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Mast Gully Track and Gully

Other Name Creek Gully Area Location 71-73 Mast Gully Road and 3 Elliott road UPWEY, YARRA RANGES SHIRE File Number 441 Level Included in Heritage Overlay

[1/1] Mast Gully Track and Gully

Statement of Significance

Mast Gully has high local significance as a place associated with an expedition to cut urgently needed ship's masts, from which the gully gained its name. In 1850 Captain John Freyer, master of the dismasted ship "Admiral", discovered a "forest of ship's masts" in the gully and cut several for his own ship. The gully has significance, too, for its associations with the bullockies Chaundy and Moore who brought out the first two 100-foot masts using 26 bullocks. The Mast Gully area also has historical significance as the site of an early 1850s timber camp, said to be the first in the Dandenongs, run by district pioneer splitters, Sandell and Fountain. A small section of the track into the Gully survives. There are also later associations with berry growers who lived in simple shacks beside the creek, harvesting wild and planted fruit.