Yarra Track

The Yarra Track is the former name of the gold fields road from Healesville to the Woods Point and Jordan Goldfields, in Victoria, Australia. The Yarra Track originally began at New Chum, but subsequent route deviations and land surveys led to the establishment of new townships, including Healesville. The earlier settlements and original routes were eventually abandoned.

Gold at New Chum in the 1850s

Traces of gold were found in New Chum Creek in the 1850s. Prospectors camped briefly on the grassy flats near the creeks junction with the Watts River, before they hacked their way through dense undergrowth into the mountains.
New Chum grew to serve these prospectors and gold miners. In 1859 William Hall had set up as a blacksmith at New Chum. By 1860 stores were brought from Melbourne by bullock cart to New Chum, where the carts were unloaded and transferred to pack horses.
Often called a hamlet, New Chum consisted of "two stores, blacksmith’s shop and three packers huts" "built of the most part of slabs, and roofed with shingles and bark." At that time it was noted that "some little bustle is created by the pack horses that are gathered around the place, with their drivers, either on the point of starting or having just returned.'"
In April 1864, New Chum was described as "a miserable collection of slab and bark huts situated at the foot of a steep hill, on the banks of the creek bearing the same name."

The beginnings of the Yarra Track

In March 1862 J. Sullivan, deputised by the miners at the Jordon Diggings, approached the Victorian Government about the need for a road or track to the Jordan gold fields. The Victorian Government sent James Murphy, civil engineer and Government mining surveyor, with a party of men, to survey and mark a track. Murphy and Sullivan at first travelled together; however, after a difference of opinion on the best route to explore, they separated and marked different tracks.
Murphy explored a track from New Chum to near what would become the Marysville Woods Point Road. He surveyed a route along the Watts River to its upper reaches; from there he ascended the spurs and ridges of Mt Dismal and explored a route running eastwards, south of Mt Observation, to beyond Donavan's Creek. He did not complete the survey of that explored section before being called back to Melbourne. His plan of that route is dated 23 July 1862.
Mr. Reick and Mr. Stockman, who were in Murphy’s surveying party, "believing that the direct road had been struck", resolved to follow it up. They followed Murphy’s route from New Chum to the end of his line of exploration. Reick describes their efforts:
"... far from having "left Murphy's track," we were actually members of that surveyor's party, engaged in Melbourne, to which place we returned when that officer, for reasons unknown to us, was recalled, and the party broken up, but not until the general lie of the country had been reconnoitered, and some fifteen miles actually surveyed, opened, and blazed. My companion and I then volunteered to explore and mark the remainder of this line into Jericho, upon the Jordan; and upon this difficult service we started on the 5th July from the settled country at the Melbourne end, and arrived on the diggings, two miles above Jericho township, upon the claim of Lapraig and party, on the 30th July."
They both suffered great hardships, narrowly escaping death by starvation and exposure. With a swag on their backs and using tomahawks they had cut through to the Jordan diggings, where they remained for ten days to recover their strength.
Upon Reick and Stockman returning from the gold fields, a meeting was held at Eltham and a sum of money subscribed by residents of the district to cut a bridle path along the route.
Blazing their marks over some of the previously made government survey marks, they cut a track along the surveyed section of Murphy's route. After ascending the spur to Mt Dismal, they deviated from Murphy's explored route that they had followed earlier, and cut a track through the Dividing Ranges. First heading northwards and then easterly across Paradise Plains until they joined Guerin's Track, north of Mount Observation, which in turn joined the upper reaches of Sullivan's Track to the Jordan.
In late September 1862, Reick and Stockman had cut the track about 20 miles from New Chum into the Dividing Ranges and were camped at head of the Acheron River. They expected to cut a further 25-30 miles and have the track open in three weeks. Given the different blazed and cut tracks they placed notices along their route; Reick's to Melbourne via Eltham and "Notice: Any persons wishing to follow Reick's track to the Jordan, must keep the longest and freshest looking tracks where the tracks differ or branch off along the route".
By 25 October 1862, Reick and Stockman had cut the bridle track through to Jordan and called it the New Jordan Road; others called it Reick's Track. This early track from New Chum to the Jordan, and subsequent deviations and surveyed routes, ultimately became known as the Yarra Track.

