Just beyond the Jimmy Creek Picnic Area, on the other side of the road, the unsealed Jimmy Creek Rd turns off to the left. It leads to Mafeking.
Some small sawmilling companies worked this area for timber in the 19th century but the area is of interest today because of a short-lived goldrush which occurred in 1900. The landscape was devastated by the goldminers who removed the wattle, tea-tree and bracken fern in the search for gold. The stringybark forests were lopped to supply bark and timber for miner’s huts, mining stays and fuel. Some old trees remain, along with fern gullies and regenerating forest.
There is an attractive picnic area, a campground and an information board but this area is definitely unsuitable for children as there are a number of dangerous mineshafts.
Brownings Walk (one hour return) takes in some remaining historic features. A pamphlet is available from the Grampians National Park Visitors’ Centre at Halls Gap. It identifies various features of the walk, including an old-growth stringybark, a regenerated gully, the site of the first claim, tail races, old shafts, a dam embankment used for water storage and open-cut minesites which were worked by means of hydraulic sluicing. A jet of water was directed onto the face of a cutting to dislodge material. The earth was then shovelled into a contraption known as a ‘Tom’ which consisted of two boxes laid atop one another. Water was directed into the upper box where a grate trapped the coarser gravels, stones and rocks while the finer particles of gravel, sand and gold fell through to the second box. There a series of bars or ripples at the bottom of the box helped trap fine gold particles while the water and lighter material ran off as overflow.
South of this point there are a number of attractions associated with the Grampians Tourist Road and Victoria Valley Road (which branches off the Grampians Tourist Road).
Halls Gap is located on the floor of the picturesque Fyans Valley, 250 metres above sea-level. By road it is 251 km north-west of Melbourne via Ararat.
It is essentially a tourist village at the eastern edge of Grampians National Park – one of the state’s most outstanding natural features and a major destination for holidaymakers and bushwalkers. The main approaches are from the south (throught the heart of the Grampians from Dunkeld on the Glenelg Highway), from the south-east (i.e., Ararat), from the east (via Stawell) and from the north (access is along a clearly signposted road which heads west off the Western Highway south of Horsham).
Aborigines have been living on the land hereabouts for at least 5000 years. The first Europeans to traverse the area were the exploratory party of Thomas Mitchell. They camped atop the highest peak in 1836 and Mitchell named it Mt William after William IV, then King of England. He named the range after the Grampians in his native Scotland.
Edward Eyre and Robert Briggs followed in Mitchell’s footsteps in the late 1830s but the first settler was Charles Browning Hall who set out in search of a suitable grazing run when he found the cattle market at Port Phillip Bay overstocked in 1841. He followed Mitchell’s route northwards, establishing a station just east of the Grampians in a spot known as ‘Mokepilli’ to the indigenous inhabitants (probably the Tjapwurong tribe) with whom he shared cordial relations. They acted as his stockmen and showed him their bush skills.
By following Aboriginal tracks he came upon the gap which now bears his name and there met members of either the Jardwa or Buandik tribe. Both occupied the Grampians (which they knew as ‘Cowa’), using the rock shelters for sacred ceremonies and as a canvas for paintings and etchings.
Hall also explored Roses Gap which is named after Philip Rose who took over the run in 1842. The Halls Gap area was later used by cattle duffers until being converted into a sheep run.
People began to frequent the area more regularly in the 1860s with the discovery of gold at Stawell, the commencement of saw-milling and the opening of the Heatherlie Quarry. A timber and bark hut known as Delley’s Inn was established in 1870.
In the 1870s the growing population at Stawell led to the demand for a reliable water supply. John D’Alton devised a system to bring water from the Grampians via a tunnel hewn through the Mt Williams range. The project (completed in 1881) bought workers into the area and a small township developed at Borough Huts. Halls Gap’s first store was built nearby in 1876. Holiday homes and a mill were also built, along with the workers’ cottages and a school operated in the 1890s.
