U3A Ballarat Hikers

 U3A Hike No 309 Hike Report By Annette Curry A small contingent of enthusiastic hikers met at the Tennis Courts in Buninyong on a cool but sunny morning and headed out to the Bungal State Forest, parking the cars just off the Ballan- Egerton Rd (about 4 kms from Mt Egerton) Led by Mark, with Gordon as the whip, we set off in an anti-clockwise direction to do a boundary loop of the Forest. We headed up and then down a smallish hill, and found ourselves at the South Moorabool River. At this point, we were given the option of either going straight up a gnarly down hill mountain bike track (or was it a hill climb for motorbikes?), or to walk up a 'gentler' track to the top of the ridge. The second option won, so off we went, but still found it very steep AND long! But we all did make it to the top, had a short rest, then followed a truly more gentle track through the bush, stopping for morning tea at a 'campsite', complete with some left behind chairs that a couple of memb

 U3A Hike No 308 Hike Report & Photos By Kath Cape Eight of us met up for this hike led by Gordon in the Brisbane Ranges National Park. Gordon had chose n this location as the place where the least rain was forecasted for the day . Nevertheless, we were all prepared and expecting rain but not a drop we saw ….we even saw some sun!!   But getting ahead of ourselves. The walk started at the delightful Crossing Picnic Area , where , after ‘crossing’ the river , we turne d off the road on a path through Yankee Gully just above a dry creek bed. Of course, as we would expect with Gordon, the walk in the Steiglitz Historic Park gave us great opportunities to investigate remnants from the gold mining area along the way , including some “calcining” pits. The pits were used for calcining the ore, an early process of extracting gold, using heat to cause the ore to crumble. Very heavy on firewood so you can imagine the forest was denuded of its original growth. We also saw the remnants of

 U3A Hike No 307 Hike Report By Joan Brick Our hike today took six of us, under Mark and Gordon's leadership, through the lovely quaint town of Guilford to the area known as Vaughan Mineral Springs. Alluvial gold was discovered there in July 1851 and with an influx of Chinese miners a township called The Junction was formed together with a market garden. By the end of the nineteenth century gold mining had declined in the area. However mineral springs were discovered in 1910 and the area became a popular destination for health and recreation as well as for the historical reminders of the goldfield era. While we started under overcast conditions there was no wind which made it a perfect for a hike that took us through various sections of the gold mining era of this particular part of the Goldfields Track. As with other tracks in this area we were able to see remnants of what was involved in the many stages of gold mining from digging a number of huge deep mine shafts with the hope o

 U3A Hike No 306 Source:Woady Yaloak Historical Society Hike Report By Ann Ottrey Fourteen walkers set out on this 10km circuit to explore some of the dams and water races built by Thomas Boden and Party during the 1860’s and 1870’s. Boden’s party were sluicing for gold around Watsons Hill, Surface Hill and Hard Hill in a quartz area south of Smythesdale.  In the early years of operation, the water ran out in summer, so they started catching water in dams  and transporting it from valley to valley to the gold sluicing areas. Our walk today was located in the southern part of Boden’s operations, around Hard Hill. We set off for two dams east of Doctors Road – State Forest Dam and Big Dam. Big Dam was, unsurprisingly, the largest dam in the race system, covering a large surface area but relatively shallow. There was little water to be seen, but the original valve in the dam wall was still in place – a rare thing in an old mining dam. We stopped for morning tea nearby, before following pa