Harcourt North - Mount Alexander Regional Park
Rising 350 metres above the surrounding area, Mount Alexander Regional Park is a prominent landmark offering magnificent views and a natural forest setting for picnics and bushwalking. It also provides important habitat for several rare or threatened species.
The West Ridge walking track (4km in length) links all the major lookouts and points of interest in the park.
Enjoy the natural beauty and surroundings at one of the lookouts and rock outcrops, or at Leanganook where there are barbecues, toilets and tables.
Mount Alexander provides a rich purple background to the fertile Harcourt valley below. The mountain stands at a level of 744 metres above sea level. (By comparison Mount Dandenong is 633 metres.) The underlying rock is granidiorite. Most of the mountain is included within the boundaries of the Mount Alexander Regional Park. Non-perennial creeks that rise on the mountain include Forest Creek, Picnic Gully Creek, Eyre Creek, Axe Creek, Myrtle Creek and Whiskey Gully Creek.The mountain, known as Lanjanuc to the Jaara Jaara/Dja Dja Wurrung people, was the location of a sacred ceremonial ground and used as an outlook.
Map of Park
Facilities & Recreation
Mount Alexander has many recreational walking tracks, ranging in degree of difficulty from the easy to the challenging. Picnic, barbeque, camping and toilet facilities are to be found at Leanganook picnic area at the south-end of the mount. Picnic and barbeque facilities are to be found at the Oak Forest. The nearest RV dump site is located at Bridge Street Harcourt. Orienteering and abseiling opportunities abound. Cyclists find the mountain to be a rewarding challenge. The quiet peaceful environment is all-encompassing.
Enjoying the Park
Lookouts
Experience panoramic views of the surrounding area from Dog Rocks and Shepherd's Flat.
Lang's Lookout commemorates the efforts of James H Lang, to have a tourist road constructed across the top of the range. In 1928, Lt-Col. Lang, in his Buick piloted by Alan Lang, and Cr J R Duggan in his Chevrolet, accompanied by the Hon H S W Lawson, proceeded across the mount in a zig-zag fashion to prove that such a road was feasible. The road thus pioneered is now known as Joseph Young Drive, in honour of a long-serving Metcalfe Shire councillor.
A large outcrop of granite boulders on the western slopes of Mount Alexander is known as Dog Rocks. The manager of Sutton Grange Station, Lockhart Morton, named these rocks in 1846 because they were the favourite lair of packs of dingoes. This is now a popular abseiling site.
Shepherd's Flat Lookout also attained its name in the pastoral, pre-gold rush era. Mountain-top lookouts provide splendid views of the surrounding country-side; the grazing properties of Sutton Grange and the vineyards and orchards of Harcourt. Mount Ida at Heathcote, Mount Macedon to the south and the Pyrenees ranges to the west can be seen.
Picnicking
Enjoy the natural beauty and surroundings at one of the lookouts and rock outcrops, or at Leanganook where there are barbecues, toilets and tables.
Camping
Dispersed foot based camping is permitted throughout the park.
Walking
The West Ridge Walking Track is 4km in length (one-way) and links all major lookouts and points of interest. The walk passes through huge rocky granite outcrops with beautiful views.
The moderately diffcult walk begins at Lang's Lookout, passes Shepherd's Flat Lookout and Dog Rocks, and ends at the Leanganook Campground. Travelling in this direction is mostly downhill and the optimum is to have a car waiting at the Leanganook Campground to drive back to Lang's Lookout. Otherwise it is another 4km uphill walk retracing your steps or using the road.
See this map which shows the route of the walk.
Animals
You may find a koala if you are patient and look carefully. Keep your eyes on the upper branches of the Manna Gums with their distinctive smooth textures and hanging ribbons of bark.
Other animals you may encounter are Black Wallabies, Eastern Grey Kangaroos, Echidnas, Brushtail and Ringtail Possums, Sugar Gliders and the rare Tuan or Brush Tailed Phascogale.
Prospecting
Prospecting is permitted in designated areas. Prospectors must hold a current Miner's Right. Refer to the relevant Prospecting Guide for more information.
A Boer War Memorial?
