Valhalla (Victoria)
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Walhalla is a small town in the Australian state of Victoria , which was founded as a gold rush town in early 1863 and had 2500 inhabitants in its prime. Today Walhalla has 20 permanent residents, with the majority of the houses only being used as holiday homes . It attracts a large number of tourists and is considered a tourist attraction in the region. The name of the city goes back to an earlier gold mine in the area, which was named after the Walhalla hall of fame in the Bavarian Donaustauf .
geography
Walhalla is located in southeast Australia in the Gippsland region in eastern Victoria, approx. 180 km east of the capital Melbourne . The area belongs to the Great Dividing Range and borders the Baw Baw National Park . The city is located in the steep valley of Stringer's Creek , about 4 km above its confluence with the Thomson River .
Due to the location in a narrow valley, most of the buildings are arranged along the main road that follows the stream on its way through the valley and splits into two arms at the northern end of the city. At the end of the 19th century, the city also had a few suburbs that lay on the hills above the valley.
history
Gold finds
The history of Walhalla is closely linked to the history of the gold discoveries in Victoria. The first gold was found in Warrandyte in 1851 , which led to the gold rush in Victoria . By 1859 the prospectors had worked their way far east of Melbourne into the pathless wilderness of the Great Dividing Range. Major gold discoveries on the Jordan River encouraged other prospectors to follow the nearby Thomson River in search of the precious metal.
A group of prospectors exploring the tributaries of the Thomson River struck gold in late December 1862 or early January 1863. A claim was staked out and a member of the group, former inmate Edward Randel , had this claim registered at the Bald Hills settlement on January 12, 1863 under his assumed name Edward 'Ned' Stringer . Although he received a reward of £ 100 for his find, he could no longer enjoy his happiness as he passed away in September 1863. The settlement was soon renamed "Walhalla" after an earlier gold mine, but the stream continued to be called Stringers.
The gold rush , which inevitably followed the news of the gold discoveries, was somewhat dampened by the remote location and difficult accessibility of the field, but many gold seekers found their way there. In February 1863, John Hinchcliffe discovered enormously rich gold deposits in a quartz bar on the hills above the creek he named Cohen's Reef after a shopkeeper in the Bald Hills.
Mining
Gold panning and similar techniques quickly depleted all gold reserves on the surface. At the end of 1863, the construction of gold mines began as the prospectors searched for gold veins underground and followed them. In Walhalla, tunnels were dug into the steep walls of the valley and shafts were also sunk down in the more traditional way.
By far most of the gold mining in Walhalla has been concentrated in Cohen's Reef, the largest single gold vein in Victoria. By 1900 this vein had already 55 tons. Gold delivered, d. H. approximately 1.8 million ounces, which in 2005 would have been worth approximately US $ 790 million.
Due to the enormous cost of gold mining, smaller claims operated by individuals or small groups soon had to close and were replaced by large companies like the Long Tunnel Mining Company . This company owned the richest mine on Cohen's Reef, the Long Tunnel Mine , which in its operating period from 1865 to 1914 alone produced 13.7 tons. Gold yielded.
The crushing and washing systems that separated the gold from the surrounding quartz rock required large amounts of energy, which was supplied by mostly wood-fired steam engines . The need for firewood ensured that the hills were cleared in a considerable area around the city. Wooden tracks brought the freshly felled wood to the kettles. The increasing costs for the ever-increasing transport of the firewood were a key factor in the economic problems that ultimately put an end to mining in Walhalla.
Valhalla's boom period (1863-1900)
At the end of 1863 there were further gold discoveries at Happy-Go-Lucky , 3 km from Stringer's Creek, and at Cooper's Creek , where copper was later found in even greater quantities. In March 1864, Walhalla received a daily mail route to Toongabbie and the first post office was opened on August 22, 1864 (until 1868 still under the name Stringer's Creek). Happy-Go-Lucky had its own post office from 1865 to 1916 , as did Cooper's Creek from 1868 to 1893.
The first hotel , Reefer's Arms , opened in September 1863. Within a very short time there were a dozen hotels, breweries and a mineral water factory. A branch of the Bank of Victoria opened in September 1865 and a branch of the Bank of Australasia in February 1866. Businessmen quickly built the city to take part in the gold rush.
In May 1866 the settlement Stringer's Creek was registered and renamed Walhalla after one of the most profitable mines of the time. Most of the first urban land was sold to people who already owned a house in the city. In the same year a Wesleyaner church was built, a police station and a small claims court were set up.
A Mechanics' Institute (adult education and school) with a library was set up in 1867 for the growing number of families . Soon Walhalla had journeyman's brotherhoods , a debating club and eventually a chess club, a choir and a theater group. From January 1870 the Walhalla Chronicle , the local newspaper, was published and in December of that year an 8-acre property was opened for State School No. 957 , which started operating in 1868.
