The walk along Charlesworth Street is one of the most uninteresting but it is also the shortest so I use it when I don’t feel very energetic or I don’t have much spare time. After walking along Balmoral Drive and Fussell Street you turn to the right with the high fence marking the boundary of Hemsley Park on your right and the open expanse of degraded pasture on your left. This is the first time that I’ve noticed that the house on the corner has its roof fallen in.
Midway down the street there is a culvert which is the link between the source of Specimen Vale Creek up on Fussell Street, the ponds in Hemsley Park and then the Specimen Vale Creek walking path. Like the land it passes through, it looks fairly degraded too.
Since there is little else to see in this section of Charlesworth Street I cut across to Eureka Street along a pathway behind the old brickworks which is now a place where old high end cars come to have their expensive bits and pieces recovered for on-selling. A short walk back along Eureka Street brings us to Frances Crescent and Wesley Court which appear to have been a Housing Commission estate built in the 1950s. It might have been a nice place to live half a century ago but it seems to be a part of Ballarat that has now been forgotten and neglected.
Turning right at the little shopping center (where you can get a more then acceptable hamburger) brings us back to Eureka Street. From there it is a direct walk down Stawell Street to home but, feeling like a little more adventure, we head down Eureka Street with Eurake Park on the other side of the road until we get to the end of the park, cross over and walk behind the park and museum along Rodier Street for a little while and then along the Bunny Track with the museum behind us and the caravan park on our right.
Wishing to take in the more interesting part of Charlesworth Street we walk up one side with the caravan park on our right to Stawell Street and then back down the other side to the path again. You can seen from the railway tracks still in the ground that the caravan park was probably a workshop and shunting yard for the railway that ran along the Bunny Track. Following the track some more we come to the Specimen Vale Creek path, turn right and before we know it we’re back at Stawell Street and ready for a nice rest.
Leigh Edmonds little box of stuff 