Centre > Travel diaries > Australia 1999 > p2: Walhalla excitement
Saturday September 11
Word had gone out ahead of time that it was my birthday, so I was spoiled by all. The day itself had been planned as a big birthday celebration, so we packed a picnic and drove out of Latrobe valley towards Walhalla. On the way we stopped at Katt's present to me: a visit to an alpaca farm! Anne called me Alpaca online and her friends knew me by that name, hence Katt's idea.
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The alpaca farm and a particularly hippy specimen I called Shaggy.
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Walhalla is an interesting little village hidden in the lap of a jungle-covered mountain. It is so remote that it never had electricity before April that year. It sprung out of the ground during the Gold Rush, and gold and copper were extracted in the mines surrounding it. However, the gold mine soon became too deep and flooded with water, and there wasn't enough copper to justify its exploitation. So Walhalla became largely a ghost town, and only the part of the village that was in the valley survived.
In 1911 the Walhalla firemen received the latest equipment in firefighting. That didn't prevent the town from burning down, for they had the equipment, but not the corps!
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Walhalla's picnic area.
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The city's wooden architecture hasn't changed since the Gold Rush.
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The highlight of the day was a 4WD trip on the old coach road. The tour took us across a river, through ghost satellite towns such as Maidentown and Mormonville, and the Happy-Go-Lucky camping ground. We stopped at a copper smelting post that is rotting away in the forest and picked up copper and azurite minerals from the ground to bring home as a souvenir. The road was cut into the mountain flank, so that we had a wall of earth to our right and a steep slope to our left. Sometimes there were fallen trees across it, and the jeep could barely drive underneath them. The guide told us that one of the jeeps was too high to go through, so whenever they reached this part of the road they had to ask the passengers to get off and to hang onto one of the sides! The end of the drive was memorable: the gorund suddenly vanished and our expert driver switched off the engine so that the jeep could freely slide down a slope that no wheels could have adhered to. |
A pause on the trail.
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Fording the river!
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Above and right: Remains of ghost towns.
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The ride left us all very excited. It was definitely my kind of birthday event!
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We unpacked everything in the picnic area and treated ourselves to a "barbie". In the meantime I was discovering Australian birds and flora, with the help of Steve who was picking flowers for me and telling me their names. I have pressed them in my sketchbook, which has retained their scent ever since. As for the birds, I had already noticed three very chattery ones: the jay, with white bands on its wings, the South Australian piping shrike, and the candy-pink rosella.
Dawn had had a cake made for me, with "Happy Birthday Alpaca" written on it. She said the guy who took the order couldn't help but commenting: "A birthday cake for an animal??"
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Piping shrike.
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Jay.
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Rosella.
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Flip to Page 3: Road to Adelaide. |
