Enfield Forest, Enfield State Park - July 2016

The route crosses this shallow dam early on.

It's been awhile since I've walked up at Enfield Forest so, needing a walk that would continue to test my leg out a bit (this walk was done while my leg was still in the rehab stage)....but not break it, I decided to head over and check it out again. Last time I walked this circuit was on a baking hot summers day, with the ambient temperature this morning hovering around the single digits I figure today's experience may be a little different. The Enfield State Park is another area that is home to a lot of old gold mines, a fairly common feature of any parks to the north and west of Melbourne. Another common feature of these parks is that nearly all of them feature dry open eucalyptus forest that is best experienced in the colder months, Enfield Forest is home to a large number of wild flowers in late winter and spring so I was hoping to maybe practice my macro shots a little today.

It would appear that horse riders aren't that popular in Enfield State Park.

As I mentioned the weather was a bit marginal this morning, driving down through Ballarat in the misty drizzle I was starting to wonder if I should of just spent the morning drinking coffee and reading the papers. After parking the ute at the end of Dredge Road in Enfield it took a little will-power to pull my old boots on and brave the weather, but once I was off and walking all was good. This walk starts off passing through a labyrinth of old tracks and old gold mines as it heads towards a dam, being a state park there aren't as many regulations here and I was already starting to notice where my bogan shooter and trail bike mates had been leaving there mark on the ground (or, in the case of the shooters any signpost that didn't duck). After passing over some duck boarding and making my way through numerous old mulluck heaps I arrived at the shallow dam, the still early morning conditions making for some half reasonable photos.

There are even a few sections of duck boarding near the start.

Starting down the Dunns Gully Walking Track.

Once I'd crossed the dam wall I started to descend fairly gently into the shallow valley of Dunn Gully, I'd now follow this shallow valley for the next couple of hours all the way to Surface Point Picnic Area. The walk along here generally contours along the side of the hills above the creek and on the map it looks pretty easy but I found myself climbing steeply in and out of numerous steep side gullies, the wet steep clay would have been slippery enough but my trail bike mates had also decided to use the walking track as an enduro track and had cut the damper sections up badly making them even slipperier. So it was a fairly careful Feral Walker who eased his way along this morning, I wasn't keen to go arse over with my dodgy leg, especially considering that the doctor said I could only start exercising next week.

Trail bikes have cut up this section of track, the damage was particularly bad where the track crosses side gullies.

The open forest made for nice walking though.

There was a little bit of fungi around if I looked hard enough.

Meeting the end of Wattle Track I came to what looked like a crime scene with all sorts of random pieces of rubbish littered around the area, its amazing how the rubbish quota increases the closer you get to a spot that has motorised access. Closing in on Surface Point Picnic Area the trail starts to pass through large areas that have been sluiced for gold, the trail alternates between old water races and weaving its way through the mullock heaps, it would pay to stay on the track through here as there are a lot of old mine shafts around as well. Surface Point was the site of an old village back in the 1850's although the only real evidence now is the sluicing scars on the hill sides.

The closer I got to Surface Point Picnic Area the more evidence of old gold mining I started to see.

There's some nice sections along old water races.

Cherry Ballart.

The trail passes some of these mullock heaps.

Surface Point Picnic Area was a good spot to stop for awhile and have a break. I'd been lucky so far today in that while I'd had a couple of passing showers I hadn't as yet needed to put on my rain jacket, the grey overcast conditions weren't doing much for my photos though. Dropping down from the picnic area to a three way intersection of roads near the bridge over Mt Misery Creek I located the faint walking track heading along the east bank of Firth Gully. The steeper sides of Finn Gully now thinned out the number of my trail bike mates who could access this section of the walk, and on reaching an un-marked track junction about half way up Finn Gully eliminated the trail bike damage totally.

There was a large number of Chinese miners that lived around Surface Point back in he 1850's.

The ongoing route follows the east bank of the creek.

This is where the trail bike damaged finished on the route along Finn Gully, bikes exit to the right, walkers follow a pad heading up the valley to the left of the fallen tree, it's a bit vague to start with.

The rest of the walk up Finn Gully towards Bald Hill was a little rougher in spots, the track climbing, sometimes very steeply, in and out of numerous side gullies. Eventually the route starts a more sustained climb through dry forest to the east, popping out of the trees right near the intersection of Incolls Road and Misery Creek Roads at Bald Hill. The hard(ish) part of todays walk was now over though, all that was left for me to do was to nurse my throbbing leg down the gently descending Incolls Road towards Enfield. As Incolls Road meanders its way east it passes by an Air Navigation Facility, now it was heartening to see that our responsible shooters had taken pot shots at the sign asking them not to blow the bejesus out of the area, maybe I'm just getting old and cranky like Sam says....

Climbing up through some nice open forest towards Bald Hill.

It gets a bit cold and wet up here.

Heading down Incolls Road from Bald Hill.

hmmm

Now I mentioned earlier that Enfield State Park is normally home to a profusion of wildflowers, but apart from the ubiquitous heath I hadn't actually noticed any colour lighting up the sometimes drab greens of the scrub. So after turning off Incolls Road and starting the last kilometre back to the ute on Dredge Road I was happy to spot some Sun Orchids (although I've now been reliably informed that they were Hardenbergia not Sun Orchids) flowering on beside the track in a damper section of the forest. Now the pressure was on though, I had to get a photo that at least partly did them justice, oh well, no choice really, I was soon down on all fours goin' feral in the mud trying to get a shot that I could use. Normally I walk in shorts so a bit of mud doesn't worry me too much, but with my dodgy leg still bandaged to my knee I've been walking in long pants recently, the one disadvantage of the long pants attire is that when I get down and dirty my pants get dirty too, I must look like the most clumsiest bushwalker around, with my dirty knees, oh well least I don't have to look at me. So, with wet patches on my knees (hey wet patches on other places would be worse!) I arrived back at the ute, relieved once again to find it unmolested.

Yep, follow the arrow. Heading back to the ute through the maze of tracks behind Enfield.

Finally after around 16 kilometres I found myself an orchid that was flowering, well they looked like an orchid to my untrained eyes but apparently they are called Hardenbergia, oh well I guess I'll have to head back up to the Enfield Forest and see if I can actually spot one of the orchids that its famous for. 

I can just see the ute through the trees, the last bit of the walk was a little on damp side.

The Dirt.

I walked 16.8 kilometres and climbed 501 metres on this medium standard stroll. This is another walk from the House of Chapman's Day Walks Victoria, now my stats and the Chapman's stats are normally a bit out of sync, but on this walk the metres climbed was miles out, the notes suggested only 185 metres of climbing over the route but my GPS almost tripled it, my gut feeling is that my GPS is pretty close to the mark as there are a lot of short sharp climbs and descents out of side gullies which all add up at the end of the day. This is a nice walk if you like gold mining history, or indeed you want to do a little prospecting with a metal detector. Unfortunately I must have been a little early for the carpet of wildflowers, so I'd recommend heading to Enfield State Park at the end of winter and hopefully the open forest will be carpeted in flowers. Oh yeah, this walk would probably be best done on a week day if you want to avoid most of my motorised bogan mates.

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