Melville Caves free camp ground VIC
During a recent tour around the golden triangle of Victoria I discovered a new campsite that I would like to share with you all called Melville caves camp ground. It stands close to the top of an interesting hill between Bendigo and Wedderburn and is named after Captain Melville a highwayman who used to hold up the gold shipments travelling from Wedderburn to Melbourne and used the hill top as his hide out and vantage point.
The area of the hill features huge boulders of crumbly and apparently easily weathered rock and it is between these boulders that the 'caves' are to be found.
According to Parks Victoria searching for minerals is allowed within 200m of the white swan mine located nearby so I picked up a likely looking rock for later inspection during my walkabout of the area. Sure enough when I later crushed it and panned the resulting gravel there was a small gold flake to be found!
About 400m from the camp ground is this beautiful viewpoint
The campsite is a real gem and I was treated to a night without flies or mosquitoes and clear skies with excellent stargazing. There is plenty of space in the camp and some long drop toilets but no other facilities (it is free after all!).
The campsite is quite large and can accomodate many campers. There was a school trip at the other end of the camp and I could barely hear them they were so far away.
There are some walks that start and finish at the campsite and plenty of local wildlife. I was fortunate enough to see two huge wedge tailed eagles take off from a tree at the roadside as I drove in. The views from the viewpoint at the top of the hill are absolutely stunning.
Happy camping guys!
Can we see a picture of your gold?? 😍
Ok - It’s tiny at less than half a millimetre but here you go;
Oh wow, I'll have to sus it out. Looks like a great place to take the drone out also.
Yes it would be a pretty cool spot for sending up the drone!
I tried Inglewood with the metal detector per our previous chat but no luck unfortunately - I must be swinging it left to right instead of right to left ;)
Inglewood is full of gold, we go up there a fair bit but you need a good detector.
I have the SDC 2300 which loves picking up shotgun pellets so great for small stuff but doesn’t go very deep. I once found a piece of gold in maryborough with it that is probably about 1/3 the size of a shotgun pellet! Do you think the depth of detection would be hurting me at Inglewood? It’s only got an 8” coil.
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I wonder if captain Melville got to retire early...
I think he was forced into early retirement!
Lol! I bet he was!
awesome site..Thanks. I'll visit this site in April..
You’re welcome!
Thanks for telling us about this great place and that free camping is available.