The Long and Winding Ride: Episode 11 – Tarrawingee to Eldorado: In Search of El Dorado

The Long and Winding Ride

 

 

Episode 11 Tarrawingee to Eldorado: In Search of El Dorado

 

Stage 11 Tarrawingee to Eldorado 

 

Not a mythical city of gold in South America, Australia’s ‘Eldorado’, or ‘El Dorado’, can be found just up the road from Wangaratta at the bottom end of the Woolshed Valley. In episode 11 we will pedal on from Tarrawingee to Eldorado where we will fossick for gold, taste a superb Durif (a wine for which NE Victoria is world renowned) and have a beer at the ‘smallest pub in Victoria’. We might also ‘cross paths’ with one or two bushrangers. Football has not been played here in my lifetime, but when it was, the ‘Pioneers’ put up a pretty good showing in the Ovens and King FA, as we will learn. It is not an arduous ride – we will be there in under an hour.

 

Eldorado

The gold mining town of Eldorado was not named after the gold discovered in the Woolshed Valley, but in fact it was adopted from the name of a property near Chiltern, renamed as ‘El Dorado’ in 1841. How was that? The property owner, a former Navy captain, had found his ‘pot of gold’ and unbeknown to him, a wealth of gold and tin lay just beyond the boundaries of his land. The miners who were soon to arrive understandably chose the same name. A coincidence indeed.

 

Gold was first found at Eldorado in 1845 but mining did not get underway in earnest until the 1850s. Alluvial gold attracted prospectors to the district but most gold at Eldorado was won from open cut methods. When that became unprofitable dredging took over. In 1936 a huge dredge (the Cock’s Eldorado Dredge) was constructed and at the time was the largest machine of its type in the Southern Hemisphere. It is reported that the dredge took the third-most amount of power from the State Electrical Grid after Melbourne and Geelong. In its 18 years of operation, the dredge produced 70,664 ounces of gold and 1,383 tons of tin concentrate.The dredge ceased operation in 1954 and was left to rust in a pool along Reedy Creek, but remnants can be viewed at the site where it was abandoned 70 years ago.

 

Visitors are drawn to the gold mining heritage of Eldorado and the chance to have a go at gold panning or to fossick for gemstones along the course of Reedy Creek between Woolshed Falls and Eldorado. With a Miner’s Right and a pan in hand, the simple pleasure of gold panning appeals to many age groups. Gemstone fossickers can be rewarded with finds including amethyst, sapphire, diamonds, rubies and topaz.

 

Reedy Creek, a tributary of the Ovens River, was the richest creek in the history of Australian gold mining of the 1850’s era. By 1857 around 8000 people lived and worked around Eldorado and the Woolshed Valley. Among the fortune seekers and the existing residents there were people with goodwill, but others with bad intentions. The rugged, rocky hills and caves of the Woolshed Valley provided a perfect location for bushrangers to hideout and keep watch. Two members of the Kelly gang, Joe Byrne and Aaron Sherritt, grew up in the Woolshed Valley at Sebastopol and had prior criminal records for assault and stealing livestock. The pair were supported in their surreptitious movements in and out of the valley by sympathisers, but there were others who were prepared to alert police to their activities. 

 

By 1880 the Kelly’s grew suspicious of Aaron Sherritt, believing him to be a police informant, and responded by ambushing Sherritt at his hut. There on the winter evening of 26th June Joe Byrne, accompanied by Dan Kelly, shot him dead. This event was a prelude to the Glenrowan siege and the end of the reign of the Kelly Gang. Within days they would either be dead themselves (Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart) or in police custody (Ned Kelly).

 

Lunch stop

After a cold beer at the local pub, proudly advertised as the ‘smallest pub in Victoria’, it is time to start thinking about lunch. In this part of North East Victoria the summers are long and hot, perfect conditions for an intense and ink-coloured red wine that will grip you like a vice. It is not, however, a summer drink. Wait for the colder months of July and August to pull a bottle from the cellar. The variety is from the Rhone region of France and is closely related to Shiraz. Durif was first planted in Australia in the Rutherglen region by pioneering Victorian viticulturalist Francois de Castella in 1908. Eldorado happens to have a modern example of the variety’s potential, full of power and finesse, and it is grown just up the road from our lunch stop.

