Former Shire of Huntly Heritage Study Stage 1 Volume 2 Thematic Environmental History
Shire of Huntly, 1924. (Source: H E C Robinson 1924, Victoria: showing shires, boroughs towns and cities, cited in Victorian Places 2015)
Prepared for City of Greater Bendigo
Dr Robyn Ballinger
History Making Pty Ltd
PO Box 75 Maldon VIC 3463
June 2020 FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Acknowledgements
The consultants acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the country that is the subject of this history, the Dja Dja Wurrung, the Barpabarapa and the Taungurung peoples.
A number of local residents have provided information for this history, and we thank them for their contribution. Similarly, members of the Elmore Progress Association Museum and the Huntly and Districts’ Historical Society have been most supportive, and their contribution is greatly appreciated.
Conversions
Weights and measures
In this work imperial units for common measurements are used until 1970 when the present metric system was introduced.
1 inch = 2.54 centimetres
I foot = 0.30 metre
1 yard = 0.91 metre
1 chain = 20.11 metres
1 mile = 1.61 kilometres
1 ounce = 28.3 grams
1 pound = 454 grams
1 hundredweight = 50.802 kilograms
1 ton = 1.02 tonne
1 acre = 0.405 hectare
1 square mile = 2.59 kilometres
1 horsepower = 0.746 kilowatt
1 mile per hour = 1.61 kilometre per hour
Monetary values
Before 1966, Australian currency was expressed in pounds, shillings and pence (£ s d). The following form is used: £2 13s 6d.
Naming conventions
The goldfield on Bendigo Creek was first named Bendigo in 1852. The name was changed to Sandhurst in 1853, although the diggings continued to be referred to as the Bendigo goldfield. Sandhurst was renamed Bendigo in 1891. For the sake of consistency, ‘Bendigo’ is used throughout the report. Bendigo Creek was historically known as Piccaninny Creek north of Huntly. As requested by local residents consulted during the writing of this history, this naming convention has been retained. Today’s spelling of Barnadown differs to the
2 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY original spelling, ‘Barnedown’. The former spelling is used throughout the report except for the naming of the pastoral run and state school.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations used in the study include the following: ‘Farm complexes’ refer to farm residences and outbuildings as a group; HGA refers to the City of Greater Bendigo Heritage Gap Analysis (2019); HO refers to the Greater Bendigo Planning Scheme Overlay; VHR refers to the Victorian Heritage Register of state significant historical places, shipwrecks, and objects; VHI refers to the Victorian Heritage Inventory of known historical archaeological sites in Victoria; and NT refers to the National Trust Heritage Register.
3 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
1. Introduction Since the first occupation of what was to become known as the former Shire of Huntly by the Dja Dja Wurrung, Barapa Barapa and Taungurung Aboriginal peoples, multitudes of people have interacted with the natural environment over time to create the landscape that is in evidence today.
The former Shire of Huntly, located on the country of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Barapa Barapa and Taungurung Aboriginal peoples, incorporates two geomorphic divisions: the Midlands region of the Western Victorian Uplands (part of the Central Victorian Uplands), and the Murray Basin Plains. Some Box-Ironbark forest and native grasslands occur on roadsides, on private land, or are set aside in national and regional parks. The natural environment has shaped patterns of human settlement and activity and today the study area comprises extensive agricultural holdings, the townships of Epsom, Huntly, Goornong, and Elmore, and former settlements at Bagshot, Kamarooka, Barnadown, Drummartin, Hunter and Fosterville (see Figures 1 and 2).
The Shire of Huntly, measuring 878 square kilometres, was proclaimed on 13 July 1866. In 1875, the estimated population of the Shire of Huntly was 3,590; in 1954, 2,247; in 1979, 2,570 and in 1991, 4,542 (Huntly 126 Years 1980:25; Victorian Places 2015). The Shire was amalgamated into the City of Greater Bendigo in 1994.
Sheep and cattle grazing established by pastoralists on large runs in the area from the late 1830s displaced Dja Dja Wurrung, Barapa Barapa and Taungurung peoples, who were forced to move into other Country, to Aboriginal protectorates, or to find work on the runs. White occupation intensified with gold mining activity from the 1850s. At the same time, using local creeks and water supplied by the Coliban scheme, market gardens and orchards were developed in the southern part of the Shire of Huntly to supply the needs of miners on the Bendigo goldfield.
After a series of Land Acts were introduced from the 1860s to provide land for farms to the burgeoning goldfield population, a significant wheat and sheep industry was established in the northern part of the study area, and subsequently, a number of settlements and townships were founded to provide services to their agricultural hinterlands. The Murray River-Melbourne railway line, which traversed the Huntly Shire, opened in 1864. Consolidated development continued in the Shire through to the economic depression of the 1890s.
