Friday 2 August 2013

Tannery Lane



This week we explored an old industrial site dating from the 1860s. Tannery Lane, south of the township of Ballarat East, was a a tannery site for a long time.








While the stinking tanneries producing leather for the boots, horse gear, mining equipment and furniture of Ballarat have long gone, Tannery Lane is still a work site.





I'm fond of the foot bridge, which is a nice example of industrial recycling. 


The Yarrowee has been given a chance to breathe again now, replanting, no more noxious effluent and a walking track keep it alive.







Up by the Woollen Mills (more of them later) you can see how the old creek has been straightlaced into cement and bluestone corsets in the late nineteenth century, to keep it from its natural flood plain.






2 comments:

head in the sun said...

Hmm..it's interesting, isn't it?
I see evidence all around Toowoomba and the region of man's attempt to corral nature.
Then the big floods of 2011 come along and blow it all away.
And 2 1/2 years later work still continues to put it all back together.

Elizabeth said...

In Northcote they finally put in flood retarding ponds along the Merri Creek and between floods these are full of reeds, frogs (and snakes). A lovely solution.