Tipperary Walk/Ride

The bike track heads down the main streets of Daylesford and Hepburn Springs to rejoin the walkers at the northern end of Golden Spring Avenue.
An alternative route primarily for riders wishing to avoid the busy traffic route from the Daylesford Post Office to Hepburn Springs via Vincent Street and Main Road diverts at the Post Office and goes via Jamieson Street, Kidds Gully and Hepburn Springs Reserve to re-join the official Goldfields Track shared track in Mannings Road north of Widows Gully. Walkers might also travel this way but by doing so would miss seeing the attractions along Sailors and Spring Creeks.
For a map of this alternative, please CLICK HERE. Please note that this alternative route is not sign-posted.

To start this walk, head left from the car park at the Book Barn, which has ample adjacent car parking and public toilets, aiming for the lake spillway in the SW corner of the lake. This first section does not have gold GT posts marking the route.

Go downhill next to cascades, sticking to the right hand side (north) of Wombat Crk. After arriving at the track junction where a steel foot bridge spans Wombat Crk on your left, find your first gold GT post and head for the busy Midland Highway. Carefully cross, going left down the bitumen a short distance towards bridge, then picking up the Twin Bridges sign. Follow GT signage and posts contouring on the right hand side (east) of Sailors Crk.

You could make a side trip to the Tipperary Springs picnic ground sheltered by a huge manna gum in a crook of the creek, with a working mineral water pump and toilets. Bryces Flat acts as the climatic interface between the wetter country typical of the Great Divide and the drier hills and box trees of the northern plains. Vehicle accessible via 15th Street.

A well known feature, the Blowhole is one of 13 known water diversions dug by Victorian gold miners to expose alluvial gold. In wet weather, water belts out of the tunnel. Vehicle accessible via 18th Street.

From the Breakneck Gorge bridge, you contour way above Spring Creek, which becomes increasingly hemmed in by walls of blackberries. You descend to a bush spring with mineral water available from a pipe in gully’s south bank at Golden Spring. The shared use track begins soon after and leads to the Womans Gully junction.

SUPPLIES & FACILITIES

Supplies at Daylesford. Toilets, water, picnic grounds and car parking at Lake Daylesford and Tipperary Springs (mineral water pump). Car parking and picnic areas at Twin Bridges, Bryces Flat, the Blowhole and Golden Spring (mineral water pipe). Walkers can access Womans Gully from the Hepburn Mineral Springs Reserve.

Refer maps 16b - 18 of the Goldfields Track Walk or Ride Guide