Creek | Kangaroo Creek

Click to enlarge – then click that to enlarge it again. It still isn’t particularly clear – it’s something I made a long time ago and I can’t get rid of the blue background or make the labels bigger.

Kangaroo Creek flows (when it’s flowing) from Bullarto South, near the top of the Great Dividing Range, north to the Loddon River. Springs keep some sections full even when much of it is dry.

Scale? The straight-line distance between Woolnoughs Crossing and Back Glenlyon Road is just under 1.5 km. My stretch of Kangaroo Creek is just upstream of (south of – below) Woolnoughs Crossing.

Downstream of Back Glenlyon Road the creek falls into the deep, steep valley of its own creation. Upstream from there it’s just a small waterway, becoming almost negligible as it approaches its source in a paddock near Bullarto South.

There’s no gold in my part of the creek but upstream, somewhere around the Lightwood Drive area, a mine shaft was sunk in the 19th century. A report said the first results were ‘promising’ but I can’t find any more information about it.

Old-timers talk about the fishing in my stretch of the creek but fish are rare or absent now. There are occasional sightings of platypus or rakali (native water rat).

There are about 25 Kangaroo Creeks in Victoria, including two in my area. Naming mine took some time, apparently.

This 1891 map from the Titles Office (I assume) shows that Kangaroo Creek was a bit of a mystery. It is named Loddon River on the map but that name has been crossed-out and Leitches Creek added. But Leitches Creek actually flows into Kangaroo Creek a few hundred metres upstream (south) from my place and Kangaroo Creek flows into the Loddon a few km downstream (north). All three are roughly the same size this close to their sources, especially when in flood or dry, so the dithering is understandable.

Presumably the person who thought it was Leitches Creek assumed that Kangaroo Creek ended where it met Leitches Creek. But presumably the person who thought it was the Loddon River considered that the entire length of Kangaroo Creek, from its source, was the Loddon River. In which case they would have had to name what we call the Loddon, from the confluence with what we call the Kangaroo all the way up to its source, something else.

(Come to think of it, what are the rules for deciding which waterway is extinguished when two meet?)

My property is at the centre of the map. It’s the eastern half of James Bradshaw’s land, which is 80 acres. I don’t know when it was subdivided but according to my title I’m only the second owner of this 40 acres. A James Bradshaw of Glenlyon (the closest town to my place) won a prize at the Daylesford Agricultural Show in 1876. By default.

The Argus (Melbourne) 16 March 1876, from the NLA’s Trove project.

googlemap1

Above – the same area on Google Earth. Unsealed roads show more clearly than sealed ones in this image. This means that Pine Court is easily visible, which it usually isn’t, and Scotts Lane seems to be the main road from the south/south-west, rather than Porcupine Ridge Road.

Below – the same area on a topo map (very slightly enlarged). There are far more buildings than are shown on this map. Pine Court is the dashed line. The right-angled turn at the end is barely noticeable in real life. This is an extract from Vicmap T7723-3-1-1 (2004), which is part of the 1:30,000 series available as PDF downloads for a small fee.