ALLEN DAM

A hot day yesterday, and forecast rain today. Not ideal for 
exploring the dam I plotted a route to last weekend. So I decided 
to go on Friday instead, with an 18degC forecast and light winds 
being perfect for some quiet bushwalking.

Allen/Allenvale Dam/Reservoir (naming for these places is 
traditionally inconsistent) is among the last dam within 
comfortable day-trip range that I haven't visited yet. The Web 
provides every suggestion that it's not accessible to the public, 
but since it's in a national park with lots of walking tracks 
running between the innumberable waterfalls dotted around the 
coastal township of Lorne, the tracks cross the gated road to the 
reservoir and present a convenient backdoor route.

The drive down to Lorne via the Deans Marsh - Lorne Road is one I 
haven't taken for many years and quite a fun drive through the 
twists and turns amongst towering forrest. Cutting through Lorne to 
the Allenvale Mill campground carpark where the trail begins also 
runs off a twisty road, now with the further thrill of a narrow 
margin for passing oncoming traffic. The trail starts by passing 
through Lorne's semi-rural ourskirts, past, even through one of, 
its outer properties. Its objective, not that far distant from 
mine, is "Phantom Falls". Fed, as is the reservoir, by the St 
George River, this opportunity for watching some water fall over 
draws people up a final steep ascent along a path which seems to 
largely follow the pipeline running from the dam back to the 
township and providing its fresh water supply since the reservoir's 
construction in 1958 (Lorne is one of few larger townships in the 
district still not connected to the wider pipeline/channel system 
which links Geelong, Melbourne, and Ballarat, as well as the 
relatively nearby big West Barwon Reservoir).

In fact these falls also seem to have been shaped by man almost as 
much as by nature, although still blending together quite 
attractively. While descending the carved steps in the rock face 
beside the falls, a cast iron pipe rears precariously up from under 
you and towards the top of the falls supported by long bolts driven 
into the rock face. Below is a mound of boulders towering to half 
the height of the waterfall, sharply cut even in the flow of water, 
and at the top of the falls, easilly accessed next to the top of 
the steps, deep angular cuts and concrete are visible near where 
the pipe juts out into emptyness. Two rocks at the top of the falls 
even seem like huge square blocks stacked with great, yet seemingly 
purposeless, effort. In fact the purpose was for an earlier attempt 
at water capture using a weir at the top of Phantom Falls to supply 
Lorne from the nearest high point where water would run back to the 
township. Apparantly this design was ill-conceived, resulting in 
water quality described as "very smelly, black muck":

https://www.barwonwater.vic.gov.au/about-us/news-and-events/news/from-black-muck-to-the-best-supply-a-century-of-water-in-lorne

The weir itself has all been removed, leaving the short man-made 
footings and channels in the stone itself at the top of the falls 
to appear as a bizarrely pointless effort. Surely though an effort 
that would have been quite significant at the time. The weir 
location is marked on my WWII army map of the area, along with 
another pipeline which ran to the Erskine River, that river feeding 
another waterfall which I visited on my last trip to Lorne some 
years back, after popping out of a long forest road next to it, on 
a journey I wrote about here as well.

This waterfall isn't as high, but very pretty and well framed by 
the rock either side, one chiselled by man and the other by time. 
Still out of 35mm film (I figure I should finally start developing 
films before starting to buy more again), this time I brought an 
old pair of binoculars with me, inherited from my holiday-loving 
grandparents complete with vintage brown leather case and strap. I 
still wasn't much good at spotting wildlife in the trees, and 
somewhat frustrated to miss some fine shots of the river running 
beside the track, but they were handy for peering up to the 
recesses in the rock face where you can imagine being watched by a 
suspicious aboriginl man camped out there centuries ago.

However to this point in the journey, I know my path had already 
been phographed in 2017, evidenced by this webpage describing the 
route in very practical detail, though in much wetter times 
(thankfully, by the looks of it):

https://annabel-claire.com/chasing-waterfalls/phantom-falls-great-otway-national-park-lorne-victoria-australia/

That page also links to a tourist guide with a far better map of 
the area, including around the dam, than any other I've found. A 
newer link is here:

https://www.surfcoast.vic.gov.au/files/assets/public/v/3/04-experience/tourism/lorne-walks-and-waterfalls-2018-lr.pdf

Annoyingly I forgot to print that out, since it was going to take 
some effort to crop to A4 size, so I ended up relying on my usual 
map-book photocopies, but it explained clearer than anywhere else 
the locations where the various signposts point you to, which gave 
me a great start.

