explore-hotham

Black Hole

Black Hole

Great Alpine Road

Once a busy mining landscape, today the Black Hole has returned to wilderness. 

During Victoria’s golden era the locality was dotted with dozens of mining camps, huts, machinery sites and alluvial workings, all threaded together with a web of bridle tracks.  The Black Hole would have been a remarkable place to visit one hundred years ago.

Today the upper reaches of this valley are inaccessible, skirted only by the Great Alpine Road and the Bon Accord Walking Track.  The many ruins that lie scattered throughout these hills are historically important archaeological sites, that one day may provide us with a greater insight into the pioneering individuals of this region.  

Heritage Feature Survey of McDuff’s Hut.  Post Bushfire Survey, 2004

Many hundreds, if not thousands of historic mining sites lay sprinkled throughout the ranges of North Eastern Victoria.  Some, like McDuff’s hut can provide us with important physical evidence of what it was like to live on Victoria’s Great Alpine Goldfield’s.  

McDuff’s Hut & Blacksmith.  Illustrated Andrew Swift

Based on a heritage feature survey and a photograph of McDuff at his hut, reconstruction sketches can bring a little life back into historic places or stories.  

Peter McDuff’s outside his hut.  Harrietville Historical Society collection

McDuff outside his little hut in the Black hole in his later years.  An evocative image of one of many hundreds of miners who once lived throughout these ranges.