Last weekend on our way back from the Yarra Reservoir, we stopped off to have a short walk. Just a short way from the road is a tight bend in the river that swings around a spur of rock.
At least the river used to go around. In the 1860s a group of miners got together and blasted this tunnel through what was known as “The Little Peninsula” to divert the river. This is the outfall.
As you can see with the river low (partly due to the drought and largely because of the reservoir upstream) it easily fits through the tunnel. Even before the building of the dam upstream I suspect the river would have easily rushed through here.From the 1850s to the 1860’s there were a series of gold rushes in the then fledgling Colony of Victoria. These had a profound impact on Australia and Victoria. The Australian population tripled in a decade while that of Victoria grew by seven fold.
Badly managed growth, revolutionary ideas brought by those fleeing the 1848 European revolts and a colonial government bent on extracting as much as it could lead to discontent. From this discontent stemmed the most significant armed uprising in Australian History: The 1854 Eureka Rebellion.
At a meeting on Bakery Hill at Ballarat the miners raised the Southern Cross Flag and an oath of allegiance was sworn: "We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties."
The miners then built the Eureka Stockade to defend the road from Melbourne.The rebellion was quickly crushed by the Police and the Army, an action that caused 42 casualties. The public outcry at the inept handling of the affair led to the adoption of virtually all of the miner’s demands over the next few months.
Interestingly, the Southern Cross flag that flew over the stockade is taken as a symbol of liberty by most sectors of the Australian community today.
While the Southern Cross still features on Australia’s flag.
Anyway I am straying from my point, which was the “Little Peninsula Tunnel”. During the gold rushes a number of discoveries were made in the Yarra Valley near Warburton and Hoddles Creek. Much of the gold found in the area was alluvial, so here the miners hit on diverting the Yarra from this bend so they could explore its bed for gold.How much gold they found here is unknown.
This piccie shows the upstream inlet crossed by a bridge that leads to a nearby picnic area. The tunnel is about 30 metres long and from here with the river so low you can see through to the other end.
So there it is, the light at the other end of the tunnel!