After World War I, in the first decades of the twentieth century, soldier settlement and the economic boom of the 1920s brought further development to the Shire of Huntly. This slowed with the widespread economic depression of the 1930s.
After World War II, during the 1940s-60s, agriculture once again enjoyed buoyant economic conditions and further soldier settlement took place from the mid-1940s.
Since the 1960s, with advances in agriculture coupled with farm aggregation, many districts of the study area have experienced a decrease in population. Conversely, the gradual loss of population from the Huntly and Epsom areas to neighbouring Bendigo was reversed in the 1980s, with residential development occurring in those areas from that time. More recently, greenfield residential developments have resulted in these parts of the former Shire taking on a more suburban appearance.
This report charts the post-contact history of the former Shire of Huntly by describing the layers of physical occupation that were shaped by the attitudes and values of the time. The history focuses on themes and events that have affected key stages of development to create today’s landscape, a landscape rich in historic places. The history considers development up until the present day with less emphasis on development since 1980.
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The City of Bendigo’s Framework of Historical Themes has been used in the preparation of the history and the HERCON criteria have been used to develop the Statement of Significance.
Figure 1. Former Shire of Huntly, showing townships, main roads, railway and waterways. (Source: Shaw 1966: frontispage)
5 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 2. Former Shire of Huntly, showing and parishes and districts. (Source: City Greater Bendigo 2020)
6 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
2. Statement of Significance What is significant?
The former Shire of Huntly, located on the country of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Barapa Barapa and Taungurung Aboriginal peoples, incorporates two geomorphic divisions: the Midlands region of the Western Victorian Uplands, and the Murray Basin Plains (the Riverine Plain). Its waterways include the Bendigo Creek, the Piccaninny Creek and the Campaspe River; portions of the Box-Ironbark forest remain at Kamarooka and Wellsford. This diverse environment has shaped the historical development of the study area.
Pastoralists took over Aboriginal land from the late 1830s, but intensive white settlement of the area began with the mining of the deep lead at Huntly in 1859, after gold was discovered on the Bendigo Creek in 1851. The townships of Huntly and Epsom were established as part of this era of mining activity and were later sustained by market gardening and wine making. Goldmining extended to May Reef in 1869, and to the Kamarooka and Fosterville areas in the 1890s where townships were also formed.
The opening of the Melbourne-Murray River railway line in 1864 saw the surveying of townships at Elmore (originally named Runnymede) and Goornong, and the establishment of settlements at Bagshot and South Elmore (today’s Avonmore).
From the early 1860s, programs were introduced by successive Victorian governments to encourage people to settle on the land. These initiatives included settlement under Land Acts introduced in the 1860s, which were eventually successful in establishing a significant wheat industry on the Riverine Plain of the study area.
Closer settlement Acts, introduced from the 1880s to settle people on small allotments across the colony of Victoria, resulted in the establishment of village settlements at Kamarooka during the 1890s economic depression. After World War I, large estates were subdivided for farms for soldier settler families, with the Hunter settlement founded at this time.
The economic boom that followed World War II saw subdivision of remaining estates for solider settlement and a period of sustained development in the study area.
With farm mergers and advances in technology and machinery, rural areas of the study area have experienced a decline in population since the 1960s. Conversely, places closer to Bendigo, such as Epsom and Huntly, have experienced population growth.
This historic interaction between people and the natural environment, shaped by the values and attitudes of the time, is reflected in the heritage landscape in evidence today.
How is it significant?
The former Shire of Huntly is of historical, social, architectural, aesthetic and scientific significance.
Why is it significant?
The former Shire of Huntly is historically significant, with squatters taking up land from the late 1830s along waterways, including the Campaspe River, and establishing homesteads that are still in evidence today (Criterion A).
From the late 1850s, the Huntly and Epsom areas were the focus of alluvial gold rushes, followed by the establishment and expansion of deep lead mining. Later, in the 1890s, quartz mining was carried out at Kamarooka and Fosterville. The Bendigo-Eaglehawk field, of which the former Shire of Huntly mines were a
7 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY part, was one of the world’s great nineteenth century quartz mining centres. The former Shire of Huntly’s mines were significant contributors to this wealth and their remains as well as early associated residences can be seen in the landscape today (Criterion A).
The Riverine Plain of the study area has been the focus of agricultural activity since the early 1870s with a number of farm complexes, built from the Victorian era through to the 1960s, still in evidence, with a number of early examples represented in the Goornong district. Essentially a flood plain characterised by myriad waterways, early infrastructure also comprised the building of fords and bridges, which have been upgraded and are still in use (Criterion A).
