I had a mate come to see me yesterday. He is a photographer and is here in the Central Highlands of Victoria taking pictures and researching the Fryers Town area. In the 1850s Fryers Town was another gold mining shanty town. There were no police nor law and order. It was there before the Cobb and Co coach route started. I live on the old Cobb and Co route in Taradale. It is now called Davy Street here. My friend Ken is tracking the old road that went through Taradale and up over Fryers ridge to the west and down again into Fryers Town. From there the coach continued on to the gold mining town of Castlemaine. The old route is difficult to see, both because of age and because it was sluiced for alluvial gold, probably in the early 1900s. However, when the coach was running people built their shanties along the track and at this time of the year the daffodils are beginning to poke through and flower, marking the old road. I don't suppose it was a road, more like a rutted track. This has helped Ken plot the track of the old coach road to Castlemaine.

The area is littered with the remains of old towns. For example there is Irishtown that is not too far from me. The remains of Irishtown is in what is now called the Fryers Ranges State Forest. The area was was deforested in the gold rush days of the nineteenth century. The trees have grown back. They are mainly long leaved box, and stringy bark eucalyptus. The are not large trees as the country is poor and typically gold mining country. The average rainfall is about 650 millimetres a year although it has been a lot less in the last couple of years.