A self-proclaimed Council of Ten applied for registration as an electoral district in 1869, but disbanded again due to a lack of public support in the valuation of urban properties before it could do much more than build a stone protective wall, which can still be seen in the center of the town. At the end of 1872 a separate constituency was finally established and in 1878 an agreement was reached with the state government on the construction of a first section of today's main road to Moe . From the end of 1879 Walhalla had a daily carriage connection to the railway line in Moe in the south and in Traralgon in the east, so that the connections to the outside world were significantly improved.
The Long Tunnel Company introduced electricity to mining in 1884 and the telephone in 1891. Walhalla was the first city in the world to have two electric street lamps in 1884, but this installation was never expanded. But the church grew; Houses and gardens were built along the slopes of the valley; after all, the city had more than 2,000 inhabitants and more lived in the surrounding suburbs of Maiden Town , Mormon Town and Happy-Go-Lucky . There were cricket and football clubs, and a cricket field was built on a hill, the top of which had been leveled because otherwise no flat land was available.
Poverty Point
The Italian settlers played a major role in the development of Valhalla and worked e.g. B. as mine managers, forest workers, farmers, miners, miners, merchants and bricklayers. The first Italian settlers arrived in 1873 and Pietro Bombardieri opened a wooden station at the foot of Little Joe Hill . The Italians soon proved to be hard-working and hardworking compatriots, especially through their farming skills, and they were also well represented in the town's business life from 1882 when Anthony Simonin opened the Alpine Hotel . Their two settlements, one along the Long-Tunnel wooden railway to the north, the other at the southern end of the city, prospered around 1910.
The forest workers lived in wooden huts near their workplaces and it seems that they rarely came to town. At the turn of the century, these families settled in a place far from the city along the Thomson River in the northwest, which was then called '' Poverty Point '' (Eng. Place of Poverty).
End of mining and time as a ghost town (1910–1980)
After many years of lobbying, the Victoria government finally agreed to build a narrow-gauge railway line to Walhalla. The line, the last of four narrow-gauge railways with 762 mm gauge of the Victorian Railways , was completed in 1910. Small 1'C1 ' tank locomotives were moved between the four lines. The six locomotives that still exist today belong to the Puffing Billy Railway in the Dandenongs - five of which have been restored and are still in use today. The Walhalla line branched off from the Gippsland line in Moe, led through farmland to the small town of Erica , then further through the mountains and over a steel and concrete bridge over the Thomson River, then curvy over a stretch blasted out of the rock into the steep valley of Stringer's Creek up, on rubble foundations and over six wooden truss bridges for the last few hundred meters into the city.
It was hoped that the railroad would breathe new life into the city, but gold mining was already largely unprofitable and the last major mines closed in 1914. With the city's main industry gone, most people soon left Valhalla. In 1918 the Shire of Walhalla was merged with the adjacent Shire of Narracan .
One of the most important tasks of the railroad became the removal of old buildings from the city; the original station was moved to Hartwell , a suburb of Melbourne, in 1938 . In 1944 the section from Platina to Walhalla was closed. The small community of Cooper's Creek, where copper ore and limestone was mined, used Platina as a train station until 1952, when the section from Erica to Platina was also closed. Until 1954, wood and agricultural products were still transported between Erica and Moe, but this section of the route was also closed after a further decline in transports. In 1958 the entire railway line was dismantled.
Until tourism grew in the 1970s and 1980s, Walhalla became a ghost town for most of the 20th century . Several large public buildings, such as the Mechanics' Institute and the Star Hotel, were destroyed in fires in 1944 and 1951, and a number of buildings were demolished and not rebuilt. The school closed its doors in 1965 and further fires, floods and neglect slowly decayed the city.
Valhalla today
Since 1980, Walhalla has had a kind of renaissance in booming tourism with the restoration and reconstruction of a number of historical buildings, e.g. B. the Star Hotel, the Mechanics' Institute and the narrow-gauge railway between Walhalla and the Thomson River.
After the local government areas were amalgamated in 1994, the areas of Walhalla and Erica / Rawson are administered by Baw Baw Shire in Warragul , 80 km to the west . Despite the proximity and strong historical ties to the Latrobe Valley , the national liberal Kennett government integrated Walhalla into the LGA Baw Baw.
In 1991 a group of interested people got together to examine the reconstruction of the railway line to Walhalla as a tourist attraction, which they had previously tried unsuccessfully at least once. Work on the newly established Walhalla Goldfields Railway began in 1993 at the former Thomson station near the Thomson River, just in front of the bridge. After the bridge was rebuilt over the river, trains took tourists up the valley of Stringer's Creek to a makeshift train station on Happy Creek . The wooden bridges over Stringer's Creek just before Walhalla still had to be rebuilt.
The tourist trains ran on this route from 1996 to 2002, then the section was reopened to the old station in Walhalla. The current station building is an exact copy of the old original, but the courtyard is designed quite differently because part of the former station area was already occupied with a diversion of the main road to Walhalla.
In December 1998, Walhalla was the last mainland parish in Australia to be reconnected to the electricity grid. However, some communities in Victoria still do not have access to electricity. B. Licola nearby.