Large-scale immigration associated with gold mining brought a diversity of traditions and cultural practice to the area. Cornish, German and Chinese immigrant numbers in the former Shire of Huntly were particularly strong, with Chinese migrants involved in market gardening and Swiss-Italians making wine in the areas of Huntly and Epsom. Water delivered from the Coliban water scheme via the Huntly-Goornong and Ascot channels supported these industries, and from the 1920s, the tomato-growing industry (Criterion A and Criterion G).
The construction of the Melbourne-Murray River railway line through the study area, opened in 1864, resulted in the establishment of the townships of Avonmore, Goornong and Elmore on the line and facilitated access to Melbourne markets for fruit and vegetables grown in the Ascot, Huntly and Epsom areas from the 1860s and also for the transport of crops and livestock for farmers to the north. Original railway infrastructure evidences the line today, which is still in use (Criterion A).
Immigrant German architect William Vahland, who established his business in Bendigo, designed churches, civic buildings and residences in Huntly and Elmore. Melbourne architects were also responsible for bank and hospital designs in Elmore. These buildings contribute to the architectural/aesthetic and social significance of the former Shire of Huntly (Criterion A, Criterion E and Criterion H).
Residences in the former Shire of Huntly range from small miners’ cottages built in the period 1850s-1870s, to houses and farm complexes, many constructed during the boom years of the 1880s, 1920s and 1950s. The areas of Huntly and Epsom are distinguished by their post-World War II residential development and Elmore has a particularly rich and intact housing stock dating from the Victorian era (Criterion A and Criterion E).
The Shire of Huntly retains original street layouts surveyed in the townships of Ascot, Epsom, Huntly and Elmore. Moreover, early droving routes established from the 1840s are still in evidence today (Criterion A and Criterion E).
The former Shire of Huntly is of scientific significance. Numerous archaeological sites associated with the gold mining and forestry industries remain to demonstrate aspects of these processes. Natural sites of significance include the Sugar Loaf Reserve at Fosterville, classified as a geological site of regional significance; remnant grasslands in the Hunter Rail Reserve Grassland Site; and the Whipstick forest, which is of geographical and paleoclimatic interest within the State of Victoria (Criterion C).
3. Shaping the environment The natural environment of the study area has been a major influence in the shaping of settlement patterns and phases of development, and the establishment of industries.
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3.1 Geomorphology and geology The study area comprises two geomorphic divisions: the Midlands region of the Western Victorian Uplands (part of the Central Victorian Uplands), and the Murray Basin Plains (the Riverine Plain) (Cochrane et al 1995:65).
The Central Victorian Uplands have been lifted by slow, periodic, tectonic movements. About 100 million years ago, a bedrock spine was formed that runs east-west through Victoria, with the Great Dividing Range running along the crest. This crest divides the rivers, including the Campaspe River, that run north to the Murray River, and those that run south to the ocean.
The Midlands region of the Western Victorian Uplands include Victoria's gold-bearing rocks; sandstones, siltstones and mudstones that were deposited in deep marine beds some 400 million years ago. Gold is associated with veins of milky white quartz, which were intruded into the older rock after it had been uplifted, drained, folded and faulted. As a result, the Bendigo area’s saddle reefs (anticlines) contain gold-bearing reef quartz, whereas the creeks and gullies (synclines) contain alluvial deposits (Joyce 2015).
The Riverine Plain division of the Murray Basin Plains of the study area is essentially an extensive flood plain. It has been created from alluvium carried from the weathered surfaces of rocks by large rivers, which deposited gravels, sands and clays to create today’s plain country. As a consequence, historically, floods have been a common event on the Riverine Plain of the study area.
The Riverine Plain is characterised by flat to gently undulating land on recent unconsolidated sediments, with evidence of former stream channels. Low winding ridges mark the meandering courses of older streams. Red- brown duplex soils with a loamy surface and clay subsoil also characterise the older flood plain (the Shepparton Formation). Soils in the ancestral valleys and on the plain, which continues to be flooded by present-day rivers and streams, are grey with high sodium contents. In alternating wet and dry years, the clay subsoil of the plains moves upwards to form gilgais, mounds and depressions caused by the swelling and cracking of clays (Ballinger 2009:24)
3.2 Vegetation There are two main bioregions (a biogeographic region is defined as an area with common biological and geographical features) that make up the study area: the Goldfields and the Victorian Riverina. Within these bioregions, Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs) are used to classify native vegetation communities.
The Goldfields bioregion includes the core of the Box-Ironbark ecosystem, where Grassy Woodland and Box- Ironbark Forest EVCs dominate. Before European settlement, this bioregion was covered with a mixture of dry forest and woodland types, mostly on relatively poor soils. Grassy Woodland and Box-Ironbark Forest dominated. Mallee shrublands were also represented (NCCMA 2005: unpaginated).
