Badger Creek Weir and Park
Location
Badger Weir Road, Healesville VIC 3777
Show Place Maps and StreetviewStatement of Significance
The Badger Creek Weir has high local significance as part of the Maroondah water supply system, which provided drinking water for Healesville and Melbourne. Constructed in 1909, the weir became redundant when the second weir was built higher up the creek in 1929. The Badger Creek Weir area has been a popular picnic place since the 1890s with its fern gullies and forest of Mountain Ash and Manna Gum.
Description
The Badger Creek Weir and tree plantings are located within the Badger Weir Park, now part of the Yarra Ranges National Park. The picnic area has the appearance of a large landscaped garden with smaller areas of visitor facilities and plantings separated visually from each other. Facilities include some shingle roof rotundas made with timber poles, clusters of picnic tables, barbeques, toilet blocks, parking areas and walking tracks. A fieldstone toilet block appears to have been built in the 1920s or 1930s, although it may have been rebuilt since then. It is surrounded by flagstone paving.
Plantings around the picnic area are spectacular and include a range of mature conifers and other exotics, and mature treeferns, mountain ash and other native species, although much of the native vegetation would have grown there of its own accord. The picnic area, beside the Badger Creek, is surrounded by native forest with towering mountain ash and lush ferns. The Badger Creek flows along a bed of sometimes giant basalt-like river pebbles and is lined with ferns and some native and exotic trees. Two small recently constructed timber bridges over the creek link the picnic ground with walking tracks that lead to the Badger Weir and pass through the dense rainforest.
The weir was not inspected during the present study, nor was the Coranderrk Aqueduct which is able to be seen from the walking track to the weir. Current Parks Victoria information about the weir show the Badger Weir, Coranderrk Aqueduct and Aqueduct Track, water storage tank, slip weir and Slip Track, as well as several bridges which relate to the use of the weir. (Parks Victoria 1999)
Physical Conditions: Good
Integrity: Intact