Little more than two and a half hours from Melbourne, Walhalla feels more remote than towns twice as far from the big smoke. In 1988 this became the last Victorian community to hook up to the state power grid; mobile phone reception is piecemeal at best.

What is the appeal of this Victorian-era gold rush township, almost lost in the Great Dividing Range, whose population just reaches double digits? Perhaps Walhalla satisfies that old-fashioned childhood ideal of a toy-town of neat, square houses set alongside a stream which burbles through a deep valley.

Gold was discovered here in December 1862 by prospector Ned Stringer. More than 75 tonnes of precious metal was extracted from Cohen’s Reef, a quartz vein which runs far underneath the town. At its peak Walhalla was home to several thousand people, serviced by ten hotels, three breweries and seven churches.

The narrow-gauge railway reached Walhalla from Moe in 1910, too late to boost the town’s prosperity. Today the Walhalla Goldfields Railway runs tourist trains back and forth from the Thomson River, criss-crossing Stringers Creek Gorge on trestle bridges before the last, postcard-perfect river crossing.

These images were taken with Nikon D300 using RAW format, and are available for licensing.