Castlemaine-Diggings-National-Heritage-Park-Management-Plan

Basis
• The park’s historical nomenclature (place
names), providing the key to tracing a
chronology of site workings, occupations
and events.
• Intangible values which reflect people’s
and community’s attachment to the park
and the importance of these values to the
cultural significance of the place.
• Indigenous history of occupation and
cultural heritage, including scar trees, rock
wells, seed grinding grooves, oven
mounds, shell middens, isolated artefacts
and tools and meeting places.
Natural values
• Eight Ecological Vegetation Classes
considered vulnerable, depleted or
endangered within the Goldfields
Bioregion.
• Diverse Box-Ironbark ecosystems
supporting over 520 vascular plant species,
including 13 that are threatened, and a
range of fauna including 17 that are
threatened.
• One of the largest protected populations in
the state of the threatened Midlands
Spider-orchid.
• One of only three known locations in the
State of the vulnerable Eltham Copper
Butterfly.
• A number of member species of the FFGlisted
Victorian temperate-woodland bird
community.
• Highly valued waterways and associated
mineral springs.
• World-renowned fossil sites.
• Extensive quartz and alluvial gold
endowment, and alluvial goldfields that
were intensively mined in the past.
Recreation, education and tourism
• Well-preserved evidence of the original
1850s gold rushes, the authentic landscape,
sites and relics associated with the Mount
Alexander Gold Rush.
• The Mount Alexander Diggings Trail, a
series of heritage trails linked to Tourism
Visitor Information Centres at Castlemaine
and Maldon.
• The Dry Diggings and Leanganook
sections (totalling 32 km) of the Great
Dividing Trail, which links Bendigo and
Daylesford.
• An open and accessible landscape
providing opportunities for education,
historic touring, nature observation,
camping, picnicking, bushwalking,
prospecting and cycling.
2.3 Evidence of past land use
Indigenous
The Box-Ironbark forests and woodlands
provided Indigenous people with wood and
plants for food and shelter, medicinal
purposes, canoes, spears, shields, nulla nullas
(clubs), boomerangs, tools and dishes (ECC
2001). There are a number of rock wells that
supplied drinking water for use by the
Traditional Owners in the park. Several are
well preserved as they are found in sandstone
outcrops that do not bear quartz, and were
therefore not damaged or destroyed by mining
activities in the past (B. Nelson pers. comm.
2005).
Grazing
Livestock grazing in the park and the
surrounding area dates back to the 1840s when
the first squatting runs were established. Little
information is available about the distribution
of past grazing activities in the park. However,
boundary areas would have been grazed more
frequently, as the areas most suitable for
pastoralism in the park (creek flats and gullies)
were subject to mining. Grazing pressure from
stock, along with other past land uses, has
depleted native vegetation, accelerated erosion
and promoted the invasion of pest plants in the
park.
In accordance with recommendations of the
Environment Conservation Council and
Section 50I of the National Parks Act, grazing
ceased in the park in October 2005 (section
7.2).
Gold mining
The area now occupied by the park was part of
one of the world’s richest shallow alluvial
goldfield, luring tens of thousands of migrants
to Victoria during the mid 19th century.
4 Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park