Walhalla, Victoria - A Relic of the Gold Rush Days

Victoria’s Gold Rush

During the 1850’s and 1860’s, Gold was discovered in Victoria in Australia and people went crazy looking for the stuff. It was not long after the California gold rush and Australia’s population boomed as a result. The gold rush was mostly centred around the Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine regions in Victoria, but prospectors soon started to look further afield for the yellow shiny stuff and in 1862, gold was discovered in a small stream in a gully north-east of Melbourne.

Walhalla

A small group of Prospectors found some alluvial gold in the stream and quickly set up camp to mine more. Enough people now lived in the town for it to be named Stringer’s Creek. This was later changed to Walhalla after one of the prominent mining companies in the valley.

Word soon spread and more prospectors spread to the area quickly exhausting the alluvial gold in the valley.

Long Tunnel Extended Mining Company

Deep mining soon started in the area with various companies digging into the steep hillside in search of the gold. Eventually they hit the gold rich Cohen’s Reef quartz vein which was the largest gold rich vein in Victoria.

The tunnels dug by the company are still there today and you can take tours 300m deep into the hillside where an outcrop of Cohen’s Reef can be viewed. Unfortunately, the day we visited tours were not operating into the mine itself.

Walhalla Town

The town itself is a relic of its former self. At its peak the town had 4000 residents but today only has 20 permanent residents living in the town. It is a very popular tourist location, however, and the population of the town booms during holiday periods. An interesting fact about the town is that it was the last mainland town to be connected to the electricity grid in 1998. All of the lines were buried underground to not impact the visual heritage of the town at a cost of $640,000.

This retaining wall was originally built in 1869.

Bank of Victoria

The town also had it’s own bank which required a very secure vault to hold all of the gold that was being produced by the miners. The vault stored a total of 72 tonnes of gold throughout its use and the remnants of the bank vault still stands today.

Walhalla Railroad

The popularity and wealth of the town during the late 1800’s resulted in a rail line being built from Moe during the early 1900’s. The terrain was quite difficult to build through and the track was finally opened in 1910. It’s usability as a productive rail road was short lived with the onset of war and the resultant unproductivity of gold mining towards the end of the 1910’s. Eventually the line was decommissioned and completely dismantled in the 1950’s. Over the past 10 years, a community group, with the aid of a grant from the government, have rebuilt the last few kilometres of the track from the Thomson river up into Walhalla township. You can take a ride on Wednesday’s and weekends.

If you are ever in the area (near Mt Baw Baw), stop in and spend sometime looking around this amazing town.

Thanks for reading.

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