Some independent or adventurous miners went prospecting through the ranges where they hoped they would not be disturbed by troopers, but wherever gold was wrought the troopers sought them out.

On one licence hunting excursion through the bush the troopers came on several parties of diggers in a narrow shallow valley. They must have been in a good frame of mind because one trooper named Benjamin Keirl, observing the number of magpies flying about idly remarked that this gully should be called Magpie, and the name stuck to the district.

The miners' track coming from Buninyong to Ballarat at this time was a series of tracks on the Western side of the White Horse Range, swinging wide on soft going and converging as one track on hard ground.

On a well drained gentle slope of the track some 500 yards west of Magpie Gully, its name now firmly established, a bustling village sprang up on each side of the track consisting mainly of business houses, hotels, grog shanties, skittle alleys, play houses and tents. It was as lively as Main Street, Ballarat and extending over a distance of a half mile when the Frenchman s and Chinaman's Leads opened up.

The man who suggested locating on the track in this position was a wily thinker. It not only caught the busy traffic, but also they had first pick of the freelance store drays on the way to the Ballarat diggings. To clinch the position there was an extensive patch of wild cranberries between the gully and Village. The goldfields children of that time have handed down and boasted of the cranberry tarts thei r mothers made. Today a remnant of the patch remains but, when the natural trees were replaced with pines, the fruit would not develop.

At the end of 1854, when the smoke of the Eureka Stockade battle had blown away, came a man from Bakery Hill who built a hotel at the end of the street close to a small creek flowing from the east to spill into the Yarrowee River. He was a friend of Carboni Raffaello named Carl Wiesenhavern, a genial German who had kept the Prince Albert Hotel at Ballarat East. Carbon called Carl his good Samaritan and now Carl kept the fla flying by calling his new hotel "The Southern Cross".

Carboni said he followed the mob to Magpie Gully an described the place as "the Magpie of Ballarat". He said n search for a gold licence ever took place there.

As the Frenchman's and Chinaman's Leads rapidly go underway the village became a thriving centre, looking to the needs of about 4,000 people on the various gold leads.

A lead called the Lord Raglan was found under the south end of the village, then again to the south, The Cobblers, Long Gully, Paddy's, Crawfish, and the Prospect Leads opened up.

Magpie Gully then extended from The White Horse Lead in the north to The Star and Garter Hotel in the south, about two bush miles in all. It must have been 'some' place indeed to attract the famous French tight-rope acrobat Charles Blondin.

Mr Abrams witnessed and passed this knowledge onto Magpie historian J R Aubrey. He spoke of Blondin performing on a tight-rope stretched across the village street from the Lord Raglan Hotel to another hotel. This event was watched by a multitude from the various gold leads, and in the narrow street they crowded close together - eyes all turned skywards to witness such a feat. These hotels were two stories high.

At the close of 1854, water for drinking, cooking and washing became a problem. Fifty yards west of the village, near the ancient aboriginal camp ground, a good hole lay in the shade of lightwood and blackwood trees, but taking the pitcher to the well too often the level fell quickly and this water then had to be boiled to stave off dysentery.

Fifty years ago one could still pick up flint chippings. The camp site is on the shore line of a small ancient lake, now dry. A few gum trees remain but, when the lightwood and blackwood wattles were cut out a heavy growth of grass covered all. The whole of this area is now settling ponds for the sewerage works.

The church life of the locality is a bit sketchy.

At the north near the Southern Cross and Golden Age Hotels was a flimsy building known as the Welsh Chapel. At the south, as early as 1854, a piece of ground had been set aside for a Wesleyan Church. West from here a broad band of sandstone, some ten feet higher than the river, was variously known as Pulpit or Cradle Rock where the good news was preached in fine weather until a slab walled building was erected.

In this rock are three clefts, cradle-like in size, and it has been told how each of these had sheltered a sleeping child during each service.

Half a mile to the south the primitive Methodists in 1856 worshipped in a house belonging to Thomas Aubrey at Winters Flat. For many years a plaque setting forth this fact hung on the wall. A remnant only remains of the house.

In 1851 Dunlop and Regan, as they crossed Winters Flat on the way to Ballarat mentioned the dog barking at the house over the hill. It is believed that this was the same house, near the Lady Mary Mine. George Lansell's Long Tunnel Mine was a stones throw from the house.

The women in the flat-bottomed valley north of the village, but, in a sense part of it, were the unsung heroines, suffering many and varied privations.

They were the water carriers, drawing the first buckets o water in the morning before the miners stirred up the clay in the shafts, as well as keeping the camp fires burning. In the hot summer, when the ground baked as hard as a brick, in this valley would be dogged by the ever present flies, which spread sickness abroad. The "grim reaper" passed this way during the hot summer months claiming an infant here and there from resultant diseases.

On most goldfields where there is a cemetery can be found written in stone the same story - Mary Ann, one week; Jane three weeks; Andrew, one month; John, two months.

Through all tribulations, at most times the lot of the people was a favoured one. Gold was plentiful, lawlessness was unknown.

There were a few petty thieves, but the yarns of lawless people on the goldfields themselves is over done, though a bit of spice made a good yarn!

By the middle of 1855, this village had moved west onto the Sebastopol plateau.

The old track up the plateau is still visible today.

These people belonged to the original Magpie Gully (known as old Magpie Gully), White Horse and Frenchman's, not to confused with the Magpie township that grew up south of the church.

My great grandfather, William James, came off the flat in 1857. By 1858 he had built a bakery known as the Monmouth in the infant Cobblers township. He was a foundation member of the Carmel Welsh (Calvanistic Methodist) Church.

As these people, who came from most of the best educated families of the old world, looked back from the plateau with their inner most thoughts, there is nothing more heart rendering than to gaze on a deserted village where they had first suffered the joys and sorrows in a strange new land, especially those who had lost a loved one in this place. Now they and their children, have all walked forward into the sunset.

Today the old village is choked with furze from end to end and across its whole width the flat valley is the sewerage settling ponds.

The original Magpie Gully is now planted with pines.

The sandstone foundation of the bakery is still visible at the head of the gully near what is known as Job Gullocks, but nothing remains of the old village and campground.