A Walk to Wood’s Point
Published in The Age, Saturday 23rd November 1872, page 6
Our first day from Melbourne took us up the Heidelberg-road on to Eltham and the Yarra Flats. There is a nice hotel where the wearied can find a rest. A good supper is also to be had, which is requisite after the day’s fatigue. The country looks fine hereabouts, and it is something cooler than in Melbourne. Our next point for halting was Healesville, and the next to that Fernshaw. You have heard of Fernshaw, and will hear more of it. It is the most correctly named of places, excepting Sandridge, in Victoria. It is called after the many ferns which are amongst its numerous beauties.
It is cooler here than at Yarra Flats, and quite another climate to that of the shores of Hobson’s Bay. Here the Watts River, which joins to the Yarra, has a lovely valley course, lined with all sorts of pretty ferns. They are not too thickly clustered to prevent one wandering easily amongst them. It is to such a place as this that Keats wanted to go with his celebrated nightingale; a cool retreat where one may not find what he tells us the bird amongst the leaves has never known—“the weariness, the fever, and the fret of sitting here to hear each other groan.” The Watts River itself is a very fine stream of rapidly-flowing crystally-clear shallow water, that should be brought to Melbourne and sold by the glass in place of the yellow Yan Yean. In England, you may have seen a trout stream to match it. To those who have time an exploration of the Watts River would, no doubt, repay the explorer.
We left it with regret, and got on to our seventeen miles’ walk over the much-spoken of Black Spur, through places called Fisher’s Creek and Granton, and so on to Marysville. On this day’s walk we crossed the Acheron, another river, and two or three streams not yet dignified as rivers, but having, like to the Watts and the Acheron, beautifully cool, clear, delicious water, of which we drank in pints and pannikins. That day’s walk was a very pleasant one, with the exception of the toilsome bit of road over the Spur, which is of a very satisfying kind. A little of it is enough. There is compensation, however, for the toil in the many fine views to be obtained on the Spur itself and in the fern-tree gullies around, and the immensely wonderful trees—wonderful in their immensity—are things to be seen to be believed. We never saw trees until we got on to the Black Spur. Anything else that we had seen in the timber line were but as gooseberry bushes to the trees of that mountain range.
At Marysville we found a mountain township, consisting of two licensed and one temperance hotel, a blacksmith’s shop, and six horses. What business keeps them going is more than mortal can conceive. We put the question to each other, and are considering it yet. What song it was that the syrens sang, and how Ulysses disguised himself when he hid amongst the women and was not found out, are questions easier of solution.
The next day, after a night at the temperance hotel, we set out for Mount Bismark, which had been before us for some time, and looked most majestically contemptuous on us. We are told at Marysville that this mount is never done by visitors, but it was certainly in our eyes the great lion of the trip, as Mount Wellington is the lion of Hobart Town. The ascent of Bismark is as toilsome as that of Wellington, though the mountain is not so high. We found it as difficult as the Frenchmen did to get over Bismark, and at one time quite lost our way. After wandering vainly for some time, and cooeying ourselves hoarse, we heard the blessed barking of a dog. “ ’Tis sweet to hear the watchdog’s honest bark bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home,” says Byron, and so it is, but far sweeter, when a lost man hears it on a lone mountain. That angel’s voice of a bark heard in the awful stillness of the wild mountain side enabled us to find a splitter’s hut, owned by a German recluse named Klein.
This hermit is verily the old man of the mountain—or will shortly be so when he gets older. He has dwelt here for a long time—the oldest and the only inhabitant of Mount Bismark. It is to be supposed that he has christened it in honor of his great countryman. He combines the tastes and habits of the hermit with the occupations of splitter and paling dealer. He is a fine-looking and well-mannered man; and we wondered much within ourselves what had driven him to such a fearfully solitary life, and what charm he found in it to compensate for all the losses of civilisation’s resources. K., who is a philosopher, said that a woman was generally at the bottom of all man’s troubles, but we fancied that any amount of crossing in love would not drive us from life. To fly from such trouble is folly; we would stop and face it out.
Our German friend—a real friend he was too—took us about his grounds—the mountain sides—and pointed out all the fine views, many of which are as fine as anything to be seen from Mount Wellington. From several points one seems to have the whole colony in full view below. Our hermit guide told us that with a good glass a view right up to the valley of the Murray could be obtained. Our trip up Mount Bismark repaid all our trouble, and it has our good recommendations to others. Self and E. resolved to start next day for Wood’s Point, but K. preferred remaining at Marysville to await our return. He is not a greedy man, and thought that he had enough for his money. We could see the rest, and he would wait and take it out in narrative on our return.
For ten or twelve miles our road lay round the ranges, and was a good road with fine views, and such Goliah timber! One of the trees that we saw here, if dropped lengthwise into Little Collins-street, would fill up that chink from William-street to Elizabeth-street in length, and over the first-floor windows in bulk. Such trees! 400 feet in height, and 20 feet and more in diameter of trunk. These magnificent trees were greatly in the way of our fine views sometimes. There are possibly arboriculturists who can tell how many centuries these giants of the forest have been growing, and how long yet they will grow. We cut our initials deeply into one of the largest, as we might have chiselled on the side of a pyramid. The bark will grow over the letters, and enfold them to future ages.
The next part of our journey lay over the worst road that we had ever trodden. It lies on the summit of the ranges, and is all along a quagmire, in which drays bog, and sink, and stick, and sometimes disappear. The punishment of being “put on the road,” had never seemed to as such a fearful thing as it did when we contemplated being put on such a road as this. About a month’s toiling up and down it would be equal to three years’ stonebreaking in comfortable Pentridge.
We got over it at last, as we do everything else, and found a roadside house by seven p.m., in which we stopped, and out of which it would have been troublesome to get us. We had been walking twelve hours, and felt equal to stopping anywhere for food, rest, and shelter. We have now been walking five days, and are still a day’s journey, perhaps two, from Wood’s Point. It is certainly a great change from Melbourne city life. It is ever so much cooler too—quite as much cooler as Tasmania, if not more so. It is refreshing to see human beings about, never mind how they are dressed. Our own dress don’t look much just now, nor do our boots. We should be shunned in Collins-street altogether. Our faces are brown and so are our hands, and our voices are hoarse. We are doing ourselves good however by a change of air, and wondering how few people know what fine things are to be seen within a few hours’ ride of Melbourne.
