There’s a large dam in our area (The North Pine Dam) which was built in the 1970’s. It has created a lake (Lake Samsonvale) which has flooded a lot of old historical places, including roads, bridges, homesteads, farms and townships.
About a year ago Steve and I visited this area on foot.
My ride today covered a lot of the shoreline of the lake, and I was pleasantly surprised by some of the remnants I found.
One interesting road is Samsonvale Road. As you can see from this map large parts of it are now under several metres of water, but portions of it rise out of the water like a sleepy sea-serpent.
Those above-water portions are hidden away in bushland – unused and overgrown.
These photos are of a road cut-away – where engineers have dug away a hill to smooth the course of the road to reduce its gradient. The only problem these days, apart from the overgrowth, is that if you walk along the road for a hundred metres in either direction you end up in the water.
In a way it’s eerie. Old fence posts and pieces of barbed wire mark old boundaries that are meaningless today.
Strange looking exotic / domestic plants such as umbrella trees spring up in unexpected places – a quaint reminder that this once was a garden, not overgrown bushland.
Who knows? Perhaps one day a few hundred years in the future someone will cut through the overgrowth on our street and find old fence posts, gardens and tracks that once meant something to us.
Total climbing: 852 m
Average temperature: NAN
Total time: 03:59:40
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Hi Neil, do you ever see the old antique bottles on your travels of the old dayboro railway line. as a dayboro person and antique bottle collector would love to know your stories and any leads, cheers Dean
G’day Dean
Thanks for reading my blog.
No, sorry, I haven’t ever seen any old bottles on the old Dayboro railway line.
Here’s a map I did up of the line: http://blog.neilennis.com/index.php/ghost-train/
If you’re looking for artefacts, it might be an idea to have a look at some of the places on the map between Armstrong Creek and Samsonvale. The land there is relatively undisturbed because of being fanced off for the dam (where it hasn’t flooded). It’s quite easy to walk along parts of the old line north and south of where it crosses Golds Scrub Lane, and you can still see old sleepers in places. Maybe there are some old bottles in there?
Neil