U3A Ballarat Hikers

 U3A Hike No. 139  Hike Report by Fiona Deutscher Thirteen members of the U3A Ballarat Hiking Group began this circuit hike near Eatons Dam within Creswick State Forest. This walk explored early historic gold mining construction of water storage and channels for alluvial diggings in the area. Firstly we inspected the early stone and earth construction of Eatons Dam (circa 1862) as we walked beside and along its wall. Nearby, we could also see sections of the adjoining water race which transported the water over many kilometres to the diggings. After a steep short ascent up a gully we reached the newer Cosgrave Reservoir. We walked for some distance around it’s perimeter- stopping to admire the beautiful views and reflections across the water. We then turned sharply to follow a section of the water race ‘off track’ heading back toward Creswick for a few kilometres. The terrain was rough and involved stepping over many logs and hopping across the water race multiple times. Eventually

  U3A Hike No. 138 Hike Report by Anne Ottrey 20 hikers met at Sebastopol to head off to our walk at the Berringa mines and heritage area. As 29 degrees was predicted for the day, the walk was reduced from 13km to around 10km.  Between 1898 and 1911, the historic mines at Berringa produced a minimum of 293,000 ounces of gold from four main operating mines. Mining re-commenced from 1937 to 1952 and again during the 1970’s and 1980’s as small scale gold mining operations. Ballarat Gold Mines still holds an exploration lease on the four main mines in Berringa. The area was first called Kangaroo, then Moonlight and finally Berringa, thought to come from an aboriginal word for rainbow or sunset. We started off by exploring some of the old mining areas, but it was soon evident that these had been mined again in the more recent periods. We passed the relatively new dam for the Kangaroo mine plus also an older, now dry, dam. We did a fair bit of scrambling down into gullies to find mining ruin