Fryerstown - Herons Reef Historic Gold Diggings
Herons Reef Historic Gold Diggings is an authentic gold mining site on 113 acres (45 hectares) in Fryerstown, Victoria. It is classified by the National Trust of Australia and is registered with Heritage Victoria.
On this site exist relics spanning three eras of gold mining activity:
Alluvial (1851 - 1870)
Deep Lead (1870 - 1890)
Hydraulic Sluicing (1930s)
All these workings remain as left when abandoned by the miners. A golden time capsule in a bushland setting.
The Herons Reef Gold Diggings used to be privately owned by Les Simmons, who ran guided tours of the site's ruins, relics and diggings. Today the area is included in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park.
The site has relics of every known method of gold extraction used during the early history of gold mining - bank sluicing, mud surface sluices, incline and deep lead mining, puddling, opencuts, battery sites and adits, to name but a few.
There is a remarkably intact Cornish miner's cottage c. 1867 which was built from local stone and mud mortar. There are also the remains of a second cottage c1840s close by.
The Heron Nugget was discovered in April 1855. This nugget weighed 85.3 lb (approximately 40 kg) and was the 7th largest nugget in the world at that time.
How to get there: Turn south off the Pyrenees Highway at Chewton and continue along the Vaughan-Chewton Road for about 4.4km. Just after passing Spring Gully Road, there is a small parking area and a locked gate on the left. There used to be a sign 'Herons Reef' but that was missing when we visited.
There is also a walking track leading off from the intersection of Vaughan-Chewton Road and Crocodile Reservoir Road. The Cornish miner's cottage are located in the southern part, closer to Crocodile Reservoir Road.
The huts are best accessed from near the intersection of Crocodile Reservoir Road and Vaughan-Chewton Road. Cross Golden Creek and head up hill to the ruins of the first cottage and continue on to the intact cottage. The marker on this map shows the location of the intact cottage.
Review:
This is a really interesting area and there are lots of gold mining relics. The best route is to start at the locked gate (which has an entrance point for walkers). The gravel road leads past a dam to an area with discarded mining equipment. From here there are some branching tracks but we followed a main track which headed to the south which passed lots of heavily mined areas with many stone foundations, mullock heaps, a fenced off deep mine and rusted and discarded equipment.
Location
Vaughan-Chewton Road, Fryerstown 3451 Map
✆ (03) 5473 4387
Web Links
→ Herons Reef Historic Gold Diggings (Victorian Heritage Database)
