Penny Wise…
WARRANDYTE, VIC – Australia may have changed to decimal currency forty years ago, but we still have Pound Bend in Warrandyte, roughly 24kms east of Melbourne. The name is a reference to £-like loop in the Yarra River. Loopier still is the tunnel that the Evelyn Tunnel Gold Mining Company drove through the intervening buttress in 1870. A dramatic bid to divert the water, the tunnel let prospectors dredge the shallower riverbed for more of that £-making gold. A sandbag levee didn’t last too long at the outfall end, and nor did the company, liquidating a year after the burrowing. Their legacy is a 195-m chute of confused water to daredevil platypuses – and the odd (illegal) kayaker. [End of Pound Bend Rd, off Warrandyte Rd, opposite Soil and Sand Nursery. No dogs allowed. Carpark gates close near dark.]