Leitches Creek Mineral Spring Established - Jan 1st 1879
Address: Leitches Creek Road Daylesford Victoria
Leitches (Wallaby) Creek Mineral Spring was found in the late 1860s in a large pool of water in a naturally swampy section of the creek.
In 1879 a small area around the spring and on either side of the creek, about the size of a suburban building block, was protected as a mineral spring reserve. This was opposed by new selectors (small farmers who were offered land by the government to settle in the district) as they wanted the land for farming and timber. However, during 1880, nearby residents lobbied government to increase the reserve size in a bid to save the springs and surrounding timber. They won, as in 1881 the reserve was increased in size and formalised in legislation as a reservation.
Water extraction from the reservation was licensed around 1905 to John Harrison of the small town of Musk Creek. One condition of the licence was that the public must retain access to the water. Another condition reinforced public access as the mineral water extracted could not be sold ‘within a 15 mile [24.2km] radius of this spring'. It is not certain how long the extraction rights were held by Harrison as Jenkin family records show that the Jenkin Brothers began bottling mineral water at Leitches Creek from 1905 up to the 1950s. A simple timber building, with a lean-to verandah at the northern end, was used as the bottling plant.
Today a bore, sunk in 2000 by VMWC, with a semi-rotary pump is located towards the south of the reservation. About 30 m closer to the road is the old stepped concrete area built in 1905. Mineral water still seeps into the sump of the small pit and a small grassed picnic area occupies the slope between the bore, sump and creek.
The cased bore penetrates the rock aquifer far deeper than the level of the water-table, as does the free-flow pipe outlet. However while the mineral content of the water from each outlet may be similar, the higher carbon dioxide gas content of the pumping bore, particularly after being pumped for fifty or more strokes, could impart a different taste.