Canopy trees in the Box-Ironbark forests are divided into three main forest associations: red ironbark (E tricarpa), red stringybark (E macrorhynca) and red box (E polyanthermos) that grow on steeper slopes and ridges; red ironbark, yellow gum (E leucoxylon) and grey box (E microcarpa) that grow on the better drained lower slopes; and grey box and yellow gum that grown on the alluvial plains (ECC 1997:66-71). It has been noted that the boundaries of the Box-Ironbark forests generally match the geological distribution of gold (Bannear 1996:7). Only approximately 54 per cent of the original native vegetation of the Goldfields bioregion remains (VEAC 2010:88).
On the Victorian Riverine Plain bioregion before European settlement, Plains Woodland and Plains Grassland EVCs were the predominant vegetation communities. The Woodlands were characterised by low-density tree
9 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY cover with an understorey of scattered shrubs and a well-developed grassy layer. Plains Woodland canopy trees in the study were mainly grey box and white-cypress pine (Callitris glaucophylla). Remnant Plains Grasslands were dominated by wallaby and spear grasses, with a rich mixture of herbs from the daisy, saltbush and pea families. River red gums (E camaldulensis) and black box (E largiflorens) grew along rivers, creeks and in swamp areas (NCCMA 2005: unpaginated; ECC 1997:71-74). About one fifth of the original native vegetation of the Victorian Riverina bioregion remains. Of this vegetation on public land, almost 40 percent is on road reserves (VEAC 2010:70).
Forests in the study area comprise the former Kamarooka State Forest and Park and Whipstick State Park, which are now part of the Greater Bendigo National Park created in 2002, and a part of the Wellsford State Forest. Significant remnant vegetation sites exist in the Kamarooka and Whipstick (named after a type of eucalypt used for horse whips) and at least nine red ironbarks, between 500 to 700 years old, grow in the Wellsford State Forest. Other significant trees that once provided shelter to families involved in eucalyptus distilling in the Whipstick include a large blue mallee (E polybractea) and green mallee (E viridis) at Campbells distillery. Roy Roger's Tree (HO854), a significant ironbark growing in the Whipstick is reputed to have been deliberately left by Roy Rogers, a government forestry foreman, to evidence how large these trees grew (Lovell Chen 2013b:11). The Bendigo Whipstick has been assessed by the National Trust (Victoria) to be of considerable geographical and paleoclimatic interest within the State of Victoria (NT 2004, 68274).
Huntly is known as the home of the Whirrakee wattle, which grows in profusion in the area (H&DHS 2020).
The Sugarloaf Range at Fosterville is classified as a geological site of regional significance by the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (ECC 1997:235).
3.3 Fauna Apart from reptiles and amphibians, approximately ten Box-Ironbark stronghold species occur across the study area, including the brush-tailed phascogale, squirrel glider, swift parrot, barking owl, white-bellied cuckoo shrike, painted honeyeater, black-chinned honeyeater and diamond fire-tail. Due to the high degree of seasonal variation in eucalyptus nectar, a large number of species (mainly birds) move through the study area on a regular, sporadic or even daily basis (ECC 1997:64-65). The loss of habitat through vegetation clearance, introduction of carnivores such as foxes and cats, and destruction of native species considered pests by farmers, has caused marked changes in the distribution of hundreds of species in the study area, and the extinction of many others (Lovell Chen 2013b:12).
A number of significant vertebrate fauna are found in the Box-Ironbark forest, including the study area (see ECC 1997:246-47).
3.4 Climate Climate change is affecting historic climate averages. The climate of the study area is semi-arid to temperate, being dry and warm to hot in summer and cooler and wetter in winter. Most rain falls in winter and spring, with May to October being the wettest months. Dry periods are extended by El Niño events. The more elevated and southerly parts of the study area generally experience cooler weather with higher rainfall, whereas the northwest districts of the study area, which are closer to inland Australia, are more prone to northwest winds and other drying influences from the arid zone (ECC 1997:42). Mean annual rainfall at Bendigo is 503mm compared to Elmore at 458mm.
3.5 Water resources
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The former Shire of Huntly takes in the basins of the Loddon River and Campaspe River, both of which flow to the River Murray from the Great Dividing Range. The Campaspe River forms the western boundary of the study area.
The Bendigo Creek, also known north of Huntly as the Piccaninny Creek, is part of the Loddon River basin, as are the waterways of Five Mile Creek, Yankee Creek, Sandy Creek, Reedy Creek, Crabhole Creek, and Round Creek (see Figure 1).
In addition, Murray Basin water underlies the Riverine Plain.
