Bridgewater on Cox's Creek with Keith Conlon
It has been one of the defining landmarks of the Adelaide Hills since 1860, and on Postcards this week we have celebrated the 140th birthday of "The Old Rumbler" as the great waterwheel of Bridgewater Mill was called.
We've also discovered that the mill helped wash one village away and create another. Upsteam, only about half a kilometre away, the old Mt Barker Road peters out at Cox's Creek Reserve and briefly becomes part of the Heysen Trail. (The hills freeway just beyond, cuts across the gully and the old road route).
The quaint little bridge over the spring-fed stream is almost famous! There are timbers in it from the original structure here, said to be the only bridge in South Australia built by convicts. They were in the colony after release, but further strife with the local constabulary meant they were due back in Van Diemen's Land.
The original village of Cox's Creek is nowhere to be seen, but a plaque beside the old bullock track tells us about the first pub in these parts. It was the Rural Deanery Inn, an unlikely name for a rustic hut full of bullock drivers and woodcutters on the rum. Not a particularly pious lot.
What happened to the rural village? The main road through the hills was re-routed in the 1850's, and so the new coach road ran a little southwards through what is now Bridgewater. What's more, the new Mill on that road needed a new dam in 1870.
It was badly built above the village and in its first year of filling, the dam wall broke and washed what was left of Cox's Creek away.
I walked with the Postcards crew along the Heysen Trial down the creek a few hundred metres to find a big embankment for the railway line between Adelaide and Melbourne across the gully. Scrambling up the steep sides of Goat Hill to one side, we could see the abutments of the original picturesque viaduct spanning the creek. Passengers would have looked down on a pretty expanse of water. The Bridgewater Mill dam spread right across the gully.
Back on the trail, we happed down the bluestone remains of the dame wall and walked through the parabolic tunnel that takes Cox's Creek and the Heysen Trail under the railway embankment. Pas a tranquil willow-shaded pool is a secret hills walkway.
The trail joins the old millrace along the side of the valley that opens into the t own of Bridgewater. The stone-lined channel took thousands of litres of water every minute to turn the great waterwheel of the old flourmill. It's a birdwatcher's joy along the millrace path with the scrub and gumtrees dappling the autumn sunlight. And it's only a few steps up from lunch at the mill or the Bridgewater Inn over the creek.
The hotel has been offering to wash the dust off the travellers' tonsils since 1855, even before the famous mill was built. It followed the traffic when the main road moved, and there's an oil painting within, of what may have been its forerunner at Cox's Creek. A Mr. Addison moved the licence and probably gave the town-to-be its name. He called his establishment the Bridgewater Inn after his village in Somerset.
If losing the pub didn't kill off the hamlet of Cox's Creek, the new mill did! Prosperous miller, John Dunn, bought some land on the stream from the hotel to open his new operation exactly 140 years ago, and subdivided allotments for a new village. Closeby, are the old school from the 1880's and the grand stone Institute.
The "Old Rumbler", the giant waterwheel, is the centrepiece of the district. Manufactured in Scotland, it is a "pitchback" wheel, with a hundred buckets that fill from the high millrace so the weight of the water turns it against the run of the stream. It's more than eleven metres hight, and with a few ups and downs, it turned the grinding stones inside for a hundred years, till 1960.
The wheel grinds and splashes slowly now, restored for the pleasure of visitors on a pilgrimage to a temple for fine food and wine. Petaluma, the flagship of the Adelaide Hills wine region, has its cellar door and sparkling wine storage here in the three-storey stone mill building. One of its labels celebrates its home.
On a balmy Autumn day, gourmets sit on the raised deck tucked into the hill and mill next to the great wheel. They come to savour the cooking of national restaurant-of-the-year award winner Le Tu Thai.
They overlook the lawn and creek below. If they head along the green and up the steps, they're on the Heysen Trail that brought us down the gully and along the millrace from the site of Cox's Creek, the forerunner of Bridgewater.
It's only an easy one-hour walk there and back, and it's postcard-perfect at this time of the year.
(I was alerted to this hills ramble by a Flinders University Cultural Tourism Degree student who, along with his colleagues, prepared research projects for Postcards stories and hostings late last year. Shaun de Bruyn lives at Bridgewater, and his excellent research was obviously a labour of love. Thanks Shaun).
Details:
Walks Brochure - "Two Walks in Bridgewater".
Excellent heritage walk guide published by Stirling District Council, now Adelaide Hills Council.
Stirling Office
63 Mt Barker Road
Stirling SA
Telephone: 8408-0400
Bridgewater Inn
Counter Meals, seven days
387 Mt Barker Road
Bridgewater SA
Telephone: 8339-1151Bridgewater Mill
Mt Barker Road
Bridgewater
Telephone: 8339-3422
Waterwheel operates every day - 10.00am to 5.00pm
Cellar Door every day - 10.00am - 5.00pm
Restaurant, open six days for lunch only (closed Tuesdays)
For more information you can email info@postcards.sa.com.au
