The Three Lost Children Walk (15km)

The Story

The call of adventure
It was Sunday morning, 30 June 1867, when a group of young children from Connells Gully, near Table Hill, Daylesford, wandered in the direction of Wombat Creek past familiar shallow gold diggings to look for wild goats.

Three children, William Graham, aged 6½, his brother Thomas, 4 years 3 months, and Alfred Burman, 5, responded to the call of adventure. They crossed Wombat Creek and headed towards Muskvale. When the boys failed to return home for lunch their fathers began to search, concentrating their efforts near the junctions of the Wombat, Stony and Sailors Creeks. That evening the police were notified, and the search went well into the night.

During the afternoon the boys had spoken to a Muskvale storekeeper, Mr Mutch, but failed to follow his instructions on how to reach Daylesford. After a short distance they unaccountably headed east to Specimen Hill.

Towards dusk the children then spoke to an older boy, John Quinn, near Specimen Hill gold mine. He told them they were lost, but they ignored his attempts to turn them back and vanished into thick bush to their impending doom.

Organised searches
At dawn on Monday 1 July, the search began in earnest. As news of the previous day’s sightings circulated, the search area widened. Community anxiety grew, and the next day more than 100 horsemen assembled near the Specimen Hill gold mine. By Wednesday 3 July, after a public meeting the previous night called by the Mayor, Cr Bleakley, sympathy for the distressed families was so heightened that almost 700 people turned out in cold, miserable weather to continue searching.

The sorrowful discovery
After eight successive public meetings and 25 days of searching it appeared that the tragedy of the Three Lost Children might never be solved. But on Friday 13 September a dog returned home to Wheelers Hill, some 10km from Daylesford, carrying in its mouth a small boot with a child’s foot in it. The following day a number of Wheelers Hill residents combed the area and found the bodies of the youngest boys in the hollow of a tree. The remains and clothing of the older boy were nearby. There was a large funeral, and the three children were buried together in the Daylesford Cemetery. An impressive monument was erected there by public subscription – you can see it today in the cemetery on the Daylesford-Trentham Road. In 1889, Mr Graham, the father of two of the lost boys, established a scholarship to be presented each year to the best boy and girl pupils at Daylesford State School. In this way the memory of the Lost Children has been kept alive in the Daylesford District.