Hidden History

After a whole day at the caravan park, we wanted to head out and explore in the morning again, before it got too hot. As I’ve said a number of times before, geocaching can often uncover hidden secrets that we would not normally find or know anything about. Well that is what happened again today…

Looking at the map, I found about 4 geocaches we could get – none of them required a big walk from the car which was good in this heat. However, at least 3 of the four uncovered a piece of history of the area.

We began at a location called Shelley. The forestry commission manage a lot of the land around this area and it is being utilised for growing pine for timber purposes.

A couple of km’s off the main highway at Shelley, and it is not signposted so you would never know it, is the remains of the old Shelley rail way station. No big deal, we knew there was a railway between Wodonga and Cudgewa. Much of it is now a rail trail further towards Wodonga. Here it is not part of the rail trail.

We literally drove in through the bush along a narrow track and found ourselves ‘shunting’ into the station on what would have been the tracks!

Shelley station has another claim to fame though, it was the highest station in Victoria, at 780 metres above sea level. Not that high really in world terms, but an achievement in these parts!

Again, not really signposted until we got closer was the next piece of history we discovered. It was further along the dirt road we’d taken to get to the station. About another 6km’s of well formed dirt track, through pine plantations and we came to the Avondale Gardens. The story goes that in the 1950s this was a cattle station and the owners planted a European garden. The property sold to the forestry people and the farm was converted to pine plantations. Someone in the forestry commission had the sense to keep these gardens. The homestead is gone, but there are these magnificent hidden gardens to explore! Explore we did!

I liked this golden deodar cedar tree, it had little baby cones like these…

As well as some big sappy ones like these…

After this detour we went back to the main highway and continued west to the small town of Koetong. We’d seen the cute pub driving past before, but never stopped. Like many of the pubs in the area, it is for sale.

Just out of town is the old trestle bridge, part of the same train line. This is signposted and not such a secret, but we wanted to see it up close. A 300 metre walk had us overlooking the dilapidated wooden construction.

There were some cute little wild orchids by the trail.

Another smaller bridge had also seen better days, this was a road across the railway line. 

On the way back to Colac Colac we went to Lawrence’s Lookout for a panoramic view of the surrounding hills.

Once back at the caravan we had lunch. You’ll never guess where we spent the afternoon?