A tramline to Stawell was established in 1881-82 to aid shipment of the Grampians sandstone which was used in Stawell for the courthouse and St Patrick’s Church and, in Melbourne, for the new Government House, the Melbourne Town Hall, the law courts, the public library, the museum and a number of banks and churches. The opening of the tramline also enabled the transportation of timber and of passengers who began to frequent the Grampians for recreational purposes. In 1890 the growing tourist trade was recognised and encouraged when the first facilities were provided for a recreational camping reserve. The Grampians were declared a reserved forest in 1907.
In 1887 alluvial gold was found in Stony Creek. Despite the appearance of 300 prospectors, little gold was uncovered. Somewhat more substantial was the Mafeking goldrush which took place at Mt William between 1900 and 1912. At the foot of the mountain, businesses, hotels and tents quickly appeared although returns proved disappointing. Today there is a memorial stone, a picnic area and some abandoned mineshafts.
In 1923 naturalist and beekeeper Walter Zumstein opened a tourist park. That same year, Mt Victory Rd from Halls Gap to Zumstein’s was opened and the road south to Dunkeld was commenced.
School lessons commenced in 1921 at Halls Gap Public Hall (built in 1899) and a school building was erected in 1928. In the ensuing years tourism has gradually increased, particularly with the development of the highways. Today Halls Gap consists largely of accommodation possibilities, a pub, restaurants, cafes, a supermarket and a number of stores. There are caravan parks at Halls Gap, Wartook and Dunkeld. Jazz is regularly played at the Mountain Grand Guest House on the Main Rd.
This question is often asked in reference to early events in the Stawell area which show Pleasant Creek as the place where the event took place i.e. birth, deaths, marriages or residence.
Pleasant Creek is a small creek which rises in the Black Ranges a few miles south west of Stawell. The creek flows through Stawell West at the Caravan Camping Park, crossing Seaby Street near the racecourse; continuing along the Halls Gap Road, through the Illawarra forest and finally to Lake Lonsdale. A small quantity of gold was discovered in this
creek in May 1853 by a hut keeper who, with two shepherds were
shepherding Concongella Station sheep. They were occupying a bark
hut, known as Pleasant Creek Hut, on the eastern side of Pleasant
Creek not far from the present racecourse. This gold find was
described as at Pleasant Creek.
Some three years later, about 1856, miners were pegging out claims on the quartz reefs around Big Hill
in present Stawell. This would be about 2 kms from the original
gold find in Pleasant Creek. This quartz goldfield was called
Quartz Reefs, Pleasant Creek or The Reefs, Pleasant Creek. In
August 1857, a large alluvial gold find caused a big rush to what
we now know as the Illawarra/Deep Lead area some 6 kms north west
of the original gold find. This goldfield was described as at
Pleasant Creek and was distinguished by the names of its streets –
High Street, Broadway, Commercial road, Oxford Street. High Street
was situated about where the Western Highway passes through Deep
Lead today while Oxford Street runs off the highway past the Deep
Lead Cemetery. Commercial Road runs off the Halls Gap Road at
Illawarra and is signposted. Shortly after this big gold rush, in
June 1858, a Township called Stawell was proclaimed. This Township
was an area of 640 acres and was surveyed around the site of the
original 1853 gold find in Pleasant Creek.
Stawell is a former goldmining town of some 6700 people located just off the Western Highway, 32 km north-west of Ararat, 235 km north-west of Melbourne and 231 m above sea-level.
It is a service centre to the surrounding district and supports a number of industries such as brick-production, goldmining, a substantial and very successful fabric upholstery concern and an abattoir, as well as more traditional grazing and farming pursuits. With the Grampians close by Stawell has a growing tourism sector. Just south of town are the wineries of Great Western.
The Mukjarawaint Aborigines occupied the area prior to white settlement. The first European to pass through the town site was explorer Thomas Mitchell in 1836. The first station was ‘Concongella’ in 1841. Gold was discovered on Pleasant Creek by shepherd William McLachlan in May 1853.