Local residents casually referred to the summit cairn as a Boer War Memorial. People with a precise interest in history will have noted that the cairn was constructed over twenty years before the Boer War. However, there is value in the oral history as it fixes this as the site of the district celebrations for the relief of Mafeking. The Mount Alexander Mail reported "inspired by a right spirit the young men of the district have arranged to commence next Friday to prepare a huge bonfire on the summit of Mount Alexander." Twenty men spent four days, to build the pile, reckoned to be the largest in the Colony. On June 6th 1900 the bonfire was lit in the presence of a large number of locals and was visible for a very great distance.
Sericulture Ruins
The site of the Mount Alexander Silkworm Farm can be found on an east-facing slope at the south end of the Mount.The area was overplanted as a pine plantation but was cleared in 1997. A granite cottage in a ruinous condition, and foundations of a granite workroom, are all that remain of a complex of buildings which included a magnanerie - a French word describing the place where silkworms are bred and fed. The whole venture was organised and financed by the Victorian Ladies Sericulture Company Limited. A wealthy English widow, Mrs Bladen-Neill organized this venture.Three years of unsuitable soil, lack of summer rains, dramatic winter frosts and the ravages of rabbits and possums were disastrous for the young mulberry trees.The enterprise was abandoned in February 1877.
Target Rock
Target Rock is a notable feature of the north-west slopes, marking the site of a rifle range utilised by the militia between the Boer War & World War I. Clearing of the pine trees in 1998 has enabled us to locate this rock. Upon the flat vertical west face of Target Rock can still be seen the outline of a circular target - probably painted with bitumen. From 1899 this was used a target for a rifle club formed in Harcourt as a response to the outbreak of the Boer War.
Granite Quarries
Large-scale quarrying of granite on the mountain started in 1859 with stone supplied to the Melbourne to Echuca Railway. Cornish quarry-man Joseph Blight had arrived in the colony in 1855 and achieved some success in quartz reef mining at Eureka Reef. He then turned to quarrying at Mount Alexander, at first providing stone for the railway. He began to work the Blight's Quarry site in 1862.A 36-ton block of granite for the Burke and Wills Memorial in the Melbourne General Cemetery was sourced here in 1863. At the time it was the largest block of stone ever quarried in the Colony. Harcourt Granite has a reputation as a first-rate building/dimensional stone. It is used for building and monumental work, with waste stone being cut for spalls. Quarry sites are easily recognisable by the great piles of cut stone discarded on site. A close look at the drill marks gives an indication of the age of the quarry. Smooth holes were produced by air compressor drills, while more "ragged" holes date from the era when the holes were "drilled" by two men; one holding/turning the drill fin reality a long-shanked cold-chisel) and the other being the striker. The age of the site may also be gauged from the mature gums and pine trees growing between the blocks of discarded stone.
Flora & Fauna
The regional park is home to many types of eucalypts including manna gums with their distinctive smooth textures and hanging ribbons of bark, messmate, long-leafed box and yellow box. Other examples of flora are acacias, native grasses, herbs and wildflowers such as austral cranesbill, ferns and mosses.
The fauna includes koalas, eastern grey kangaroos, black wallabies, echidnas, the rare tuan or brush-tailed phascogale, sugar gliders, brushtail and ringtail possums, snakes, lizards, frogs, owls, eagles, cockatoos, rosellas, parrots and altitudinal migratory currawongs and robins. Plentiful hollows in the old trees for nesting and dead wood on the ground for shelter make Mount Alexander an excellent native animal habitat.
A Koala Park was established in 1943.The park was stocked with koalas from Phillip Island and managed by a committee of local residents. This park was later relocated and enlarged. It was abandoned in 2009. Leanganook picnic facilities are located near the entrance to the former Koala Park.
Mount Alexander hosts a unique member of the Brassicaceae family called Southern Shepherd's Purse (Ballantinia antipoda).This tiny plant grows in small patches of moss on granite outcrops in damp locations. Ballantinia antipoda has become extinct in all other documented sites in Victoria. The plant is nationally recognised as a threatened species.