There have been some serious attempts to resume gold mining in the Walhalla area; Walhalla Resources and GoldStar Resources invested substantial sums in the 1980s and 2002, respectively. Both societies hoped they could use modern mining methods to get to gold-bearing rock, which had not been profitable to mine during the gold rush. In 2008 GoldStar Resources was well advanced in obtaining a mining license, but in 2009 it had to file for bankruptcy due to undercapitalization due to the global financial crisis . The company then re-emerged as Orion Gold NL with new management and has now taken a less aggressive course in attempting to restart gold mining in and around Walhalla. In 2020, Fosterville South Exploration acquired the mining rights in the Walhalla area.
Valhalla was hit by other major fires in 2005, 2006 and 2009, but the city did not suffer any significant damage.
Attractions
In addition to historical buildings, the city also has many mines and tunnels and the mountainous terrain is popular with hikers and mountaineers. Walhalla is the starting point of the 650 km long Australian Alps Walking Track , which leads to the vicinity of Canberra . Walhalla also offers many campsites, but camping is only allowed 50 meters away from Stringer's Creek, as its water is unsuitable for drinking.
The new station corresponds exactly to the old one from the outside and was built according to old plans of the Victorian Railways, but the interior is designed differently than before. It is also on the other side of the station area because the road to Walhalla was widened after the railway line was closed.
The Walhalla Fire Station was built over Stringer's Creek and now serves as a museum. In the early 1960s, the building was completely rebuilt after many years of deterioration.
The band rotunda was built in 1896 at the confluence of the left and right source rivers of Stringer's Creek at the instigation of the Mountaineer Brass Band , which organized an architectural competition for it. Two hotels were directly opposite, the Star Hotel on the north side of the river mouth and the Grand Junction Hotel on the south side. The old Star Hotel was destroyed in a bush fire in 1952 , but was rebuilt in 1999 with the reconstruction of the old facade.
The Windsor House was built between 1878 and 1888 by the German Johannes Gloz from around 90,000 hand-made bricks and is the only brick house in town. Gloz ran a vineyard on the slope above the house and pressed around 900 bottles of Riesling in 1880 . The building now serves as a bed and breakfast .
On a hill directly northeast of the confluence of the two arms of Stringer's Creek is the Walhalla cricket ground. It can be reached on foot in around 45 minutes from the valley floor.
Long Tunnel Extended Mine
The Long Tunnel Extended Mine (LTEM) was one of the richest gold mines in Valhalla. It is located in the richest gold vein Cohen's Reef . Work on the LTEM were in 1863 by the Hercules Gold Co. started. After eight years, the company was bankrupt because it had not found gold. In 1871 the mine was taken over by the Long Tunnel Extended Company . They dug the other way and found a more rewarding part of the vein. This mine soon became the second highest yielding in the area (after the Long Tunnel Mine ), yielding a total of 13,695 kg of gold by the time it closed in 1911. In all of Victoria, the Long Tunnel Extended Mine was the fifth largest colonial gold mine.
Today it is operated as a tourist attraction by the Walhalla Board of Management, Inc. on behalf of the people of Victoria. Tours are offered daily. The shafts and tunnels of the mine are 8.5 km long and lead from the machine chamber, which itself is 150 m below the surface, a depth of 923 m. During the tour, visitors are taken 300 m into the underground machine chamber, which was carved out of the solid rock over a century ago. Ancient mining methods are explained and you can see much of the famous Cohen's Reef.
Known residents
William 'Barlow' Carkeek , Australian cricketer, was born in Walhalla on October 17, 1878.
literature
- John Aldersea, Barbara Hood: Walhalla, Valley of Gold. A story of its people, places an its gold mines. Walhalla Publishing, Trafalgar VIC 2003, ISBN 0-9750887-0-X .
- Gwynydd F. James, Charles G. Lee: Walhalla Heyday. Graham Publications, Ringwood VIC 1975, ISBN 0-9596311-3-5 .
- John Kiely, Russell Savage: Steam on the Lens. Volume 2: Walhalla Railway Construction. The photographs of Wilf Henty. Russell Savage, Mildura VIC 2002, ISBN 0-9581266-0-7 .
- Raymond Paull: Old Walhalla. Portrait of a Gold Town. Melbourne University Press, Carlton VIC 1980, ISBN 0-5228421-2-7 .
Web links
- Valhalla . VisitVictoria.com
- Walhalla Heritage and Development League
- Walhalla Goldfields Railway
- Walhalla: fires, floods and tons of gold . cv.vic.gov.au
- Walhalla Board of Management, Inc.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Australian Bureau of Statistics: 2016 Census QuickStats. 2016, accessed on May 24, 2020 .
- ^ Post Office List. Premier Postal History.
- ↑ Aldersea, Hood: Walhalla, Valley of Gold. 2003, pp. 38, 44-45.
- ^ The First Time Electricity Came to Walhalla . Historic Walhalla
- ↑ Fosterville South acquires Walhalla Belt Project. Fosterville South Exploration. May 21, 2020, accessed May 24, 2020 .