Survey and construction of the Yarra Track begins

The Yarra Track had several different routes over its life. The tracks and roads from New Chum to the gold fields were some of the earliest.
New Chum was at the furthest point coaches could travel along the route from Melbourne. From there, Murphy’s Track, a packhorse track, climbed through the mountains to the diggings. Murphy’s Track was surveyed in mid 1862 over the spurs of Mount Monda on the northern side of the Watts River. The track was still in use in late 1863. However by October 1863 an alternative route on the southern side of the Watts River had also been blazed by Mr. Farrell, Assistant Road Engineer and was in use by foot traffic.
In December 1863 several government contracts were awarded and road construction commenced along this alternative route that had been blazed by Farrell. By early 1864 this route of the Yarra Track from New Chum to what would become Fernshaw had been cleared for about four miles. At 5 miles the track again returned to the Murphy’s Track. By February 1864, R. W. Larritt, Inspector General of Roads reported 8 miles had been marked and about 6 miles cleared.
This alternative route of Mr. Farrell, Assistant Road Engineer, was the earliest route of the Yarra Track constructed by the Victorian Government.

Early tracks bypass New Chum and shape the future location of Healesville

In late 1862 the shortest route to Woods Point and the Jordan Goldfield from Melbourne was via a good dray road to New Chum, beyond which the Yarra Track became a bridle track. Over time more prospectors and miners travelled along this route to Woods Point and the Jordan Gold Fields. Not all these miners travelled by horse or coach and large numbers travelled by foot. Tracks soon developed that bypassed New Chum and took a more direct route to join the Yarra Track further along the Watts River Valley.
George McDonald's July 1864 Survey Plan of Evelyn documents these early tracks. About four miles before New Chum, near the Hit and Miss Restaurant, the tracks headed either north via New Chum to Woods Point, or bypassed New Chum by crossing the Watts River and then continuing east along Cameron’s Track to the Glenwatts Store before rejoining the Yarra Track.
Further downstream, crossing the Yarra River at Castella’s Bridge, and Rourke’s Bridge other tracks headed initially northwards to join Cameron’s Track and then on to the Yarra Track.
These early tracks and bridges that bypassed New Chum provided the impetus for later government deviations of the Yarra Track and influenced the selection of the new township site that became Healesville.

Cameron's Glenwatts Store

The Glenwatts Store was one of the earliest stores established on the Yarra Track and played a significant role in shaping the route’s development and influenced the location of Healesville. By early 1864, both the store and Cameron’s Track that led to it were already established when surveyor George McDonald proposed an alternative government route to Woods Point and identified the site that would later become Healesville
Four months before McDonald’s July 1864 survey, the Inspector General of Roads, R. W. Larritt, had proposed a deviation to bypass New Chum. On 9 July 1864, Larritt wrote to the Surveyor General following up this suggestion, noting that the proposed deviation would rejoin the Yarra Track at “the present cleared road at Cameron’s Store.”
The Glenwatts Store was also known as Cameron's Store and Cameron’s depot for goods and pack horses. The store was used as a landmark at this time, further demonstrated by an application approved on 27 July 1864 for a rural store allotment “six miles beyond Cameron’s depot for goods and pack horses,” and by references to the store in the Plan of Allotments at the Hit or Miss Restaurant.
The Glenwatts Store and Cameron’s Track were likely established between October 1862, when the Yarra Track was first opened by Reick and Stockman, and October 1863, when an alternative route surveyed by Mr Farrell, Assistant Road Engineer, passed the Glenwatts Store before continuing along the Watts River Valley. In any case, the store certainly existed by July 1864, as confirmed various survey plans, correspondence, and related documents.
The land on which the store stood was purchased by Ewen Cameron on the 23rd August 1864, formalising his ownership of the existing establishment. The two acre allotment, formerly occupied by the Glenwatts Store and owned by Cameron, was located on the northwest corner of Mc Gregor Avenue East and Maroondah Parade, Healesville.
By 1868, as traffic to the goldfields declined and the surrounding forest was gradually cleared for farming, Cameron was recorded locally as a farmer rather than as a storekeeper or hotel keeper.
The store is likely depicted in a watercolour by John Mather . The work suggests that the site continued to operate as a stopping place for coach traffic into the late 1870s. By 1878, the building was among the oldest surviving structures associated with the early development of the Yarra Track.
Cameron died on 23 March 1876 at Glen Watts, aged 63. At the time of his death he owned the Glenwatts Store and other landholdings, ownership which of passed to his wife Mary.