Researched by Margot Hitchcock, Historian for the Blackwood & District Historical Society May 2022.

From the Argus – Melbourne, Saturday 20 August 1927.

BLACKWOOD. – A FORGOTTEN MINING TOWN.  By G.B.

About nine miles in a southward direction from Trentham, hidden in a valley of the long mountain chains which form the Great Dividing Range, is the little township of Blackwood. Though a generation has arisen for which the name has no interest or associations it was once a place of no small importance.

Up to 1854 the district was scarcely known, and was rarely visited by either white man or Aborigine. The rough timbered ranges had no attraction for the settler, and they were too cold and inhospitable for the Aborigine.

There was, however, a stock route through the hills, and some time m 1854 a drover found gold near that portion of Blackwood afterwards appropriately known as Golden Point. The drover and another camped for a meal on the Lerderderg River, a stream for most of the year an deserving of the title of river. The river water is mineralised and therefore one of the drovers decided to look for pure water in a little gully close at hand. While filling his “billy” from a pool he found there a small nugget of gold. The two men re solved that as soon as they had delivered the stock under their control they would return and prospect the gully. A couple of days later at Ballan they assembled a supply of provisions and set out under cover of darkness. The unobtrusive manner of their departure was noticed. As the gold fever was then at its height the movements of anyone who might possibly have “found a colour” were quickly observed. When it was found next morning that they had gone away so secretly it was supposed that they had discovered gold. A few decided to try to ascertain their destination. They picked up the tracks of the cattlemen’s packhorse, and they were able to follow them for many miles. When only a mile from the gully where the drovers had found the nugget the pursuers lost the horse tracks. They agreed that they would prospect the spot where they were, and on sinking a small shaft at a place still known as Ballan Flat they found gold.

The two drovers also found gold and ere long there was a rush to the district where beside alluvial gold rich reefs were unearthed. A city arose almost magically. Rough tracks were made through the hills to enable provisions to be taken there to meet the wants of the increasing population which surged into every valley. In a little while rich discoveries of gold were made at Simmons’ s Reef within a mile or so of the spot where the drover found the first nugget, and also at Barry’s Reef, a couple of miles away, and it is said that at one time the population of the district exceeded 40,000 including 1500 Chinese. For some time 4,000 ozs of gold were sent to Melbourne even fortnight by police escort. The old road leading out of Blackwood has long been disused, but even now the first mile or so cut into the hillside is in a fair state. As it runs into the forest it fades into a track, and soon it becomes part of a maze of timber tracks. Other roads that once led to the town, roads that knew the lights of Cobb and Co, now “lead to nowhere,” and gradually disappear in scrub and bracken.

Greater than the change and decay of the roads is the change that has taken place in the old town. The stranger who sees the few remaining houses finds it hard to believe that here once flourished a town of probably 25,000 people (apart from the residents of what might be called the suburbs of Blackwood).  No doubt most of the homes of the pioneers were those of people who looked there for no abiding place, and their dwellings were of a primitive and temporary nature. Many large nuggets were discovered of which the old mining registers hold records, but the largest is said to have been carried away secretly. The story is told that it was discovered by two Americans who fearful to make their discovery known placed the nugget in a sack and carried it through the bush to a quiet road that led to Melbourne. The deep banks of the Lerderderg River and of the numerous little gullies running into it are all scarred and torn but on most of these young wildernesses partially hide man’s ravenges. Scrub and brambles grow over the mounds of tailings and tangles of bushes and blackberries hide the entrances to the tunnels burrowed into the hills. Here and there however the bush seems to be deaf to the silent appeal for a renewal of its old time beauty.  Simmons Reef about a mile from Blackwood, for a while a town of several thousand inhabitants, is deserted. Of its many homes only an old stone building remains. Some pine trees, an occasional mossy orchard tree, and a few mounds of what were once chimneys tell where homes were built. In the spring daffodils, notwithstanding their fight against the bracken bloom in thousands. Gradually the forest is stealing down the mountain side but its progress is checked by those who cut down the young peppermints to extract oil from them.

The growth of Blackwood in the 1850’s was remarkable but as the output of gold decreased the great prop of the town’s prosperity was withdrawn. Its decline, however came steadily, and for a while a couple of timber mills helped to support the district. For some reason these ceased operations, and year by year the population grew smaller and smaller. A little sluicing is still done in the river but the distillation of eucalyptus oil is a more important industry there today than gold mining. From the Bald Hills, a couple of miles from the township, magnificent views may be had of range and plain. Toward the south the You-Yangs rise up clearly and to the east the Warburton and Healesville ranges towering over the Dandenong’s may be seen in the dim blue distance. This extensive panorama and the beauty of the wooded hills and valleys, known but too few, are now the chief boast of Blackwood.