Places that represent the theme ‘Shaping the Environment’ include:
• the Campaspe River and creeks and swamps of the study area
• the Sugar Loaf Reserve at Fosterville
• remnant grasslands in the Hunter Rail Reserve Grassland Site
• Box-Ironbark forests at Kamarooka and Wellsford
• the Whipstick forest
4. Peopling places and landscape
4.1 Aboriginal peoples Although traditional Aboriginal boundaries were somewhat fluid, the Aboriginal clans who have traditionally occupied, and continue to occupy the country of the study area are the Jaara Jaara people of the Dja Dja Wurrung people, 24 clans who spoke the Dja Dja Wurrung language; the Taungurung people, nine clans who spoke the Taungurung language; and the Barapa Barapa people, eight clans who spoke the Barapa Barapa language (see Figure 3) (Clark 1990:20). All clans shared the two moieties of Bundjil (the wedge tail eagle) and Waa (also Waang) (the crow). Members of the tribes identified with one or the other of these moieties and it was their moiety which determined the pattern for marriage between individuals (Taungurung Land & Waters Council 2020). The Aboriginal clans of the study area moved within their country according to seasons, basing their economy on a variety of small, distinct and carefully managed micro-environments.
Before the arrival of Europeans in the late 1830s, the Riverine Plain of the study area provided particularly rich resources of fish and waterfowl for nine months of the year, allowing groups such as the Barapa Barapa to live in large village communities (Lovell Chen 2013a:3). Stone was extremely scarce along the Murray River and its tributaries, but string formed a central part of the plains’ economy along with bone, shell and reeds. People worked in teams to process bulrushes in extensive earth ovens, rolling and weaving the fibre into huge nets as wide as the rivers, to catch fish and waterfowl. Reed spears were made in large quantities by Riverine tribes such as the Barapa Barapa and were widely traded (Lovell Chen 2013a:3). In the winter months, people often dispersed in smaller family groups to eke out a living along the creeks away from the rivers, or to visit kin and neighbours.
The Dja Dja Wurrung moved within the wooded and hilly environment of their country, which, intersected by streams, valleys, and chains of ponds, provided a wide variety of plant and animal foods, birds and reptiles, which could supply a family group with most of their needs throughout the year. The region did not lend itself
11 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY to large village gatherings, mass exploitation of resources, and a dense population as happened on the rivers to the north. Although there was some division of labour in the food quest, with men generally hunting the larger mammals and women gathering the vegetable foods, there was considerable overlap (Lovell Chen 2013a:3).
A staple plant food for the Taungurung peoples was the Mirnong (yam daisy) which provided a reliable source of carbohydrate. Stringy bark was used to construct shelters or to weave baskets. The rich resources of the permanent rivers, creeks, tributaries and associated floodplains enabled Taungurung people to access an abundance of fish and other wildlife. Fish were speared and trapped while water birds were netted. The pelts from the possum were sewn together to make cloaks for winter. In the summer the Taungurung people travelled south for the Debera (Bogong moth) season and then head back north when the weather cooled (Taungurung Land & Waters Council 2020).
By the time of occupation of the region by squatters from the late 1830s, Aboriginal peoples had lived and worked with the environs of the study area for thousands of years. Although many were moved off Country, they have returned and continue to maintain a strong connection to Country today.
Figure 3. Aboriginal languages groups within the study area. (Source: Clark 1990:20)
4.2 Pastoralism Men of some wealth, from mostly England and Scotland, were attracted to sheep farming in the Port Phillip District (later the colony of Victoria) by news of white settlement in the Portland area in 1834. Pastoralists also arrived after positive reviews of the country were published by Surveyor-General of New South Wales, Thomas Mitchell, after his 1836 expedition through the Port Phillip District.
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Immigrant squatters took over vast acreages of land in the study area for grazing (see Table 1 and Figure 4) causing significant rupture to the spiritual, environmental, political and economic order of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Barapa Barapa and Taungurung peoples.
Name of run Name of licensee Year occupied Size in acres in 1848
Barnedown (and Axedale) No 34 Henry Grey Bennett 1840 51,200
Burnewang No 32 Edward & William 1841 112,913 Postlethwaite
Campaspe River No 158 Robert Edwin Ogilby 1840-1 48,000
Myers Creek No 5 John Aitken 1846 50,000
Piccaninny Creek (Kamarooka) John Aitken 1846 51,840 No 3
Tandarra No 4 John Aitken 1846 50,000
Table 1. Showing the first pastoral runs in the study area. These runs were later subdivided to form additional runs. (Source: Spreadborough and Anderson 1983; Randell 1982:535)
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6 1 5 2 4
3
Figure 4. Showing approximate locations of squatting runs in the study area in 1851: Burnewang (1); Campaspe River (2); Barnedown (3); Myers Creek (4); Tandarra (5) and Piccaninny Creek (6). Note also the track in existence following the Campaspe River, which linked the colony of Victoria to Deniliquin in New South Wales. (Source: Ham 1851, SLV)
Squatters and their workers built huts and outstations, yards, hurdles and fences: bark sheeting was used for buildings, as was timber from available eucalypts. The first fences were of chock and logs and/or brush, with some squatters setting up pit saws on their runs to cut timber. Shearing sheds and sheep dips were also constructed.