The Explorers
When Major Thomas Mitchell was surveyor general of New South Wales he mounted an exploring expedition into what he later described as "Australia Felix". From a long way off he set his north-east course by reference to this mountain, this friendly hill, and on 28 September 1836 with an aboriginal named Tommy, "rode with ease to the summit, and found it to be but thinly wooded so that I could take my angles around the horizon without difficulty." He named it Mount Byng after John Byng, 1st Earl of Strafford, a Field Marshal during the Peninsular War, but soon changed it to honour Alexander the Great, emperor of ancient Macedonia. Overlander Edward John Eyre camped on the north-west slopes of Mt Alexander on 8th February 1838 having become bushed in the vicinity of Mt Alexander on a five-month-long journey from Goulburn to Adelaide with a mob of cattle.
The Oak Forest
In the late years of the nineteenth century the proprietor of a tannery led a long campaign to promote planting of the Valonia Oak in order to secure the supply of tan for his Tannery at the Castlemaine suburb of Winters Flat. In August 1900 the Lands Department planted the oaks, together with a variety of other species, Ash Trees and Atlas Cedars being the most successful. By 1912 it was realised that the Valonia Oaks would not successfully establish here as the drainage is inadequate. Other varieties of oak were more successful, among them the Holly Oak, Cork Oak, English Oak, Algerian Oak and Bristle Tipped Oak. The Oak Forest is significant as a community recreation area. It has been used as a venue for films, picnics and concerts. In 1910 the first plantation of Pinus insignus (or Pinus radiata) was established south of the Oak Forest.
Strong demand by Harcourt Fruit Growers led to the subsequent expansion of the plantation to provide wood for packing cases. These plantations were harvested for the final time following the leasing of the plantation areas to Hancock Victorian Plantations. The area occupied by the pine trees has been revegetated with native species and is to be a recreation park for mountain bike events, horse riders and walkers.
Transmission Facilities
The mountain has a number of transmission sites. The transmission towers are among the tallest structures in Victoria. The Win TV transmitter was built in 1961.The national broadcaster ABC TV built a repeat/ transmitter tower in 1963.That mast was dismantled after being replaced in 1992 by a 157 metre high structure on top of which is installed a UHF TV antenna. Other masts are the PMG (Telecom) repeater station, built in 1959, a mobile-phone master-transmitter, antennae for Community Radio, Victoria Police and the Taxi services.
Trigonometric Station
In the days before Global Satellite Positioning the distinct features of each region were used for the accurate surveying of land. The summit of Mt Alexander is an ideal spot to commence a survey. A survey mound was here in 1867, consisting of a "flagstaff in the centre of a pile of stones." The solid granite cairn was built in 1876.
History
The mountain, called "Lanjanuc" by the Jaara Jaara people, was important as a sacred ceremonial ground and high vantage point.
Major Thomas Mitchell was the first European to climb the mountain in 1836. The rapid occupation of the region by graziers followed.
In 1851 gold was discovered nearby and tales of "Mount Alexander" as the new "Eldorado" swept around the world. It became the richest shallow alluvial goldfield the world has ever known and one of the largest goldrushes of the nineteenth century. The goldfield was later known as Forest Creek or Castlemaine.
In the 1860s the first quarries had opened to provide stone for the Northern Railway. Since then Mount Alexander granite has been used for buildings in Melbourne and monuments such as the base of the Burke and Wills memorial.
By the 1870s the mountain was stripped of vegetation to provide timber for the goldfields. Areas were also used as a Common (land where anybody could graze a cow or a few sheep) and a Silkworm Farm. Slowly the mountain and its vegetation have recovered. Plentiful hollows in the old trees for nesting, dead wood on the ground for shelter and the abundance of native plants for food make Mount Alexander an excellent island for native animal habitat.
Access for Dogs:
Dogs must be on a leash.
How to get there
Mount Alexander Regional Park is 3 kilometres east of Harcourt on the Calder Highway, 120km north-west of Melbourne. The Mt Alexander Tourist Road can be reached from the south by turning off the highway at Faraday, and from the north by turning onto the Harcourt North Road.
Location
Joseph Young Drive, Harcourt North 3453 Map
Web Links
→ Mt Alexander Regional Park - Park note (PDF)
→ Mount Alexander Walking Tracks Map
