W.G. Spence Walk/Ride
Creswick Visitor Centre – Mollongghip
This section incorporates the walkers-only Creswick Heritage Walk taking in heritage listed buildings and significant trees within the old School of Forestry, links to the heritage-listed La Gerche walk, then heads into a pine plantation managed by Hancock Victorian Plantations and over Brackenbury Hill to rejoin the shared use track at the SE cnr of St Georges Lake.
From here, walkers turn left (east) onto footpad traversing up through blackberries to contour high above Creswick Crk along an old water race through woodland and the abandoned Koala Park. Bikers head south from St Georges Lake on 4WD road winding through pleasant bush before rejoining walkers past the Koala Park.
The track follows a heavily mined section along Creswick Crk passt an old Chines market orchard gone ‘feral.’ You could make a side trip to Eaton Dam, still largely intact, which offers an excellent example of stone and earth construction techniques.
Uphill past Spence’s birthplace in Jackass Gully – just a plaque and a few fruit trees. Keep climbing to a ridgetop, dominated by white-trunked candlebark gums. Into Bowens Lane and flat open farmland of deep, red volcanic soil, with seven, bare gently rounded volcanic hills stretching across the horizon.
From Dean, continue east through farmland climbing steadily to the top of the Divide at Mollongghip. Mt Tipperary at 743m is as high as Ballarat’s more well-known Mt Buninyong.
SUPPLIES & FACILITIES
Supplies at Creswick. Toilets and water at St Georges Lake, and the Dean Hall (hot showers too) and Mollongghip Hall. Camping with kitchen facilities at the Mollongghip Hall – contact Rhonnie Dryne on 03 5334 5201 (AH) or email rhonnie_dryne@hotmail.com
Refer maps 8b - 12 of the Goldfields Track Walk or Ride Guide
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What you can expect to see
