We recently took a small camping tour of the eastern part of Victoria and our first stopover was in Omeo to visit the old gold mine workings there. What a fascinating place to take a walk around!
Loving the bark on this gum tree
There is a circular walk around the workings which are dominated by the high cliffs created where miners have pressure washed away the topsoil to extract the gold by running the slurry produced into sluice boxes. Apparently Omeo was one of the richest alluvial goldfield in all of Victoria with the oriental claim producing around 60,000 ounces of gold worth $100,000,000 AUD at today's prices.
The cliffs viewed from half way around the circular walk
After all the easily obtainable gold was exhausted from the Livingstone creek the miners began to blast away the topsoil which turned out to be up to 30m thick! To achieve this a series of canals were built to harvest water from all the surrounding areas. In all about 20km of canals were built with construction taking almost a year. The mining operation produced considerable pollution as you can imagine washing away so much soil into the downstream creeks. Eventually it was the pollution which caused the end of the gold mining operations at Omeo with laws being passed preventing the hydraulicking for gold. There were some later attempts to start gold mining again with a more environmentally friendly approach but these lasted just one year due to poor yields obtained for the expended effort at only about 10% of the earlier yields.
While staying at Omeo we camped at Jokers flat campsite next to Big River. Even over the Christmas holiday there was plenty of space. Fire-pits, long drop toilets, and picnic tables are provided. The river I understand provides some good trout fishing although I didn't cast a line in myself on this occasion
The campsite at Jokers Flat alongside Big River which is around 10km to the north of Omeo
Thanks for reading. If you are interested in the gold history of Victoria I'd be pleased to hear about your own tales!