sailors falls Mineral SpringS

Sailors Falls Mineral Spring is within the Hepburn Regional Park and lies adjacent to the 30m Sailors Falls. A viewing platform provides an ideal spot to observe the waterfall. The "Delightful Daylesford" brochure from 1920 characterized them as follows “Water drops a distance of 90 feet into a rocky declivity and gurgles in little rills through a maze of wattle and lightwood; where on the hottest days maidenhair fern is abundant. A tasty mineral spring is continuously flowing in the gulch.

And not much has changed. Miners discovered the first springs, known as the Wishing Well and Northern, below the falls in Sailors Creek around the 1850s. They can be approached via a steep staircase. The 210-kilometre Goldfields Track connects these springs to numerous others in Daylesford, Hepburn, and as far afield as Castlemaine.

To allow the public to enjoy the mineral springs without having to descend into the gorge and to provide high-quality water, a 135m bore was drilled in 2010. This is the only spring that features an electric pump. Shelters, picnic tables, and historical information all contribute to your enjoyment.

Above the waterfall, the creek flows over Quaternary basalts, while below, it has created a tiny valley into the bedrock. Sands and gravels of the Pliocene period known as ‘deep leads’ are layered between the basalt and the bedrock. These sub-basaltic sediments were mined for gold in the walls of Sailors Creek near the mineral springs during the 1850s.

A comparison of the levels of minerals in the springs can be found here.