Written by Lucie.
Early June is the time for a multi-way birthday weekend. The Adventure Gang rented a house in Hepburn Springs, ate lots of food, drank delicious drinks, played fun games and went for a beautiful walk as part of the 2019 challenge to traverse the Great Dividing Trail.
Hepburn Springs to Daylesford
14.7km, gentle and interesting
The intrepid hikers set off from our house for the weekend and walked north through Hepburn Springs. We got onto a forest track near the Golden Spring. Unfortunately, the spring was contaminated so we didn’t taste it but head out along Dry Diggings Track. It was a gorgeous day, perfect for hiking!
We walked along with Spring Creek on our left, admiring the green hills and the occasional fancy house. We hopped across the Hepburn-Newstead Road and found Dry Diggings continuing along, a few metres to the left. We said goodbye to Spring Creek and joined up with Sailors Creek on our right. We also discovered a beat-up car that was becoming one with a massive blackberry bush. We couldn’t work out how, or why, it had come to be there.
After a few more kilometres we were excited to reach the blowhole. But we were disappointed to find that the blowhole was supposedly closed due to an unsafe bridge. But we were happy to realise that the unsafe bridge didn’t actually lead to the blowhole! So we went down to the water, admired the waterfall and the rapids, ate lunch and explored the very peaceful little valley.
After lunch we continued on Dry Diggings track, looking out for wildlife and nice trees. We reached Tipperary Springs which we sampled and deemed ‘not too bad’, so we filled up some of our water bottles. We then kept on going and reached The Three Lost Children Walk, which has a really sad backstory* that you can read more about later if you want.
We reached our third set of springs for the day at Sutton Spring and nearby we went past a cute, wrought iron miniature cottage.
Our final set of springs for the day were the Central Springs, which we gave mixed reviews, ranging from ‘not terrible’ to ‘sulfur-tastic’ (i.e., not very nice). And then we were at Lake Daylesford and the end of our lovely wintery, but-not-at-all-wintery day hike.
*The sad backstory to The Three Lost Children Walk is from 1867 when three boys, aged 4, 5 and 6, set out from their homes in Daylesford to look for wild goats. Somehow, they got lost and despite speaking to two different people along the way the boys kept wandering further from home. It was 30 June, and despite a massive effort from the community to find the boys, it wasn’t until 13 September that their bodies were discovered in Wombat State Forest, 16km from where they had started.
The community held a large funeral and buried the boys in Daylesford Cemetery. A memorial was erected near to where the boys were found. The father of two of the boys – Mr Graham – established a scholarship, which still runs today at Daylesford State School, in the children’s honour.
