Blackwood North has a lot of gold mining history in amongst the hills and was until fairly recently heavily logged by the timber industry. The Wombat State Forest is more protected now and the timber industry has largely gone.

As the Wombat State Forest has less protection that the Lerderderg State Park to the south, it hosts a wide variety of recreational pursuits including hiking, four wheel driving and motorcycling. Because of this it has a wide variety of trails where you can literally head off into the forest and explore. There are lots of gravel roads, fire and logging trails and motor bike single track in the area.

The trails below give you a bit of a snapshot to the area but there are plenty of other trails to explore both on topographic maps and by just riding around. The area just north of Barrys Reef for example has quite a few motorbike tracks through the area and minor fire trails which you can readily explore.

For reference, the Sweet Nuggs trail is based around one of the main motor bike trails in the area but is equally good as a mountain biking trail. There are no issues with riding these trails as the number of motorbikes are few and far between and you'll hear them coming so just pull over when they get near and give them a free run. If you're in a group, hold up fingers to indicate how many are in the group and the bikers will keep an eye out. They usually reciprocate for their group but again you'll know they are coming anyway.

Albion Freeway	Single trail, 4WD and motorcycle tracks and some mining history as well. Provides an alternative method to access the Sweet Nuggs and Countess trails from Blackwood.
Blue Mountain	A largely gravel road based trip but with a nice climb up to the summit of Blue Mountain. Nice views and an old cemetery on the way up with some graves from the goldfields era.
Countess Track	A challenging cross country circuit based on a motor bike loop. Can get a bit ripped up by motor bikes in the winter but the northern section is good year round.
Shaws Lake	A ride taking in the mineral springs and Shaws Lake which was used in the goldfield days for sluicing and alluvial mining operations. Good for a swim on a hot day.
Sweet Nuggs	Another motorbike loop based ride with a rough singletrack surface.
Tyrconnel Mine	A mine site that has been worked for many years and the buildings and adit are still there from mining operations that continued until very recently. If you search around in the bush you can locate the old crusher footings from the long distant gold rush.
Wheelers Track	This track is included as a return track down into the gorge if you do one of the northern rides. Basically a gravel road but all downhill. I've chased motor bikes down into the gorge area on this one - nice high speed run.
Yankee Track	A rough fire trail up near the Yankee mine area. Lots of mining history in this area just off the track.

Blackwood

Click on link for map showing how to get there.

Yankee Mine Parking Area

Click on link for map showing how to get there. Alternative parking location north of Blackwood just near the intersection of Yankee Road and Yankee Track. Good base for Blue Mountain, Countess Track, Sweet Nuggs and Yankee Track. Note that Google Maps shows but does not recognise the western section of Yankee Road when calculating the map so check whether coming in from the western side is better by zooming in on the map and checking.

	There is a map of the general area (based on the Lerderderg Track which is part of the GDT) located to the right of the Blackwood Merchant store.