Barkers Creek didn't always flow through the land where Castlemaine sits Botanic Gardens to camp reserve in such a straight line The morphology of the creek has been brutally altered, turned upside down by mining and the train line. It used to follow a serpentine path along Gingell street and arc through camp reserve. Like most creeks in Victoria it would have been a chain of ponds with riparian vegetation thriving on periods of wetting and drying. The development of Riparian has involved walking by the creek, unearthing early maps from archives, talking to knowledgeable locals about the creek and reading about its history.