The Loddon Company Race, Irishtown walk, Sunday June 21

image by Chris Green

It’d been pretty wet leading up to Sunday for the scheduled FOBIF walk led by Steve Charman and, in retrospect, the conditions undoubtedly made the 5km walk a little
more challenging than intended. Around 10am, a party of about 12 walkers set out from an old road reservation near the corner of the Vaughan-Chewton Road and the Drummond-Vaughan Rd to do a circuit, first following the Loddon Company Race upstream to a point near Devil Track and then crossing over to the Fryers Race to follow it downstream back to the carpark.

The slippery nature of the moss covered banks of both races made it necessary for the walkers to gingerly test each step and some of the party decided half way through the walk to call it a day and return along Irishtown Track to their cars. The remainder, with some trepidation, decided to plough on, picking their way back along the Fryers-Vaughan Race perched high on a steep hillside. Golf spikes would have come in handy!

A major highlight was a visit to the remarkable Devil’s Gully Tunnel through which water from the Coliban system and the Loddon River once flowed in opposite directions, Coliban water heading south to Vaughan and Loddon River water flowing north to the Red Hill area. At the same time! The achievement of the workers who designed and cut these long water races was much in evidence.

There was a range of beautiful fungi fruiting bodies on display. Joy Walker, co-author of Fungi of the Bendigo Region, was not on the walk this month but kindly identified the fungi from these images. 

Huge thanks to Steve Charman for not only leading the walk, but for providing the text for this report as well.