Waratah Power Station Via Wandle Falls

This is a place we have been wanting to check out for a while now but have just never had the time so today we made the effort to go and check it out.

On this trip we decided to go the painful way through the gorge and because Jacinta was winging the whole way I drove harder to try to make her sick 😂.  We also went this way also so we could check out Wandle Falls.

We have driven past this countless times and never even knew it was there until I was browsing through my map earlier in the week and I spotted it.  It was well worth the look too and only a short walk from the road.

From here there was another area I wanted to check out down near the Arthur.  I love getting down to this river even if we don’t find too much.  It is a very interesting and generally very scenic river with a lot of surprises along the way.  I reckon we have explored about 80% of the tracks on my map that lead down to the river so far and this is a site that becomes very common.    Even though the river here is basically only a minor stream it must get pretty full on after a big rain event.  Not far from here we also found what is left of a hut.

You can still make out the floor bearers and a slab of concrete is there for a possible entrance.  I still wonder why they ever built so close to the River though (this is only meters) it is prone to flooding just about every year in winter and would never dry out until summer but then again location is key.

From here we picked up a hitchhiker

one I haven’t seen before and headed for Waratah for the power station.  The walk down to the Power Station is great because it is all down hill and the Power Station creeps up on you a bit because it literally just suddenly appears.

The power station had 4 Pelton-style impulse turbines made by  Escher Wyss & Cie Zurich and was capable of supplying up to 1MWH (Mega Watt Hour) of energy.  It was built-in 1906 and was fed by a complex system of water races and creek diversions that fed to a metal penstock some 170 m above the power station.  In 1956 there was a landslide near Waratah falls which damaged the water flow and was never repaired so the station went offline and has been reclaimed by the bush ever since.

Inflow

Control room to the left

which contained (what I think) are old Taps or voltage regulators

and old switch gear.  unfortunately some of the shed is collapsed so it’s a bit risky looking around and I think the Business end of the shed was the end to go.  The Crib room with the fire-place.  Around the side down near the creek is the outflow

I wasn’t to keen on staying in this area to long as there are a few precarious bits of timber ready to come shooting down in the general direction so I got a quick snap and got out of there.

Not far away from here is what I think are called Ringtail Falls so we followed the creek upstream to check them out and on the way found some unusual fungi (or at least I think that’s what it is )

I still haven’t mastered the ‘macro’ photography so it’s a bit blurry.  At first I thought they where just berries but they where hard in the ground.

It’s not hard to tell that this is a heavily mined area by the colour of the rocks as they are stained a light brown rust colour from the minerals.  Not too much further up where the falls.

They are quite a bit bigger than this but I wasn’t to keen on getting wet feet crossing the creek to get a better shot so this will have to do.  From here we walked the horrible walk back up the hill to the cruiser had a bit of lunch and then just as we where about to drive home it started to rain so we timed everything perfectly for one.

Hope you enjoyed

Cheers

Brendan & Jacinta

Full Video here

For more info on the Power Station Click here