Walhalla Township
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The text & images on these pages are from the book
The Switzerland of Australia by W.M. Harrison Lee © 1981 J.L. Harrington and J.K. King They are reproduced on these pages, with some changes in layout, with the kind permission of Paoletti's Maps P/L . |
This brief description of Walhalla in its heyday appeared in 'The Cyclopedia of
Victoria, Volumes 1, 2 and 3, edited by J. Smith and published by F. W Niven &
Co., of Melbourne and Ballarat in 1903. It is interesting to note that at the
time of publication the only access to Walhalla was by stage coach as the
railway from Moe had not been started.
Covered wagons, coaches and people wait near the Post Office (centre background) for a mail delivery. Click on image to enlarge The extreme care in which Nature has hidden away in secluded valleys, among the secret recesses of sequestered mountains covered with dense forests, difficult of penetration by the most adventurous of explorers, the most precious of her hoards of golden treasure, has nowhere in the State of Victoria been more remarkably exemplified than at Walhalla. Difficult of access, remote from any highway or byway, and lying near the southern extremity of a range about twenty miles long, running down like a prolonged spur from the Great Divide above, Walhalla occupies a position of quite remarkable seclusion and solitude. In some parts of the Old World it is just the spot in which you would not be surprised to find a Trappist monastery, erected far back in the twelth century by a brotherhood enamoured of silence and meditation. It is certainly the very last place in which you would expect to see enginehouses, with tall chimneys pouring forth clouds of smoke and steam, and to hear the clang and clatter of machinery, and to discover a population of busy miners, who have been settled there for something like forty years. The township is situated in the bend of a narrow valley, and the feet of the circumscribing mountains on either side approach each other so closely as to leave just space enough for a brawling stream to delve its channel in, with here and there an occasional widening out of the valley just sufficient in area to afford room enough for the erection of quartz-crushing mills, stores, cottages, three places of worship, a State School, a couple of banks, half a dozen hotels, a Mechanics' Institute, three halls, and the public offices incidental to a municipal township which is the chief place in a shire covering an area of 409 square miles, and containing a population of about 3,500 souls, of whom nearly six-sevenths are concentrated in the town itself, the only other places in the shire being the small townships of Aberfeldy, Bluejacket, Donnelly, and Toombon. |
Distant 107 miles from Melbourne, Walhalla can only be reached by coach
connecting with the railway at Moe and Toongabbie. The history of the discovery
of this goldfield offers a striking illustration of the courage, tenacity of
purpose, and venturesome spirit which animated the prospectors of the early
sixties. At that time the whole of the mountainous region which covers so large
a portion of the northwestern corner of the county of Tanjil was comparatively
unknown, except to the Government surveyors and a few hardy goldseekers who had
penetrated the labyrinthine ranges of the eastern division of the county of
Evelyn, and of the no less complex mountain system in the midst of which the
waters of the river Goulburn take their rise in the southern district of the
county of Wonnangatta.
 A view of Walhalla taken from the sports oval hill. The Grand Junction Hotel and the coach stables are in the foreground. Click on image to enlarge Gold had already been found at Aberfeldy, Donnelly's Creek, and Jericho, in the county of Tanjil, and at Wood's Point, in Wonnangatta; and the second of these places was chosen as the starting point of an expedition headed by Edward Stringer, which had been organised to explore the neighbouring ranges in search of gold. Some of these fastnesses had never been trodden by the foot of a white man, and a party of this kind was exposed to hardships and privations which would have daunted men of inferior energy, determination, and daring. But these men persevered, and were finally rewarded by the discovery of gold in the creek which now flows through the middle of the township of Walhalla. The gold was alluvial, as a matter of course, and although a few of the claims were rich they were not permanently so, and the prospectors had no suspicion at first of the mine of wealth which was awaiting development in the extensive quartz reefs which lay beneath their feet. These owed their discovery to a man named Hinchcliffe, who had camped with his mates on the summit of a hill, where he observed the outcrop of a lode. |
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