Today is August 27 2020, around half way through the second stage 3 lockdown of Central Victoria but in between the lockdowns there were a few weeks to get away for some day trips. One weekend between the lockdowns on June 30 one of the day trips was to Blackwood Mineral Reserve on the North Western side of the Lerderderg State Park.

There is a great picnic area with tables, toilets, undercover areas, barbeques and more (most were closed due to COVID at the time) right next to the Lerderderg river with two short walks. Lake & Lookout via Hard Hills at 1.6km and Lake & Lookout via Moonlight Gully at 2km. Before we ate we had an explore and decided to do the shorter walk. We started the walk via Hard Hills but pretty sure ended up coming back on Moonlight Gully which was an amazing track but had one part that was quite a steep descent.

Hand held two photo half second long exposure panoramic of the Lerderderg River

There are also a few mineral springs that are available for sampling, two that I found and each one has a plaque with the markup of the minerals. It was nice having the place almost to ourselves with only a few passers by along the walking track. Not sure we’ll get so lucky next time.

I took a lot of photos on my phone, some are in the video at the bottom.

The gallery below are all handheld and taken on my Olympus OM-D EM-1 MKII with the 7-14mm 2.9 pro. Lack of filters for this lens and no tripod left me with short long exposures but still they turned out pretty good.

Below is a short video of the picnic area and the short walk that starts from just across the bridge, all captured on a GoPro 7 with photos from a Pixel 2 and an Olympus OM-D EM-1 MKII with the 7-14mm 2.9 pro.