Heywood ruins hide a sinister history

Feb. 25, 2015, 4 a.m.

WEEKENDS, my mate Pud and I hitched billy-carts to our pushbikes and sweated our way up a lonely track on the slope of a long-dead volcano.

WEEKENDS, my mate Pud and I hitched billy-carts to our pushbikes and sweated our way up a lonely track on the slope of a long-dead volcano.

The ruins of the old native police barracks on Mount Eckersley at Heywood. Picture: Heritage Victoria

It was a hard ride, the slope getting steeper, the landscape below spreading forever, but we had the hill and a fast dusty track to ourselves.

Drifting around south-west Victoria the other day, I drove out to the hill to check the authenticity of memory. The track was still there among the trees, the slope as terrifyingly steep, the view as extensive as ever.

The place has come to assume a treasured spot in my personal dreaming, but it has a larger, barely whispered role in Australian history.

The old volcano is known as Mount Eckersley. It rises above the small town of Heywood. A branch of my family a century ago lived and laboured up there on the grazing station, Oakbank, that flows over the hill and boasts a fine bluestone homestead.

In a corner of the property, however, not far from our childhood billy-carting adventures, exists a ruin with the power to haunt.

A stone chimney stands above broken stone walls, the roof and the floorboards gone.

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Heywood ruins hide a sinister history