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Touted as a grand drive through the diggings of a bygone era, I found the gorge to be rather sad and forlorn,, emphasising the destruction of the natural environment to man's insatiable greed.
This hand picked and sawn race flows under Newtown Bridge. This bridge, on the eastern outskirts of Beechworth, started operation in 1875. Using no mortar whatsoever, it is held together with keystones.
Louis Chevalier set up a water-powered saw mill using water from this race in the middle of 1853. Later it was converted to grind flour, but ceased operation totally in the 1880s.
This entire gorge is very sad. All I can envisage is hordes of men, who failed at city jobs, desperately digging to try to make ends meet. Pounding the sides of this gorge into mountains of detritus and pock-marks.
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4 comments:
Hi Julie, I've been missing for a while, but am back now! I'm trying to catch up on some of my reading, and I got totally caught up on your posts since the middle of September. The history you have uncovered is amazing, as are the photos you have chose to tell the stories.
Thank you, Clytie. I will return the visit later today. This is a trip I did with friends around the state of Victoria. As you might know, some tourist spots are over-hyped ... I sometimes set the balance more to the middle.
I also find diggings difficult. It is hard for me to imagine the people there and don't know what lumps and bumps are natural and what's man made. Rarely anything to attract my camera eye.
I found something in a diggings just outside Bright to attract my camera-eye. But at the rate I am going retelling my road-trip, it will be lucky to see the light of day this side of Christmas.
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