VICTORIA'S
GREAT DRIVING TOURS AND HERITAGE TOWNS
SUNDAY
DRIVE... Dunolly
WHY GO: The heart of Victoria’s “Golden
Triangle,” beyond Ballarat and Bendigo, is a scenic web
of rural backroads linking scores of historic goldfields towns.
Gone are the rough bush tracks that once thronged with thousands
of hopeful miners; in their place are smooth, sealed, peaceful
roads custom-made for weekend exploring.
DISTANCE FROM MELBOURNE: 350km for the round-trip from the city
TIME: 4.5 hours driving time.
ROUTE: take the Calder Fwy out of town, and turn off at Elphinstone
towards Castlemaine, staying on Pyrenees Hwy. Four kilometres
west of Castlemaine turn towards Maldon, continuing through this
pretty town on the Bridgewater Road for approx 24km. A left turn
on the Eddington road takes you to Dunolly. Definitely worthwhile,
if time permits, is a return via the old diggers route through
Maryborough, Clunes, Creswick and then to the city on the Western
Fwy. This adds about 20min, plus sightseeing stops.
ON THE WAY: plenty of well-preserved Gold Rush architecture at
Castlemaine, one of the earliest and wealthiest Rush towns; Buda
homestead and the Art Gallery are both worth a look. Historic
Maldon is a good place to stop for morning tea – its pleasingly
curved main street is packed with cafes and shops, and train buffs
find the historic railway good value. The region has reverted
to farming pursuits, but keep your eyes peeled for mullock heaps
which mark old mineshafts.
WHAT TO DO: Two fleeting, albeit golden, decades were overwhelmed
by a century of decline, which even hi-tech metal detectors couldn’t
reverse. However, Dunolly has survived without forfeiting too
much of its heritage to the ravages of time and today the main
street is an eclectic mix of antiquated shops and public buildings
shaded by trees and broad iron verandahs: with names like Welcome
Stranger Café, Cobb & Co. coach office and billiard
parlour, the Goldfields Historical Museum - you don’t have
to look far to find a palpable connection with gold.
Akin to many other towns which sprang up overnight in the 1850s,
Dunolly was originally a pastoral run, owned by a Scotsman who
named it after his home town. Gold was discovered: the first rush
swamped the region and tented camps studded the gullies, sheltering
up to 30,000 prospectors. At this time in Victoria’s history,
there was an itinerant population of 100,000 who were ready to
hit the road whenever the word of a new strike was whispered.
Dunolly’s second, smaller rush brought a more permanent
town with the appearance of wooden buildings. The 1860s saw some
handsome brick buildings erected and many of these survive today.
The Courthouse in Market Street was originally the Town Hall;
the licensed grocery on Broadway dates to 1859, and has the oldest
operating liquor licence in Victoria. Owner James Bell was Dunolly
mayor five times, a mining company director and elected as a member
of the Victorian Parliament. The London Chartered Bank, also on
Broadway, was built in 1867 to replace a wooden and corrugated
iron building.
The Welcome Stranger, world’s largest nugget was a 65 kilogram
lump of solid gleaming metal found at Moliagul in 1869. It was
sold to the bank for 9,534 pounds ($19,068 - a lot of money in
those days) and cut up on the deeply scored and beaten blacksmith’s
anvil positioned outside Dunolly’s little museum. It’s
worth calling in to the Welcome Stranger café or the museum
to get a walking map of Dunolly heritage buildings.
The Hand of Faith nugget, worth a million dollars, was found
in the region in the 1980s, heralding an era of metal detectors
and a new harvest of gold. But only recently have people seen
the intrinsic value of a beautiful old town like Dunolly.
EATING AND DRINKING: as with many other small regional towns,
some watering holes only fire-up the kitchen at weekends: The
Cockatoo (ph 5468 1681) is one of these, but is reputedly the
best hereabouts. The town’s bakery has had a revamp and
is a good place for light meals and coffee through the week, as
is Footer’s Mansion B&B. Dunolly’s pubs serve
reasonable meals too, and over a cold beer you’ll find the
talk is still about gold. The museum (ph 5468 1205) is only open
at weekends and holidays.
©Peter Robinson 2007
see my images at www.australianplaces.net
For the past
25 years Peter Robinson has travelled far and wide but Australia,
being home, is his first love. As an experienced travel writer
and professional photographer, his wealth of knowledge is revealed
in travel and accommodation reviews that have freelance integrity
and honesty. The main focus of this site is to present brief reviews
of a select group of places to stay for the weekend. Each place
has been visited at least once and evaluated for high standards
before inclusion - and after reviewing over 600 places Peter has
done the hard work so you can enjoy Great
Weekends Away.