Sheep were bred for their wool in the 1830s and 1840s, but with the gold rushes of the 1850s, sheep and cattle were increasingly grown for the meat market. At the same time, station workers left in droves to try their hand on goldfields. Some licensees of runs took advantage of increased values in stock and stations to sell up their interests in this period, but others benefited by staying put to supply meat to the goldfields.
The 1847 Order in Council provided further impetus to sheep farming by introducing pre-emptive rights that permitted the purchase of 640 acres (one square mile) around established residences on squatting runs. Large homesteads with numerous rooms, substantial outbuildings and expansive gardens were subsequently built on freehold land. Further security was offered to squatters with nine-year leases introduced in 1852.
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A number of homesteads were built in the study area from this time. Adelaide Vale (HO424; VHR H0304) on the Barnedown run in 1853, for example, was constructed for John Harney from sandstone, with granite windowsills and lintels, and incorporated a large octagonal room (see Figure 5) (Webb and Quinlan 1985:42).
Upstream on the Campaspe River, traveller and diarist William Howitt found Thomas Robertson on his Campaspe River station in 1854 ‘living in a small cottage with a door and two windows, suitable to the merest labourer in England.' However, by 1856 Robertson was living in a large, brick, two-storey mansion with gardens extending to the river, today’s Campaspe Park (HO459) (see Figure 6) (Randell 1982:521). At land sales held in 1854-56, Robertson purchased a large number of blocks along the Campaspe River from Barnadown to Elmore, thus establishing himself as one of the largest owners of freehold land in the district at that time (Elmore Parish Plan 1942.)
Figure 5. Adelaide Vale homestead and outbuildings in the early 1850s. (Source: Jeffreys 1852-1855, SLV)
15 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 6. ‘Campaspe Park’ homestead in 2000. (Source: VHD ‘Campaspe Park’ VHR H1923, 2000)
With the construction of the Melbourne-Murray River railway through Burnewang run, in 1864 the run was subdivided into Burnewang East and Burnewang West. After the lease expired on Burnewang West, in 1884 the run was sold to brothers Robert and William Hunter. Robert Hunter lived at Burnewang Park, established on 33,000 acres where a homestead, private school and outbuildings were built (see Figure 7). William Hunter made his home at Burnewang North (see Figure 8) (Lonsdale 2006:93). Substantial stables at ‘The Halfway’, located on the Burnewang West run, were used to water and feed horses when moving between the two properties. The property was also used by local farmers travelling between the Mitiamo district and Bendigo to camp and rest livestock being taken to the Bendigo saleyards (Jasper 2020). ‘The Halfway’ was later subdivided into an area of 500 acres and purchased by T McCormick in 1924. A property on the site today retains the same name.
16 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 7. Burnewang Park in 1973. (Source: Collins 1973, SLV)
Figure 8. Burnewang North in 1981. (Source: Collins 1981, SLV)
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The Victorian Crown Land Selection Acts (Land Acts) of the 1860s (see Section 4.4) aimed to settle the burgeoning population of gold seekers on government land that was leased to squatters. However, many squatters retained the most productive land of their leaseholds through employing ‘dummies’ (nominal selectors) to apply for land on their behalf and fulfill the residency conditions. ‘Peacocking’ was another technique used, whereby squatters ‘picked out the eyes’ of the land, using their local knowledge to select the most productive holdings. This then rendered the surrounding land less useful for farming under selection.
Drought conditions related to strong El Niño events in 1866 and 1868, a fall in wool prices, the pending expiry in 1870 of nine-year leases and the imminent introduction of the 1869 Land Act prompted some squatters to sell up and leave the study area in this period. The remaining pastoral leases were cancelled in 1870 under the legislation of the 1869 Land Act.
The effect of squatting on Aboriginal peoples was devastating. The Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate station at Franklinford, near today’s Daylesford, overseen by Edward Stone Parker, afforded the Dja Dja Wurrung and those Barapa Barapa people who visited less regularly, some protection. The Taungurung visited the Goulburn Aboriginal Protectorate at Mitchellstown, near today’s Nagambie. However, because the country taken up for sheep and cattle runs took over the same places that were most valuable to the original occupants - the creeks, water courses and rivers – traditional Aboriginal life was all but destroyed.
