Little nugget of history from overgrown town block for sale

Back in the day, the little central Victorian block for sale for just $59,000 fronted the main street of a gold rush town.

Nowadays there is little physical evidence of that street or that a town ever existed there.

As were were told by a historian when we inquired about Redcastle.

"You can't call it a ghost town, the ghosts are long gone as well."

These days there's little chance of being able to build on the bush block at Redcastle, north of Heathcote on just shy of a hectare (2.3 acres).

But once it would have been considered very hot property, the little block was in the main street of a gold town located 45km east of Bendigo and 18km north of Heathcote.

Agents suggest buying the farming-zoned block would be a way to "own a bit of history and your own part of the Aussie bush".

Once upon a time the block was set between Pratt and Cameron streets in Redcastle.

"Now its gone back to nature and Holts Flat Track is on the eastern boundary (access it via this track)," selling agent Nick Haslam from Cantwell Property Castlemaine said.

"The land is ideal for weekend pursuits, bush walking, mountain biking or gold prospecting."

The sale of the block does put a spotlight on this early town with a rich past.

Redcastle was an isolated goldfield between the McIvor (Heathcote) diggings and the Waranga (Rushworth) diggings further north.

It was discovered in 1859, and named the Balmoral diggings.

Redcastle once boasted police and court facilities, a post office, two hotels and three quartz-crushing mills.

Apparently the town's last hotel closed in 1913 and the last school closed its doors in the 1930s.

For those interested in prospecting for alluvial or surface gold, most of the gold was found in quartz reefs underground.

Water was the eventual undoing of the gold field - too much and too little.

Mining in the hard rock was stopped by the rising water table and miners complained there was never enough water for their quartz crushing mills.

The Costerfield and Fosterville (state's biggest) gold mines are less than 50km to the west, and in its day, Redcastle outstripped those still operational mines.

Bendigo ended Redcastle's dreams.

Bendigo's strike overshadowed everything that had come before, or anything which has come after..

Today it is calculated more than $8 billion worth of gold was taken from Bendigo, one of the few goldfields which managed to transition from its rich alluvial beginnings to the deep mines which followed the quartz reefs.

Today there are numerous abandoned gold mines in the Redcastle area bordered by state forest on three sides.

Agents say building anything on the block would need a permit from the local council but it could be used as a staging post for other adventures in the district.

For more information contact Nick Haslam from Cantwell Property Castlemaine on 0422 848662.