Today we are heading for Lakes Entrance which is about four hours away but on the way we are going to call into Walhalla. We seem to have been really lucky as last night we watched the news where Melbourne seems to be being hit by a cyclone and the news was full of reports of flooding but the rain seems to have gone through and we loaded up the car in the dry and didn’t see anything other than a few spots of rain as we were driving off the island. We decided we would take the inland route as a lot of the coast roads don’t actually seem to have a view of the sea anyway so we drove toward the mountains where we did see a little bit of rain but not much. We tried to drive to a view point on the reservoir on the way but after a few kilometres along a dirt track we decided to turn round and continue our drive. The town of Walhalla was built on the back of Gold which is normally the case for any towns that are slightly inland. After the initial Victoria Goldrush by 1859 they started looking for new sites and on the 26th December 1862 Gold was found in what was then known as Stringers Creek. The settlement was re-christened Walhalla quite early on after an early mine which took its name from Norse Mythology as the Valley of the Gods. At its peak Walhalla was home to over 3,500 residents with seven churches, several hotels, a school with more than 500 students, a hospital, numerous sporting clubs and over fifty shops. However today it seemed to be closed, basically the post office was open and not a lot else, the rest open on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday but his wasn’t a problem as all we wanted to do was walk round the town anyway. Over 70 tonnes of gold was removed from the valley and in 1910 the railway arrived but as the gold yields were falling it was a little late as all the major mines had closed by 1914! Apparently today Walhalla has a population of fewer than 20 permanent residents which to be honest when we were walking round felt a little high! We had our lunch at the picnic tables and after the last few days it was really nice to be able to sit outside having our lunch, then we jumped back in the car and headed off to Lakes Entrance. We are in a really nice apartment which if you are standing in the right place has a view of the river and possibly a bit of the sea, we unpacked the car, set up the Christmas decorations, put the washing on then relaxed before having something to eat and hoping for decent weather tomorrow.