The original settlement of Stawell was at Pleasant Creek and consisted of Cooper, Longfield, Leslie, Burgh Streets running east west and Austin, Griffiths, Seaby and Foster Streets running north south, according to a map of the area dated 1858.ÂÂ
It is interesting to note that Burgh Street has a dog leg in it and this was because the Pleasant Creek Hotel already existed and the road was formed around it
Longfield Street being the main road from Melbourne to Adelaide was the centre of the settlement and housed the Camp and the Constitution Hotel (left of photograph above). On the right of the photograph are the Pleasant Creek Court House and Gaol, Shire Office and the Literary Institute. The Telegraph Office and the Police Superintendent’s Residence were situated in Leslie Street and behind this were the Police Stables in Griffiths Street.
On the corner of Griffiths Street and Leslie Street was the One Tree Hill Cemetery
On the right in Seaby Street is the home of John Yabsley Wakeham, Mr Wakeham was a pioneer of Stawell, Whilst a merchant originally he amassed his fortune as a share holder in a number of mines in Stawell.
Pleasant Creek was part of Concongella Station before the discovery of gold. The only residents around at the time were two shepherds and a hutkeeper who lived on the “Western slopes of One Tree Hill” in a bark hut.
William McLachlan discovered gold at Pleasant Creek in May 1853 while fossicking in Pleasant Creek in his spare time found some gold. It only was a small amount of gold – some pennyweights – and although the find was made known, not many people came here then. This was then a very isolated area, water was scarce and there were no supplies of food while the goldfields of Ballarat, Bendigo, Clunes etc. were operating with stores already established. Some people did come and there were also people passing through here from South Australia to the Victorian goldfields who stopped and washed small quantities of gold.
Apparently some gold diggers came and went during the next four years – finding some small quantities – and in August 1857 – the big rush occurred at what became known as Commercial Street, Pleasant Creek – off the Halls Gap Road.
This rush spread across to Deep Lead and the Warden reported at the height of the rush, said that there were 25,000 to 30,000 people there.
At the same time, shafts were being sunk around Big Hill and gold was found in the quartz there. That Big Hill area was called Quartz Reefs, Pleasant Creek.
The government proclaimed and renamed the settlement ‘Stawell’ in 1858 after Sir William Foster Stawell, an attorney-general in Victoria’s first legislative assembly (1856) who became the chief justice of Victoria in 1857.
Much alluvial gold was found in the Illawarra/Deep Lead area but how much and who found it is not known. The diggers took their gold and left and the field had petered out by 1859 – only lasting less then two years with a very diminishing numbers of diggers.
As the alluvial gold began to diminish in the 1860s, the population and economic activity began to shift north-east to the Big Hill area where a new settlement, known as Quartz Reefs, developed around the quartz gold found at the foot of the hill. Thus the original town site became known as Stawell West. The two areas were amalgamated into the borough of Stawell in 1869.
When mining activity at Ballarat diminished in the late 1860s it freed up a flow of capital and experienced hands to the Stawell fields, initiating a boom period during the 1870s which saw new administration buildings erected close by the Big Hill mines. The railway further boosted local economic and social activity upon its arrival in 1876.
Huge amounts of gold were found and fortunes made. Of the 14 richest mines in Victoria. Number 8 on that list was the Cross Reef at Stawell and number 10 was the Magdala at Stawell. Mining here slowed down in the late 1880’s with many mines closing from then to the 1890’s and the last mine closed in 1920. By which time around 58 tonnes of gold had been extracted. The settlement survived the slow inevitable decline of the goldfields due to (a) its role as a service centre to the farming community and (b) the emergence of local industries such as a flour mill, brickworks, tannery and woollen mills. Gold mining recommenced at Stawell in 1981.
Of some historical interest is the fact that Marcus Clarke worked as a jackeroo to the north-west of town in the 1860s. The settlement of Glenorchy was the ‘Bullocktown’ of his ‘Bullocktown Sketches’ which were published in the Australasian.
