1927: "One Day Walks: Box Hill to Doncaster and Heidelberg.
Doncaster from the Electric Tram Dynamo Shed
Box Hill - Doncaster - Heidelberg
The roads are the great things; they never come to an end. - Lady Gregory
Sydney folk have a playful habit of referring to Melbourne’s cable trams as relics of the stone age, and of implying that their city holds the original patent for electric cars. Most of them are unaware that in this form of traction Brisbane led them by some years, and probably none of them suspects the fact 'that Melbourne was still earlier in the field than Brisbane. How many Victorians, even, recall the electric tram from Box Hill to Doncaster? “The dead go out of remembrance. Walking that quiet country road to-day, and reflecting that thirty years ago (was it as much as that? I have no means of telling) the population of these parts must have been sparse indeed, one marvels that it could have been selected for such an enterprise. But “the boom” made all things seem possible.
Box Hill.
Box Hill is still sufficiently a country town to hold a typical country market. There is no mistaking the appointed day: horses are “hung up” in long lines on the fences of the reserves, and one of the divisions of that broad thoroughfare, the White Horse Road, is full of farmers’ vehicles, which range these times from hay waggons to motors.
If you would have a pleasant road walk, turn north as you leave the Box Hill station, cross White Horse Road, with its market to the left and its soldiers’ memorial in the centre, and follow the plane-lined way called Station Street. It heads for Doncaster, once marked conspicuously by its tower, now merely the highest ridge of the orchard-covered slopes. This is the route of the ancient tram. No sign of it exists, unless certain weathered poles, which stand idle here and there, and certainly look old enough, are the standards that were used. The outlook north and west becomes good at once. Mount Macedon is a prominent object on the sky line, closing the view across long stretches of undulating country. Beyond the new State school, which is built on the left side of Station Street, the land falls gradually, to rise as gently again to the Mont Albert ridge, on which shows out conspicuously another fine State school. The town straggles with you for a while, but gradually it drops behind, and you find yourself among open fields and orchards.
"Hark, Hark, the Lark!"
Where the road is narrowed down by fences to cross the first branch of the Koonung Koonung Creek, there is a fine plantation of clean, healthy-looking silver wattles. It is evidently appreciated by the birds. Many, including magpies, were calling there when I passed recently. It was there, too, that I observed what I believe is an unusual thing—a skylark singing from the ground. In New Zealand I have seen these birds on a few occasions whistling as they sat on fences, but generally they have fulfilled the poet’s description: “Singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singeth.” The larks are numerous, and a protracted Autumn, with its sunny skies, provokes them to as much song as if the Spring were at hand.
The creek is not much more than a deep gutter here, but it gives you a rise to climb on the other side. Dropping down from that to the more important branch, you get the orchards ahead of you in mass, yielding often some charming effects. There are broad washes of green, representing grass, superimposed upon which are splashes of the crimson and gold of fruit-tree leaves. Ploughed fields are shown as chocolate smudges. The whole is divided up, and fi’amed as separate panels, by hedges of varied tones. Among the roadside growths a solitary Bursaria of good stature is noticeable. It evidently made a brave display of its v/hite bloom last season, for it now rattles a large number of the little seed-purses from which it derives its name. Immediately opposite is a golden wattle aching to break into blossom.
The Ridge.
An impression of the creek in passing is that it contains everything but water. Gum trees there are, and Bursaria and tea-tree and wattles, and even grass, but evidently the true business of a creek is attended to when there is rain, and at no other time. Long is the slope which follows. Here you get the orchards in detail, and may find that the leaves are falling fast, the more hardy specimens fluttering in the wind like the gay ribbons of a Highland regiment. Robins are flashing their scarlet breasts in staccato flights, and every hedge is musical with goldfinches. Half-way up the hill is a right-hand branch to be avoided. Your immediate objective is a two-story store on the corner of Doncaster’s main street, known earlier in its career as the Bulleen road. It comes in on the west from Kew, and passes on easterly, to reach Mitcham, Vermont and the Dandenongs after many twists and turns. A few hundred yards up is the hotel where the “Doncaster tower” stood for so many years. The elevation of the ridge is about 350 feet, so the extra height supplied by the tower commanded a wonderful outlook. Even, from the ground level the Bay is plainly visible, with the You Yangs indicating its limits on the one side, and Arthur’s Seat standing sentry on the other. Macedon, with its Hump, is much in evidence, and the turrets of the Kew Asylum mark the middle distance. Looking back over the short 22 miles you have come from Box Hill, every detail seems under review. Walking on north, as you should, good easterly and northerly views are had of bush country, dipping to the bed of the Yarra, and rising everywhere again to blue ranges. So practically the whole circle of the horizon is completed.
Into Heidelberg.
Doncaster lives on fruit. As you resume your walk you are sure to hear the asthmatic cough which all cool stores seem to suffer from. There may be still mushrooms on the road edges where the capeweed, making ready for its early spring change from green to gold, is battling with that other, equally hardy, alien, the onion grass. A local poet has written a sonnet in praise of the onion grass, but I fear her admiration of this weed of much seed and little succulence is not shared by the agriculturist. At half a mile the road splits. Take the left-hand track, labelled Manningham Road. It points straight at Macedon. The other branch, like all the cross ways you are to encounter, leads to Templestowe, and so to Warrandyte. The elevation is still high, and you are opening out much picturesque country to the south as your direction becomes more and more westerly. With the start of the down grade the orchards dwindle and cereal crops give vivid color to the paddocks. A very striking redgum, unusually tall for this kind of tree, has been left in one pad- dock as a hint of what this country looked like before the white man altered it to suit himself. The newly ploughed soil here is exactly the tone you see in the gills of a well- ripened mushroom—chocolate with a hint of pink.
At the next cross road you must turn to the right, and just as decidedly to the left, all in 100 yards. The drop is now more marked, and ahead are clearly the heights of Heidelberg. A line of timber, largely willows and wattles, marks the course of the Yarra. One kind of willow at present contrives to suggest a soft, but warm, pink; the other is an Irish mixture of yellow and green. The road angles to the right to join still another route to Templestowe. Turn to your left at the first road coming in, and in 200 yards you will find the bridge which gives crossing to the Heidelberg traffic. There is much promise of good wattle bloom about it. Keep on until you reach the old city road, still with a milestone showing Melbourne VIII. miles; go along it as far as the historic Old England Hotel, turn up to the left there, and in half a mile you reach Heidelberg railway station, surely one of the most beautifully placed for views in the whole of Australia. In all you have covered on foot no more than eight miles.
Source: Extract from Croll, Robert Henderson. 1928, The open road in Victoria : being the ways of many walkers / by Robert Henderson Croll Robertson & Mullens Melbourne https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/236241 Download from: SLV (Aug2021); Project Gutenberg Australia; Extracts published in 1987 06 DTHS Newsletter and 1996 12 DTHS Newsletter (c slight variations)
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