A short walk from the Star Hotel beyond Windsor House you'll discover the quiet East Branch. The stone cottage in the photo is still in existence but it is in rather poor condition. Note the neat vegetable garden and the street light.
The climb out of Walhalla was a hard slog! The original coach road went via Happy Go Lucky and Bruntons Bridge to Toongabbie. Just out of Walhalla the horse teams faced a steep climb up Mt Little Joe. Horses were changed at Happy Go Lucky and allowed to rest.
The LTM battery house was built up the hillside opposite the Mechanics Institute. Only the stonework foundations are visable today. The two chimneys once stood on what is now Stringers Park. The Walhalla Post Office is on the far left of this photo and is once again the town's Post Office (May 2007) and museum and dates back to 1886.
It's easy to see why the band rotunda has pride of place at the Junction. The northern end of Walhalla was more residential. The Star Hotel is in the centre of the photo and the Wesleyan Church at the bottom right.
Looking towards the Oddfellows Hall, the Star Hotel is just obscured by the willow and the Grand Junction Hotel is on the right. All that remain of the Grand Junction today is a stone chimney. The stone wall on the right and the stone wall along the creek survive to today.
During the gold-era, Stringers Creek was home to an entire industry that processed the waste of the main mines that was washed downstream. This waterwheel was at "The Cascades" which can still be seen today from the Walhalla Goldfields Railway. If you look carefully, you'll also see here some remains of the dams that used to be spread along the creek to feed water to the waterwheels that turned the crushing plants.
Flat ground in Walhalla was at a premium, so the townsfolk got clever and sliced the top off the mountain to create a sports field. "Recreation Hill" as it became known was witness to several famous events and people. In April 1907, the MCC played Walhalla with Warwick Armstrong as Captain. He went on to become the Australian Cricket team Captain and beat England 5:0 in the Ashes in 1921
St John's Church is on the top left, the rotunda is on the bottom centre, and Corner Stores on the right on the bend in the Main Road with the Masonic Lodge on the far right. All these building have survived the gold-era.
The railway to Walhalla finally opened in 1910. It was however too late as the major mines had already begun to slow production and would shortly close. The station building in the photo was removed in the early 1930s and is now the Hartwell station on the Alamein Line of the Melbourne's suburban rail network. The current station in Walhalla is a replica of this building that was built using the original Victorian Railway's plan by Yallourn TAFE students.
