Historical Trek - Robe To Ballarat 2014

We were lead by councillor John Phillips from Arch of Victory to Ballarat City Town Hall. Welcomed by Ballarat Golden Dragon Boat Club members, both my wife & I are the members there. Then we were lead by ex Mayor Neil Steinman to the 1950s Ballarat Chinese icon Billy Butterfly Lane, the old Chinese camp site Llanberris Reserve, then walked up to Tong Way Place, then went down to the last Chinese Joss House site at Main road. After that, we walked past Poverty Point and we finally reached Sovereign Hill. We were specially welcomed by Sovereign Hill Museum president Terry Lloyd & Samantha & Chinese Tour guide team. Sovereign Hill Museum has put in great efforts to save and preserve Chinese history and artifacts in Ballarat, without them we won't be able to see the Joss house and many other items after the demolishing of the last Joss house. We will write our thanks list tomorrow after first sleep in my own bed but it won't be our last journey yet, I will keep writing all the stories we have heard of, many sites we are going to visit soon or later, many leads we need to follow up.... As said from the beginning, this is just a start, there will be lot more to come. Thanks to you all.

We are getting very close now. This is Ballarat newest suburb Lucas. Neil Steinman joined with us walking backward.

When we were walking from Burrumbeet to Ballarat (along Rememberance Drive), we found this Chinese name showing on a plaque.

We are the official public users of the new freeway . Much safer to walk on this road.....no cars.

People from Beaufort walkedwith us on the way out as we left for Burrumbeet. Thank you Beaufort.

We have visited The Imperial Egg Gallery in Beaufort. Margaret, the owner of this collection, showed us more 600 different egg shells in her collection which is the number 3 or equal second in the world. Margaret also explained the background of tyhe eggs. I did not expect to find that an egg collection can be so huge and of such variety. In a  town like Beaufort too!! . All those emu egg collection were done by hand. Artists use knife or other sharp objects scrap away different layer of emu egg shell until it showed the color you wanted or liked. No painting & no artificial colors were allowed to be used.

Helen Sartan  from the Beaufort Historic Society explains the old news paper and Court House to us and other visitors. Lucy Shen & her family joined us today at Beaufort.

Beaufort . Well,  well !!!  Amazing work done by Helen Sartan from Beaufort Historic Society, she even arranged to have 90 years old Dulcie walk with us, what an amazing walk so far!

Beaufort. The mayor of Pyrenees Shire and people of Beaufort walked with us into the town Centre, Beaufort business & historic society representatives welcomed us at the beautiful Band Rotunda.It will be a great day in Beaufort today.

Beaufort. Jennifer from Avoca joined & walked with us today. She has done a wonderful community job in Pyrenees ranges.

Buangor to Beaufort. Good morning to all. We are very fortunate to have met Sandy yesterday, she has arranged for us to use Buangor Community Sports Centre last night. We had family and friends Christmas party in there. Thanks Sandy and Buangor Cricket Club.

Buangor Cemetery.

Buangor COBB & Co Changing Station beautiful bluestone building. It was built in 1860  as coach & livery stable. The large stable with blue stone slab floor, timber stalls & upper loft, was for many many years a COBB & Co Changing Station.  Merry Christmas!

Ararat to Buangor. Here we go. We are approaching Buangor. Merry Christmas!

Travis and his wife joined us. We just couldn't believe how much support we are getting from Ballarat people. Merry Christmas!

Sandy from Santa joined us too.  Merry Christmas!

HO HO HO HO HO HO
Santa is busy today but sent his assistant. So happy to see our Society Cultural school English teacher Donna join us for the walk. Merry Christmas!

Brantley joined us. He is the original 2001 walker from Robe to Bendigo and he is also the person who inspired me to get this walk started. Thanks for all your help and support Brantley.  Merry Christmas!

Andy Long joined us.  Merry Christmas!

Beautiful Ararat.  Merry Christmas!

