McMahons Creek Goldfields, Yarra Ranges National Park - July 2015

I'm completely snowed under at work at the moment which only left a few hours for a walk on Saturday, so after finishing work for the day I pointed the ute towards Warburton and headed off. I was planning on re visiting a walk I did years ago, the McMahons Goldfield Walk. This walk starts on the Yarra River to the east of Warburton and then explores an historic gold mining area before looping back to the carpark via some ridges. This area was badly burnt in the Ash Wednesday fires back in 1983 and is slowly starting to get back to normal. 

The Yarra River flowing through The Little Peninsula Tunnel.

Parking the ute at the Little Peninsula picnic ground the first objective for the day was to check out the Little Peninsula Tunnel. The tunnel was cut by the miners back in the 1800's to divert the water from the Yarra River through a spur and thus drain a section of river to mine, the old miners certainly weren't afraid of hard work. After getting a photo of the tunnel I headed up the wide grassy swathe that covers the Melbourne Water pipeline that runs from the nearby Upper Yarra Reservoir, I would spend a fair bit of the afternoon walking on or crossing this grassy swathe. The grass made for some fairly easy walking, but being the middle of winter it was very damp and incredibly slippery, I had my trekking poles with me and they came in handy, giving me some added purchase on the steep climbs and helping with my balance as I slid down the steep slopes like a down hill skier.

My first climb of the day, it doesn't look to slippery.

Climbing to the top of the first steep pinch I came across a a blocked side track with a notice informing me that the Goldfields track was closed until further notice, now that shouldn't have been a real problem except that the side track was my return route, and the Goldfields Track was about 90% of todays walk, hmmm.... What to do? After considering my dilemma for a couple of seconds I decided to do what any responsible bushwalker would do and that was to push on and see how I go. Now some people may think that is a bit irresponsible and maybe it is, but over the years I've seen tracks in some spots closed for years, and with only a limited time left on this planet I'm keen to experience everything I can. By the way, this is in no way a criticism of Parks Victoria or the rangers on the ground, they all do the best they can with the budgets they are given.  

Err.. that's my return track.

After slipping and sliding my way on the grassy track for awhile I came to my next point of interest, The Big Peninsula Tunnel, yeah you guessed it, another tunnel diverting the Yarra through another spur dug by the old time miners. As the name implies this tunnel was a little bigger and the down stream side had a nice picnic area and would be a good spot for a swim on a hot day, however with the temperature hovering around the high single digits there would be no swimming today. The white water however provided a couple of opportunities for me to muck around with some longer exposure shots on my camera.

The outlet of The Big Peninsula Tunnel.

The stepping stones used for crossing the Yarra.

Looking into The Big Peninsula Tunnel.

Leaving Big Peninsula Tunnel I headed off on Goldfields Track. Now I'm not totally stupid, I had a couple of ideas in my mind about why parks had seen fit to close the track, the first issue I thought about was that the track was probably overgrown, and with the propensity of our early miners to dig mine shafts at random intervals in the scrub it would be fairly dangerous to leave the track to go around any tree falls or overgrown sections. The second reason I figured that they may have closed it was that some of the hardware on the track had fallen into disrepair, stay with me here, once Parks Vic have put in a safety control measure (a bridge, boardwalk, hand rail, etc) then they have to make sure that the control measure is safe, if its not then having done a risk assessment deeming the need for the control in the first place they are then liable. Anyway, now everybody is asleep its time to start walking again, the next section of track contoured around the bush above the Yarra River, the track itself was a little overgrown but nothing to worry about, there was plenty of evidence of mining with some large sluicing gullies just off the track that were now revegetated with ferns. The bush itself consisted of fairly dry heath and eucalyptus forest once I moved further away from the river.

OK, now I'm on the closed Goldfields Track, what could go wrong!

A few trees down.

The route passes by a few of these old gullies formed while the miners were sluicing for gold.

The route wasn't too bad.

Meeting my grassy swathe again I now started climbing up to Observation Road, which I met on the top of another steep slippery grassy climb. The Goldfields Track now looped through an area of old mine shafts, reaching a section of boardwalk that looked like it was last used in an Indiana Jones movie I figured now was the time to be careful. The boardwalk weaved its way around some old mine shafts and it looked very dodgy, luckily only weighing 120kg or so I'm a fairly svelte walker, but I was still very careful negotiating the rotten boardwalk. Safely over the decaying section of track I now had another easy section along a closed dirt road before steeply climbing up a spur alongside an old water race, this section was a little overgrown but nothing to worry about. Finding a few things to photograph on the climb allowed me to get my breath back on this the last big climb of the walk, unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to get a shot of the male lyrebird as it scampered across the track in front of me.

This was the dodgiest bit, the fences are around old mine shafts and the boardwalk was totally rotten.

I shimmied my svelte frame along where the supports underneath ran along the boardwalk.

The slot in the old stump is where the old loggers inserted a plank to stand on and fell the tree.

Crossing Observation Road again I now started along an old water race that contoured the sides of the hills, now normally this would mean some easy walking but I wasn't so sure today. The old water race was overgrown to start with and only got worse the further I went, after twenty minutes I got to an old closed mine shaft in the side of the hill which provided an opportunity to stop for awhile, checking out a geo cache that won't be getting many visitors for awhile. Leaving the old mine the track deteriorated a fair bit, I was now concentrating on staying on the correct route, long sections of track were complete overgrown and while it was possible to stay on the correct route I had to keep alert. The worst sections were when I had to leave the alignment of the old water race to climb through fallen trees, after much consultation of my map, compass and GPS I eventually emerged from the scrub onto a wide fire track , thankful that I had decided to bring my gaiters on this stroll.

Crossing Observation Road, my route now followed an old water race.

The old water race section of the walk was a little on the overgrown side.

With only around an hour to go before dark I now set off with a bit more urgency, luckily the fire track provided for some fairly easy and quick walking and after an encounter with a sambar deer I soon popped out at the top of my first climb of the day on the grassy swathe. With the weather closing in a bit I put the camera away and slid most of the way down the grass to the banks of the Yarra River again at Little Peninsula, all that was left now was to retrace my route over the river and back to the car, stopping for a 'finish' photo in the picnic ground before heading home.

But then I broke out on this wide fire break, happy days!

There was a bit of weather around the surrounding ranges.

The Dirt.

First up the walk is closed, now while I'm a little bit casual about rules and regulations there are normally reasons that parks have closed a walk. In this case it would be that the walk has fallen into serious disrepair, a lot of the boardwalks were rotten, there are a lot of trees down on the track and some sections are extremely overgrown. Having said all that it doesn't appear to me that any of these things will be remedied in the near future so the only way to do this walk may be the feral way. In its present condition this is a hard walk, if parks get the funding and the resources to fix the track then it would be a medium walk. I walked 11.64 kilometres over about 4 hours and climbed 516 metres according to my GPS. I used notes from Day Walks in Victoria by John Chapman, he has an update page on his website which would be worth checking out to get the latest conditions on the walk. All up I really enjoyed my afternoons walk, it provided a more challenging walk than I had envisaged but nothing that turned into a slog, and best of all it didn't get wet enough to have to put on my rain jacket, something of a bonus around Melbourne at this time of the year.

The finish shot, I'm glad I wore gaiters today.

The little loop in the Yarra River is Little Peninsula which is the start of the walk, the bigger loop is Big Peninsula, who would of thought hey!