Tour the Goldfield
The Buried Rivers of Gold self-guided tour is ~31km and will take about 90 minutes to complete by car. The tour starts at the New Australasian No.2 mine site. There are five site-stops on the tour that are on the roadside, so please be careful, park well off the road and watch out for traffic.
Please note that many of the shafts are unfenced and are on private property. Only the New Australasian No. 2 mine site has public access.
The Buried Rivers of Gold
The brochure is available at the Creswick Visitor Information Centre. Phone (03) 5345 1114
When on the self-guided tour, please acknowledge and respect that you are travelling through the traditional lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung.
STOP 1 - Tour start New Australasian No.2 Mine
The Fatal Drive
Trapped
Your tour begins here at the site of Australia’s worst gold mining disaster. The 22 men who lost their lives in the flooding of this mine serves as a solemn reminder of the dangers deep lead miners faced everyday. There are several memorials and interpretive signs at this site.
STOP 2 Madame Berry West Mine
The Dark Labyrinth
The work of a deep lead miner
The stop at Madame Berry West No.1 will give you an insight into the labour intensive underground working conditions of a deep lead mine. Carbonic gas, heat and the tense fear of water bursting through also combined to make these mines extremely dangerous to work in.
STOP 3 Berry No. 1 Mine
Industrial Strength
Pumping power of Berry No.1
Confronted with large flows of water, mining companies erected some of the most extensive pumping systems in Australia. Berry No. 1's Cornish Beam Pump was manufactured in Ballarat and was capable of lifting 270,000 litres of water per hour from the 200m deep shaft. Here you will learn about and see the spectacular remains of the three-storey brick and bluestone pumphouse.
STOP 4 Madame Berry No.1 Mine
The Jewellery Boxes
The dazzling Madame Berry
The Madame Berry mines, positioned on the famous Berry Lead, are unquestionably some
of the most successful mines in the history
of Victoria. The company’s surface operations were also some of the largest and most technologically advanced industrial sites
in Australia in the 1880s.
STOP 5 Allendale and the Lost Towns
The Transient Towns
Built for the pursuit of gold
From 1872 until the closure of the South Berry mine in 1914, 10 townships were created on the goldfield and of these, Allendale became one of the most important townships in Australia. As the mines closed, the smaller towns disappeared, only Allendale, with it’s railway station, remained
a survivor with a rich golden past.
