LONE GRAVES WORKING BEE Vic Four Wheel Drive Club - Trip Report Season 2 - Episode 8

Most of us met up at the Erica pub for dinner and then cruised into the Merringtons camping ground. Graeme and Sue were already there and had a fire ticking over. The rest of the crew turned up early on the Saturday morning raring to go. Ian Johnston from Going 4WD turned up nice and early and Noel Lees from the Parkers Corner DSE wasn’t far behind. Noel gave a short talk to us about what the plan of attack was to be for the day and did his first stint of many in front of Ian’s camera. The first stop was to be an area along the Williams Spur Tk where we gathered around a ton of quartz rock which we then took across to the Edwards Reef Cemetery just off Donnelly’s Creek Tk. Along the way we stopped to look at an extremely well made hut that Noel had recently discovered. Clearly the people that built this knew what they were doing and it was of a better and more sound construction than many of the legit hut in the high country. Unfortunately as this is an illegal hut it’s destined to have a run in with a front end dozer. Noel explained to us that he wanted a large rock at the head of the grave going down to smaller rocks at the foot end of the grave. As these graves were unmarked, and we didn’t want to dig any up to check where the head was, we assumed that they were buried with the head up hill. It didn’t take us too long and we had them all marked out. Noel gave a little talk about the area and they people that were buried there giving us some inspiring insight to the days gone by.

We gathered more rocks along Williamson Spur, this time half filling Ian’s ute and then headed towards Toombon. Coming out of the Junction river crossing Noel had all sorts of trouble heading up the greasy hill on the other side, probably the 1 ½ ton of rock in the trailer didn’t help. Michael managed to get pass and snatch him up the short section then we continued onto to Toombon. We had a short stop to look at what is left of the Toombon mullock heap which was partially washed away in the floods last year. Some of the guys climbed over the heap to the old mine site and the remnants of the boilers and stamper that are still there. It was only a short distance further on to the Toombon Cemetery and there we met the trustees Graeme & Linda Code. They were very enthusiastic about what we were doing and showed us were the graves laid. This was a lot harder than the previous site as there was a 2 meter embankment that we had to pass the rocks up and the whole cemetery was on a slope. Everyone really pulled together and got the job done. Noel was extremely thankful to us for the work we carried out, stating that it has been the most worthwhile project he has been involved in during his 30 years as a ranger. Thank you to all of those that helped out with this, you have done your club proud. John Partridge

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