There was a notable increase in Aboriginal-European violence between the years 1838 and 1842, perhaps exacerbated by diminished food and water supplies caused by the dry years. Significant conflict occurred on Henry Munro’s Campaspe run in 1839-1840 and on Henry Bennett’s Barnedown run in 1841 (Attwood 2017:69). Despite this violence, Aboriginal labour formed an integral component of economic life on pastoral stations and in some cases strong working relationships were forged between squatters and Aboriginal peoples, especially when the gold rushes of the early 1850s led to shortages of workers. Aboriginal men were employed as shearers, woodcutters, shepherds, water carters, and fencers, and women as needle workers, midwives and bark cutters (Lovell Chen 2013b:18). Aboriginal people were well placed to continue their traditions of bark cutting with stations in the area documenting payments to Aboriginal people for cutting bark sheeting for use in buildings (Ballinger 2009:65). Local clans were also involved in keeping fires stoked under large coppers and boilers to provide hot water for sheep washing on runs in the study area (Shaw 1966:13).
White people also learnt something of Aboriginal cultural traditions, with squatters on the plains’ country quickly realising that the grasslands on which their sheep and cattle depended had been managed over many years by Aboriginal firestick burning.
4.3 Gold rushes The Australian gold rushes were amongst the most significant of a series of rushes that occurred around the periphery of the Pacific Ocean from the mid-nineteenth century. Beginning in California in the late 1840s, the rushes swept through eastern Australia in the 1850s, New Zealand in the 1860s, the Klondike in the 1880s, and Alaska in the 1890s. People moved quickly, trying their luck at alluvial mining, creating 'instant' settlements, shifting from one gold discovery to another, or even from one colony to another (Lennon 2001:43).
The majority of international arrivals to Australia were from Britain. Between 1851 and 1860, an estimated 300,000 people came to the Australian colonies from England and Wales, with another 100,000 from Scotland and 84,000 from Ireland. Gold seekers from Germany, Italy and North America also made the journey to Australia. Just over 5,000 people from New Zealand and other South Pacific nations, and at least 42,000 people from China, also arrived in Australia during the 1850s gold rushes. During this period, the colony of Victoria received 60 per cent of all immigrants to Australia (Elkner 2015).
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Large groups of Chinese, Cornish and Germans joined the migration to the Shire of Huntly.
The Chinese came to Australia from 1852, in part driven out by conflict in southern China. Bendigo was one of six Victorian gold mining centres that attracted the Chinese, who were mostly from Guangdong Province. By 1855, 5,325 Chinese lived in nine camps in Bendigo, including one located at Huntly. The Chinese population decreased to 1,000 in 1859, but by 1868 had increased again to 3,500 (Golden Dragon Museum cited in Lovell Chen 2013b:22). Some Chinese returned home, but many others made permanent homes in the local area, gaining employment in varied fields, but, in the study area, particularly as market gardeners.
Cornish copper miners living in South Australia in the 1830s and 1840s travelled to the goldfields of Victoria in the 1850s. The first Cornish arrivals on the Victorian goldfields overlanded from the copper mines of South Australia, to where they had originally migrated in the late 1830s and 1840s. With the collapse of the Cornish copper mining industry in 1866, a further mass migration of Cornish miners took place. In 1881 in Bendigo, perhaps one in four households were occupied by Cornish people (Charles Fahey cited in Lovell Chen 2013b:24). Large numbers of Cornish miners joined the 1859 gold rush to Huntly’s deep lead, opening a Methodist church and school in Murray Road, Huntly, in 1860 (Shaw 1966:45).
By 1857, 1,266 Germans, the third largest ethnic group on the goldfields, surpassed only by the Chinese and British, had emigrated to the diggings at Sandhurst; by 1861 they numbered some 10,000 (Frank Cusack cited in Lovell Chen 2013b:27). German architects and builders established prestigious practices, the most prominent being architect and engineer William, or Wilhelm, Vahland, and architect Robert Getzschmann (Lovell Chen 2013b:27). In 1859, William Vahland married Jane Barrow at her family home, ‘Charterhouse’, approximately 880 acres that straddled the Campaspe River at Runnymede, and which Vahland came to own in 1880 (Arnold 2008:389; Ballinger 2015:unpaginated). Vahland designed a number of buildings in the study area, including the Elmore Water Trust secretary’s house (1898), the Elmore Mechanics Institute library building (1886), the Elmore St Andrews Presbyterian Church (1899), and with Robert Getzschmann, St Johns Catholic Church (1875) at Huntly.
