Introduction

alhalla is a town in Victoria, Australia, founded as a gold-mining community in late 1862, and at its peak, home to around 4,000 residents. As of 2023, the town has a population of 20 permanent residents, though it has a large proportion of houses owned as holiday properties.

Main Road

he main street of Walhalla runs along the bottom of a narrow valley beside Stringers Creek. In the towns heyday, buildings were squeezed into all available space and many cottages are only accessible by cute little bridges.

The residents and property owners in Walhalla clearly take great pride in the town and the residences on the main street are well kept with beautiful gardens.

Goldfields Railway

Gold was first discovered at Walhalla in 1862 an the town produced vast amounts of it the precious metal in deep underground mines for nearly 50 years. However transport costs for mining supplies, firewood and town provisions were extremely expensive.

After 40 years of agitation a railway line was finally completed in 1910. However by this time Walhalla was pretty much mined out and the vast majority of the population left and the line was very rarely used and closed in 1941.

However volunteers managed to rebuild the railway and with some donations of vehicles from the State Electricity Commission managed to restart operations as a tourist attraction in 1994.

Its takes just 20 minutes for the train to make the short 5km trip to the bridge at Thomson River. But it follows along the creek and is very pretty.

Walhalla Graveyard

At its heyday there was over 4000 people living in Walhalla. With very little space the cemetery had to be built on a hillside.

Tramline Walkway

My old drone has pretty much given the ghost and I'm saving up for a new one.

However I was still able to get some shots from on high by walking up the tramline walkway. In the towns heyday this track featured a tramline which was used to transport supplies between the mines carved into the hillside.