Ararat to Buangor.  Merry Christmas to you all. Andy joined walk with us from yesterday.

Ararat is the only city in Australia to be founded by Chinese immigrants. This is the Gum San Chinese Heritage Centre. It was built on the site of "Canton Lead". On a Sunday morning in May, 1857, 700 Chinese miners from Southern China, traveling overland from SA Robe to the Clunes, rested at the foothill of the Great Dividing Range replenishing their water supplies at a spring, they discovered the world's richest shallow alluvial Goldfield that stretched 5 km at length. In the first three months of mining, the Canton Lead yielded more then 3 tons of gold.

 2km to go. Ararat is in the Pyrenees Ranges near the Hopkins river, it was first settled around 1840,  and gold was discovered in 1854.

Beautiful gold and red colored of early morning Grampian.

High Earth People!!  Good morning to you all  !  This is Oscar & Charles from Chinese Australian Society Ballarat. We are not Martians.....

Photo of Louey Sing in his shop. Photo suplied by the Coleraine historical society. A local lady told me that when her husband was at about 7 or 8 years old, he used a magnifying glass from the outside of shop window aimed at the firecrackers old Louey had in the shop. The boy found old Louey was at the doorway carrying a meat cleaver and chasing after him as the shop had been filling with smoke from exploring firecrackers. Even today, the young boy then and old man now has still a great respect to the old Chinaman Louey Sing. He caught the boy, belted him up but didn't tell boy' parents, it was a man to man gentleman's deal, nothing else.

Day 6 morning at Mountham Hill between Casterton and Coleraine. So nice cool morning after 39 yesterday in Casterton, I had put a jumper on to keep me warm. Busy traffic on this road and so many people waving at us, they must be happy to see us still alive and on the road again. Did a tour by local historic society ladies showing us the dam that was built by Chinese in 1850s and is now shared by 5 properties who use it as a common water resource.

Kims - Chinese Ancestry (Story from Casterton Historical Society)
Gin Men Kim and many others worked on a boat for their passage and landed in Tasmania in the early 1880s. Fortunately, they were able to secure work in the tin mines.b Most were penniless with neither shelter nor food, but somehow they survived.  In 1884, Kim came to Melbourne and it was there he met and married his wife Ethel May. The next move was to Runnymede Station, where other Chinese ran a market garden.  One of his sons, Fee Kim at age of 20, opened a green grocer shop in Henry St, Casterton as photo shows.

Casterton is nationally recognized as the "Birthplace Of The Kelpie" and celebrates
its role each June long weekend through the Casterton Working Dog Auction & Kellie
Festival. Warrick Homestead, North of Casterton, is the birthplace of the amazingly intelligent Kellie breed of working Australian cattle and sheep dog. The original "kelpie" was born in 1871; her parents being a pair of black & tan Collies imported from Scotland by Warrock's owner George Robertson. Robertson had a policy of not selling female from stock but had give a pup to his nephew. Jack Gleeson. Jack initially refused to sell but was eventually persuaded to swap the pup for a horse which he fancied. Gleeson named the pup "Kelpie" meaning "...a malignant water sprite haunting the fords and streams in the shape of a horse".

Finally we reached the gateway ofthe  beautiful city of Casterton. We have been warmly welcomed by Mayor of Glenelg Shire, the birthplace of Victoria, and Casterton historic society members at "Ess Lagoon" a local picnic group and also the water birds home. Today's walk was like you walk in your oven with temperature settled on 38, after 12pm, our shoes start to get gravelly because the tarmac on road was melting. Our shoes were sticking to the tarmac, lucky we had more than 11 litres of water. Due to the heat, we have to change our initial plan, so we only walked 4 hours and we have booked an air conditioned room to cool down. To be honest, I could hear my skin sizzling when I jumped into the shower.

