FROZEN IN TIME: Darren Kamp (right) with a rookie prospector search for gold nuggets Pic. Guy Sandy Source: Supplied

DRIVING into the main street of Clunes, it’s easy to see why this old Victorian goldfields town has attracted filmmakers for decades.

With its parade of authentic 19th-century buildings, the producers of films such as Mad Max and Ned Kelly must have thought they had struck gold when they discovered the small town, which seems cocooned in a gold-rush time warp.

Clunes is graced with more than 50 historical buildings, relics of prosperous times when thousands of gold-hungry prospectors crowded the town, which is in a secluded vale 36km north of Ballarat.

The area that became known as Clunes hit the headlines in July 1851, when Irishman James Esmond discovered several ounces of gold.

Esmond’s precious find was Victoria’s first registered gold strike and triggered a rush that was to prove extraordinarily rich.

During the 1860s, Clunes boasted about 60 businesses, 23 hotels, dozens of sly-grog shanties, eight schools, imposing churches and public buildings, a gas works and seven underground mines.

Miners toiled in the huge Port Phillip and Colonial Gold Mining Company mine, established in 1857 and regarded as one of Victoria’s richest gold mines before production ceased in the 1890s.

By then, some 16 tonnes of gold had been extracted from the reefs around the town.

By the 1960s and ’70s, Clunes, lying largely forgotten in its out-of-the-way valley, resembled a ghost town. Many of its shops had been closed for decades and its few industries were in decline or already extinct.

But the town’s relative obscurity meant its colonial streetscapes stayed frozen in time.

Today, Clunes has a population of about 1000 and provides a fascinating journey into Victoria’s gold rush – which isn’t over yet.

Today the central goldfields is regarded as one of Australia’s premier gold-detecting areas.

With the price of gold hovering over $1700 an ounce, it’s not a bad idea to try your luck. More large gold nuggets have been found in Victoria’s goldfields than anywhere else.

Of 47 nuggets weighing more than 18kg recorded worldwide, 40 have been found in Australia, and 32 of these were unearthed in Victoria’s goldfields region.

Darren Kamp has been chasing gold for more than 30 years, from exploring old mines in Ballarat to gold panning with his grandfather in creeks around Daylesford as a child, before graduating to a metal detector in the 1980s.

“The largest nugget I found weighed 24 ounces (680g). It’s such a buzz when you find gold, like winning Tattslotto,” says Kamp, who runs prospecting tours around Clunes from his shop, Gold and Relics, in a charming old bank recognisable as the one robbed by Heath Ledger’s Ned Kelly in the movie.

Kamp helps participants fine-tune their detectors to suit ground conditions and gives away plenty of prospecting secrets, such as environmental features prospectors looked for across the landscape.

Old diggers called wild cherry trees “gold trees”, says Kamp, because they grow in the same mineralised soil as that associated with gold.

Kamp’s small-group tours, which run from 9.30am to 4.30pm, visit areas around Clunes, including Creswick, one of the richest alluvial sites on the goldfields, and secret sites in the bush discovered over the years.

———-

TRAVEL MATE

GETTING THERE:

Clunes is 150km, or about a 1 1/2-hour drive, northwest of Melbourne along the Western Highway and Ballarat-Maryborough Rd. See clunes.org

DOING THERE:

Gold and Relics gold prospecting tours cost $247 a person ($447 for two) and include full tuition, detector hire, lunch and morning and afternoon tea. Ph (03) 5345 3375 or see www.goldandrelics.com.au