Buckleys Falls

from w
It has been a lovely sunny day, too good to stay inside, good for some garden tidy-up, but we decided to go shopping for garden stones, bags of stuff to stop weeds growing and Peceli, 'I know a place.' Hmmm. It was a paddock locked up. Anyway we drove down a road leading to the top of Buckleys Falls - Highton area, not the usual side of the river with the steps down and where I had previously made some paintings. The river is better looking since the drought and here are a few pictures. There are picnic spots and 'Friends of Buckleys' keep the vegetation growing nicely. The old Barwon Paper Mill was somewhere nearby but we couldn't see it. Buckley's Falls is located between Highton and Fyansford. A weir and water race was built above the falls in 1876 to provide power for the Fyansford Paper Mill. The falls were named by John Helder Wedge after escaped convict William Buckley who lived in the area with Aborigines for 32 years from 1803. They say that in the still water areas you may even spot a platypus but I've never heard of one being spotted! One of the photos we took is of steps that lead no-where, something that seems to be common in Fyansford - I've previously written about the wooden steps that lead up to an empty paddock, though we later were told that school children used this to get to their primary school a few years ago. In recent weeks we have set out to find undiscovered places in the Geelong region - well, new to us, and this was a lovely walk above the river.