As is often the case at these waterfalls, a rough narrow track led 
back down the river, but it's not obvious that this actually 
continues off into another trail to Cora Lynn Cascades. Rather more 
overgrown and clearly far less frequented than the Phantom Falls 
route, this was my favourite section of the walk, passing many tall 
mossy fern trees with their younger siblings crowding underneath. 
Yet I was only taking the first short section to the closed Cora 
Lynn Carpark, off the now-gated road to the dam. From here, the 
road to the dam can be ascended and the reservoir reveals itself 
picturesquely as you round a corner. The road circles around one 
side of the long man-made lake, on which some bird life finally 
presented itself before my binocularised eyes. Surrounded neatly by 
forest, and at full capacity, I found it quite a pretty reservoir, 
with good access including to the dam itself which is of earth 
construction accompanied by a concrete spillway recently renovated 
in 2018 in a project which awarded it this rarely-found online 
photograph:

https://symal.com.au/projects/allen-reservoir-dam/

Given the dryness of the year back at home, where farm dams are 
universally empty, it was striking to see the Allen Dam spilling, 
which in fact is what sources the falls I'd watched earlier (though 
in much lesser flow than in those photos online). Clearly they have 
experienced much more rain along that stretch of coastline which 
dangles down from the south of the Australian mainland. 
Nevertheless it wasn't an impressive rush of water down the new 
spillway channel which returns it on its natural path down to meet 
the ocean, just a trickle at this scale.

Although the dam road runs on to join the walking track after 
crossing a shallow forward through the river just before the top of 
the waterfall, that fern-lined riverside walk from the falls lured 
me back for a return journey. A left turn to continue along it to 
the Cora Lynn Cascades was tempting, but it's said to be hard going 
and at over 3Km from that point a bit much for a return trip. So I 
savoured the little stretch back to Phantom Falls, before 
surprising a couple admiring the falls by seemingly appearing out 
of the wilderness behind them. Another route that takes a loop via 
"The Canyon" and Henderson Falls then back to the Allenvale Mill 
campground is normally possible, but notices warned that this track 
was cut by some unspecified damage due to be fixed in "Spring 2024" 
(they'd better hurry!), so I went back the way I came.

In the strange way that classic cars sometimes breed while you're 
away, I discovered my Jag had met a sporty little MG convertible 
parked next to it back at the carpark, presumably owned by someone 
I'd passed on the walk back. So that was fun to look over before 
zooming off aboard my own later example of British motoring.

The road back to Lorne joins one running to Teddy Lookout, which 
seemed tempting on the map, so I continued on that way, passing one 
of the various hilltop water storage tanks which take delivery of 
water from the Allen Reservoir after treatment, for gravity-feed to 
the buildings at various elevations below. In fact someone 
sufficiently inclined could take this journey by foot as well, 
following the St George River to its outlet down far below the 
lookout and where it meets the Great Ocean Road. The upper lookout 
is populated by a constant stream of foreign tourists taking photos 
of themselves in front of the sea and coastline. However follow one 
of the little walking tracks and there's actually a similar lookout 
a little distance away which has another great view yet seemingly 
goes undiscovered by everyone else. My binoculars finally showed 
their value here, transforming a single view into an infinite 
variety of scenes to be captured along the coastline, and of people 
getting aggressively tailgated and veering dangerously out of lane 
for aborted overtakes as they drove along the roadway (I'm 
definately not tackling that road again until the next pandemic 
locks out most of the traffic).

Driving back into town I went on an adventure through the steep 
backstreets before finding the same easy parking spot I discovered 
on my last visit. Less rewarding was my search for the Lorne 
Op-Shop, which, I eventually worked out, has closed. So I ordered a 
baked potato from a borderline reluctant man with a foreign accent 
that I couldn't penetrate, and rediscovered a nice picnic area 
overlooking the beach where I could eat it. There I found more 
value in the binoculars for watching surfers out in the bay. 
Between watching women on the beach, anyway.

A nice trip back home, not too much worry from traffic even with a 
few roadworks, the Jag running very well except for continuing 
knocks from the front left suspension while going over bumps. Today 
I'm planning to order some more replacement suspension bushings 
that will hopefully solve that if I can figure out how to fit them 
(hopefully not as difficult as pressing in the ones I replaced last 
year).

A little further south down the coast the West Barham Weir, which 
feeds Apollo Bay, might be another spot to investigate one day if 
it seems accessible. Otherwise there are just a couple of targets 
still left on my day-trip-range dams list. Whether or not I finally 
take that as a cue for beginning some proper holidays to visit 
distant sights like the Snowy Hydro Scheme still remains to be 
determined. I'll probably try to take that train trip to Bairnsdale 
first, although train-hopping to visit reservoirs along the route 
seems a bit too risky now after my experience with delayed services 
last time.

 - The Free Thinker