This is where we stayed on Wednesday night at a little town called Dergholm. Can anyone tell me how to say it?  Haha, it is called "der-gen". As per local historian Alistair Roper:  the selectors have been offered 320 acres then plus another 320 acres from Government in 1853. The first town fsurvey was carried out in 1875,  so not many people know about Chinese walking past there or near by in 1850s. A lady remembered a Ballarat Chinese named Ron Hon and his cousin used to come to Dergholm playing tennis and always stayed in local Tommy Turner's home about 50 years ago, and Hons were the owners of Red Lion Hotel on Main Road in Ballarat. What an interesting story!!! Will get back to there dig up a bit more information. Sorry to everyone we didn't have much mobile reception last few days. Thanks to those who took deep concerns, Oscar & myself are fine and fit, we do carried more blisters on foot, I had borrowed needle from local pub, only pub in the town, to drain the liquid out all of blisters on his foot and of cause my foot too. Learned this when I was in army, punch two holes on both end of blister, then place a hair, a clean long hair through and leave it there for overnight, pull hair out if no more liquid, your foot will be as good as gold.

We are in Panola now and had a Civic Reception official welcome by councilor Robert Thomas on behalf of the Wattle Range Council at Memorial Park. Oscar and I felt honored and pampered to receive such a great welcome from the people in Panola. We heard some nteresting stories about Chinese cut marks on the trees to tell their fellow Chinese travellers where to go, and we will checking those trees out on the way to Gergholm.

COBB & CO Ltd Booking Office.1857

Met people from Panola leaded by Councilor Robert Thomas and historian Evelynne Bowden at Chinamans Lane where used to be Chinese Market Gardens that initially supplied vegetables to Chinese walking past there. A local news paper The Border Watch has an article on Sat 8th Aug 1885 of Chinese gardener Tam Wan whose horse ran away with the cart.

Kangaroo Inn Ruin. Story about a Chinese man named "Charlie the Chinaman" who was killed in there after arguing with other Chinese in the group.

The deer farm. Just see how many deer's antlers in the farm, surly someone in somewhere can find use of them. Chinese use deer antlers for Chinese medicine. Oscar would like to have a set mounted in his bedroom.

This site is inside of local deer farm. For generations, local families called it the "Chinaman's Graveyard". And it is on the straight line from Robe to Panola only about 3km from another clay well dug up by Chinese in late 1850s. Now we fully understand why Chinese dig so many wells along the from Robe to Panola, when we run out water yesterday, it was very tough for us to keep going until we were rescued, almost, by water available in Kangaroo Inn school. Underground water table is very high, you could easily find fresh water by digging 3 to 6 feet.

Kangaroo Inn Area school kids made a special Chinese memorial corner. Such wonderful school and beautiful kids. Thanks to you all, and I will be back soon. Kangaroo Inn Area School gardens. Thanks Mike for your great work in keeping the school beautiful.

Getting hot and more flies welcome us on the way to Panola. Mike dropped us at Geoffrey's place where we did walk to find Chinaman's Graveyard. Had great dinner with Geoffrey and Josie after some maintenance work that we helped with. God knows how many Chinese walked past his property but numbers of Chinese coins found nearby tells big story.

We have met this lovely couple Geoffrey & Josie Varcoe from a deer farm very close to Kangaroo Inn this arvo. They have showed us this Chinese Well along the side of Clay Wells road, you can see from the name, there are many wells were dug by Chinese when did they walking past this area.

Beautiful morning after first night. 3 blisters plus 2 unhappy hips, one sore wrists by sharking hand with flies. We soldier on.

Here we go at the section of 18 ks mark.

Lucky day first day! Met Larraine Falkner, the owner of Karatta Winery, she knows lots histories about Chinese walk past properties nearby in 1850s. She even knows of a well dug by Chinese to drink fresh water when they stopped there. Check on their website and go there ask her more stories.

Read back label about Chinese walk. Only wine label in Australian mentioned about Chinese walk.

3 km out of Robe

Yes Oscar, you can go in there but drinking water only.

Oscar cleans up his socks. No flies zone. Ha ha !!