Beechworth to Yackandandah

We are heading into the Historic area of Beechworth and Yackandandah both towns heading gold rush days from the 1850s.
We had 6 vehicles head up on the Friday night, leaving at 6.00pm from Bendigo, we stopped at BP Glenrowan for fuel and a bite to eat.When we were getting back onto the Highway my Toyota had a flat battery, as we tried to jump start it, Brett noticed the negative terminal was corroded a bit, so a quick clean and put the terminal back on and she started.We travelled along the Snow road, turning left onto the Great Alpine road and then we turned right on Buckland road towards Beechworth, reaching Buckland Gap we turned right up Lady Newton road to Murmungee Lookout. It’s a fairly steep road up to the top, on reaching the Lookout we set up camp in the rain as it didn’t stop raining the whole night. We had a few beers underneath Matt’s awning, getting to bed about 12.00am.

Saturday
We woke and the rain had gone and as we put our heads out of the swags to a great view of the Stanley State Forest. We had breakfast then started to pack up slowly ready for a days driving. Glen turned up right on 9.00am and we had a quick briefing.
We headed off just after 9.00am and back down Lady Newton road for about 1km then we turned left down Bridle Track, after all the rain we had the night before I thought the track might be slippery, but it wasn’t to bad at all with plenty of traction, at the bottom we turned left on Boundry Track, actually a very interesting track to drive with short steep climbs and declines, we then turned left onto Rifle Range Track easy at first then it climbs up the side of the Hill, there is one steep section that had loose rocks and not much grip, this is where Ben got stuck and had to winch up. This track takes you up to Flagstaff road the main road across the top. We turned right then a little down the track we went left onto West End Track, we stopped for a break for about 20mins. We then took a left down McGeehans Track where we had a lot of trees across the track, so a lot of track clearing was in place. We got to the Power lines and to the right was a great view of Myrtleford, the track winds down into the valley through some gates as you go through Private Property, closing gates behind us. The track turns into Basin Creek road coming out on Myrtleford-Yackandandah road then left up Myrtleford-Stanley road, travelling up the asphalt was slow at about 60kmh because we had our tyre pressures at 20psi. We then got to Wallys Track on the right and we turned in, the start was very rain forest like, through some little river crossings then started to climb and the track become steep and rocky with plenty of grip, this brought us up to Granite Track so we proceeded straight ahead onto Mt Stanley Jeep Track and it was steep straight away, if it was wet would of made it very interesting and this track climbed all the way up to Mt Stanley Lookout at 1050m. We had lunch and a look around going up onto the rocks, having a 360 degree view of the area. We asked the man up in the tower if we can come up and he just said “NO”. So we jumped back into the vehicles and headed off down Mt Stanley road, we took a right on Enscarpment Track then winded our way around to Hillborough road, following this gravel road for a bit then turned onto Back Creek road then right onto Schmidt Track North, this track has some really short steep sections coming out onto Conns Spur Track through the river crossing and straight ahead up to camp around 2.30pm. We set up camp and it was fairly hot humid, we cut some firewood and had a nice pile of wood for the night. Sitting around in the shade for the afternoon, we lit the fire about 5.00pm and we started to cook dinner, after dinner when the sun went down it cooled off a bit so more wood went on the fire and we sat around the fire for the night.

Sunday
As we woke early, got the fire going and a big breakfast, we all packed up fairly quickly. Small briefing and we were on the tracks by 8.30am, first was the climb out of camp up Conns Spur Track, it’s steep but easy, after rain could be nearly impossible as it’s red clay. The track flattened out for a bit then left down Conns Track to The Underground Hut, we all found a park as there was people camped in the car parking area. It’s a small walk over an embankment and there it is, you just see a Tin Roof and a Stairway down into the Hut. This time I didn’t feel that eerie feeling, so we had a look around.
The Underground Hut can be very hard to find, you could be 10m away and still not find it. They say it was built by an old Prospector who worked the river area looking for gold and built the Hut in the side of the Hill out of stone and mortar. But there is many different stories on how and who built it.
We headed back up Conns Track and left onto Conns Spur Track and down onto Basin road, we aired up on the side of the road and headed into Yackandandah. In town we managed to park the vehicles and we had a walk around town as they had a market and a car show. After about 30-45mins we headed for Woolpack Falls for a look, with not much water coming over at all. So we took Woolpack road to Eldorado and stopped at Cocks Dredge. It was used dig up gravel from the lakes floor for gold and tin. We had a quick lunch break and this is where we finished the trip and everyone headed for home

Participants
Russell. 105 LandCruiser
Andrew. Triton
Brett and Doug. Hilux
Karl. 105 LandCruiser
Ben and Kim. Colorado
Glen. Nissan Patrol
Visitor
Matt and Micheal. 105 LandCruiser