1867.

Sadly, despite a massive search after it became clear they were missing, they were not found alive. No trace was found until September 13, 1867 when a dog came home to Wheelers Hill, 10 km south-east of Daylesford, carrying a small boot that reportedly contained a small foot.

The following day the children’s little bodies were finally found. Two of them in a hollow tree and the other close by. The Three Lost Children Walk follows the approximate route the poor little fellas walked.

You can’t really write a bushwalking series centred in the Central Highlands and not include this walk, with its tragic tale tracing the doomed trek of these three intrepid  little tackers.

You can pick up a good guide description of the walk, complete with map, from the Daylesford Visitor Info centre. I’ve been holding onto my copy for all of 2024.  I’m also equipped with my good old copy of ‘Walks, Tracks & Trails of Victoria’ (by Derrick Stone) which includes this walk, while Paddy H has the relevant one of his many beloved topographical maps.

To get 2025 off and striding, we’re going to tackle roughly half the walk. We’ll come back again, another day, and complete the entire walk for this series. Today, first up we plant my car at our designated stop point of Hogans Lane, Musk Vale, and then drive Paddy H’s car  to the walk start point.

The start point is the cairn in the Lost Children Reserve at the junction of Central Springs Road and the Midland Highway. We set out from the top corner of the Reserve, heading south along Table Hill Road then straight ahead down Forest View Lane.

The track becomes a sharp descent and we notice the dedicated Lost Children Walk trail markers.  These feature a little stylized emblem representing the three small unfortunate adventurers.

We cross a footbridge over the Wombat Creek. A jogger, impatient in his bright tangerine running shoes, rushes past and tackles the rugged short flight of steps that we also must take, upwards, on the other side.

It’s pretty straightforward going now, just carefully following the walk guide description, maps, and dedicated trail markers. But just ahead, a point of potential confusion arises when, wending our way toward Sailors Creek, we reach a bush-land point where a medley of different  dirt tracks interconnect and ping off in multiple different directions.

The trick is simply to keep calm and continue,  basically following the path you’re already on as the gully naturally slopes down toward Sailors Creek. We reach the creek and turn sharp left as soon as we cross it, then remain on a very short little section of the trail for about 200 metres as it curves around to connect with Black Jack Track.

Here we turn left onto Black Jack Track which we will now follow for a couple of ks through Hepburn Regional Park.

The eucalypt bushland is tall and deliciously fragrant. I breathe in its spicy, inimitable  aroma and then notice that someone has painted the word ‘Bees’ and an arrow pointing up, in yellow paint on a tree trunk to our left.

“Is it because we’re s’pose to be concerned we’re going to get stung  … or to enjoy them?” wonders Paddy H who maintains a couple of backyard bee hives.

The bushland is beautiful but also fairly rugged going, and you’ve really got to admire – and wonder at – how those three small gold-rush era trekkers and their little legs ever managed to get such a distance.

Peering  down at my own boots moving along on the track I see that two-legged pedestrians are not the only ones who’ve been navigating this path. There are horse hoof prints here too, etched in the sandy surface.

A bit further on, the source becomes evident when Paddy H spots, not a horse and rider, but …

“Look it’s a horse and sulky,” he says.

“What?”

Within seconds we’re meeting Glenn Conroy, a noted local harness racehorse trainer who trains in partnership with his sister, Anne-Maree Conroy.

 “I use the bush lane every day,” Glenn says as the handsome bay horse in harness, takes a bushland breather.

“You must see some interesting things,” I venture.

 “Yes. I see lots of people doing all sorts of things, walking, jogging, prospecting…” Glenn says, maintaining a steady grip on the harness reins as the powerful bay shifts about a bit.

“What’s your horse’s name?”

“When he’s in the stable he’s known as Smith, but he’s also more officially known as I’maboganboy,” chuckles Glenn.

The attractive bay seems fairly civilized for a bogan,  I think. But we don’t want to delay them any further and in the whisk of a tail they’re off again heading further along the track.

Up ahead, the track climbs a gentle rise and here we encounter three bushwalkers, a middle-aged woman, older teenage boy and a teenage girl, whose serious-sized backpacks all lay heavily on the ground as their owners take a break.

Paddy H gets chatting and as a result we soon discover that they are: A. from Melbourne. B. plan to camp, and C. don’t know that the track we’re all on is part of the Three Lost Children Walk, or the story behind the name.

As Paddy H takes it upon himself to give them a brief tragic history lesson, I re-read the description for this section of the trail and see that up ahead we’ll soon, again, cross Sailors Creek.

By the time we’ve put a good bit more trail under our boot tread, crossed the creek and pushed hard up a gnarly little hill, admiring a gorgeous small pond on our left, to finally re-emerge from the bush in lifestyle-property-land at Hogans Lane, Musk Vale, we’re more than a tad happy to call it a day and sink into my awaiting car seats.

Is it the good life we’ve been living over the festive break catching up with us we wonder, as I simultaneously try not to get too upset thinking about those poor little lost chumpers. And I’m not even the clucky sort. Yet, later tonight when the lights go out, I will again find myself thinking of how terribly cold they would have been that frosty June long ago in the Central Highlands.

As we head for home we, by contrast, are sweating and looking forward to a summer salad dinner to round out our day on what has been a fairly ideal start to 2025.

Walk to be continued…