 

Durif is maybe not a wine to serve at lunchtime, but then again it depends on what’s on the menu. How about a camp oven filled with beef, onions and a generous handful of black olives thrown in? We have the time and the wine.

 

After a cat nap in the early afternoon sunshine, let’s take an afternoon cycle up a gravel road in the Woolshed Valley to soak up the local history of the Kelly Gang. Starting at the Eldorado General Store, we soon pass the site of the Chinese vegetable gardens (1). After fording the creek at Kangaroo Crossing (2) on Napoleon Flat – one of the former townships in the valley – we proceed to Sebastapol Flat – another once-prosperous mining settlement (3). Perched high above the creek at Devil’s Elbow (4) are the lookouts and caves of the two outlaws. We continue to the site of Sherritt’s Hut (5) and beyond that to one of the meeting places of the gang at Sunbury Bridge (6). We are now within sight of Woolshed Falls.

 

Adapted from Google Earth maps

 

Australian Football came to Eldorado in the 1880s in the form of challenge matches between towns in the Ovens Valley and Beechworth areas. Often those challenge games were played mid-week. Tarrawingee was a regular opponent in those matches during the 1880s. At the time Eldorado was identified as the ‘Blue Ribbon Club’, a name derived from the Blue Ribbon Temperance Movement. The Ovens and Murray Advertiser (26 July 1884) reported on one of their matches in 1884:

 

A match was played on Saturday last on the cricket ground, El Dorado, between the El Dorado Blue Ribbon and the Tarrawingee footballers, which resulted in an easy victory for the latter, by 4 goals and 11 behinds to nil. The attendance of spectators on the ground numbered about 200, including a lot of visitors from Tarrawingee, and seemed to be much delighted with the day’s outing. J. Y. Cook captained the visitors, and A. States the Blue Ribbon Club. Messrs Hutton are deserving of special mention for the manner in which they distinguished themselves for the El Dorado Blue Ribbon Club. 

 

Eldorado was one of the six foundation clubs of the Ovens and Murray FA in 1893, finishing the season in last place without a win. The following year, Eldorado played just two matches before disbanding. 

 

Eldorado joined the Ovens and King FA in 1906, winning the 1907 premiership and a further five in the next 20 years of competition. The club was initially known as the ‘Pioneers’ and their outfit was Magpies-like vertical stripes. The Eldorado Football Club’s home ground was at Centennial Park. 

 

One of Eldorado’s famous footballers, Jim Milne, recorded the early history of the Ovens and King Association. He described the Saturday routine for teams travelling to games.

 

In 1906 I went to Myrtleford in a drag, leaving Eldorado at 10am. The drag pulled up at Keady’s Hotel at Everton at midday, where the horses were fed and watered. After an hour’s rest in which the travellers had their dinner and drinks, costing one shilling per head, the horses were reyoked and set off for Myrtleford, arriving at Gerrity’s Hotel, now the Buffalo View Hotel, where the horses were stabled. The players changed at the hotel and walked to the football oval. After the match you had a cold shower, if you were game enough, then had tea. Then, after a couple of hours in the town we climbed into the drag and set off on the thirty-odd mile trip back to Eldorado, arriving home in the early hours of Sunday morning.

 

Like the gold of the Woolshed Valley the footy club’s fortunes ran out. On the eve of the 1955 season, when the dredge ceased operation, the club also folded. Eldorado’s departure paved the way for Bright to enter the league. Today another brand of football is played at Centennial Park. The local ‘Wolfpack’ rugby league team compete in the Goulburn Murray Storm Premiership League with both a men’s team and a women’s tag team.

 

Next episode

In stage 12 we move on to the historic town of Chiltern.

 

 

More from Peter Clark can be read Here.

 

 

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