Research has indicated that the gold rushes in central Victoria rapidly decimated Aboriginal populations (see Smith et al 2008:551). While labour shortages caused by the gold rushes enabled those remaining to take up employment on sheep and cattle runs, Aboriginal people living on the edges of gold towns fared less well, with many becoming dependent on begging and prostitution. Giving evidence to an 1858 government select committee into the condition of Aborigines in Victoria, Aboriginal Protector Edward Parker stated that two Aboriginal families continued to farm at Franklinford, but that the remaining Jaara Jaara people picked up a scanty subsistence on the goldfields and occasionally among the settlers to the north (Clark 1990:145-46). Anecdotal accounts tell stories of Aboriginal communities moving to the north, away from the diggings at Bendigo, to avoid the problems of alcoholism, prostitution and begging (Attwood 1999:37-45). A large Aboriginal camp, for instance, existed at Elmore in 1865 (Shaw 1966:82).
4.4 Land Acts In an effort to overcome the breaking of the law by wealthy pastoralists to gain land under the 1860 and 1862 Land Acts, the 1865 Land Act aimed to provide families of little means an opportunity of owning land through leasing. Some 2,800,000 acres were selected under this Act, but the legislation failed to eradicate the practice of dummying. By this time too, ‘professional’ selectors were buying land to force pastoralists to buy them out at a profit.
Section 42 of the 1865 Act allowed people to reside on and cultivate up to 20 acres of Crown land in and around the goldfields under annual licenses. This section of the Act impacted on the development of the study
19 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY area, with allotments taken up on land along the watercourses of Piccaninny Creek, Bendigo Creek, Five Mile Creek, Yankee Creek, Sandy Creek, and Reedy Creek, and with large areas selected on most of the fertile land around the Huntly goldfield, including part of Burnewang station. Much of the land selected under Section 42 at Huntly was used to plant vineyards and orchards (see Section 7.8) (Shaw 1966:71-72).
Under the 1869 Land Act all unalienated land in the colony was opened for selection of up to 320 acres, and by the end of 1878, nearly eleven million acres had been selected, including the majority of land within the former Shire of Huntly. Licences under this Act aimed to ‘improve’ the land, with selectors required to live on the selection for at least two and a half years; to build a house within three years to fulfil residency conditions; to fence the selection; to cultivate at least 10 per cent of the land; and to affect other improvements such as clearing vegetation, constructing water storages, and erecting outbuildings. Section 49 of the Act allowed allotments of 20 acres to be taken up on the goldfields, many of which were taken up in the area by the Chinese for market gardens.
The 1869 Land Act was eventually successful in establishing selectors on farms in the study area. Often farming in family groups, they established a wheat and sheep industry on the plains country of the former Shire of Huntly in the Parishes of Diggora, Egerton, Ellesmere, Elmore, Goornong, Kamarooka, Nolan and Warragamba (Parish Plans 1942-72).
After a series of drought years from 1876, the Land Act of 1878 doubled the time allowed for the payment of rents due on land selected under previous Acts. The 1884 Land Act allowed only leasing of land for grazing or agricultural purposes, and under section 65, allowed 20 acre lots to be taken up under auriferous (gold mining) licenses. In the study area under this Act, a number of families moved to Kamarooka to engage in quartz mining (see Section 7.2) (Shaw 1966:97). Grazing licences were taken up in the Parishes of Bagshot, Huntly and Egerton under the 1898 and 1901 Land Acts (Parish Plans 1942-72).
These Land Acts established farming families on land in the study area, with populations fluctuating according to climate conditions and the economic booms of the 1920s and 1950s and depressions of the 1890s and 1930s. However, after increased mechanisation from the 1960s, many farms were consolidated into larger holdings and the populations of rural communities decreased.
4.5 Closer settlement In addition to the Land Acts of 1860-1901, a series of closer settlement acts to encourage more intensive settlement of existing large estates were introduced in 1898 and 1904. This legislation allowed large freehold estates to be resumed by the Crown and subdivided into smaller holdings.
In Australia during the economic depression of the 1890s, employing people on unused or under-used rural land was seen as a way of ameliorating unemployment and addressing overcrowding in urban areas. Villages intended to become self-sufficient and based on co-operative enterprise were established under the Village Settlement Act of 1892 in rural, forest, and irrigated areas. In addition, under the Settlement of Land Act 1893, families were given cash advances by the Victorian government to take up cultivation of dryland and irrigated allotments of between one and 50 acres.
The Acts established village communities, labour colonies and homestead associations in areas where seasonal work was available to supplement farm work. In 1893, land for village settlements was proclaimed in the Victorian Government Gazette and included 2,845 acres at the northern end of the Kamarooka State Forest for a Homestead Association (Argus 7 October 1893:15). An extension was planned to the settlement in 1901 through clearing an area of the Kamarooka forest.
20 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
The Endeavour Homestead Association was consequently established at Round Creek in the Pembroke district along today’s Larsens Road in 1893. The original 29 settlers, who were allocated allotments of 35 acres, included three Norwegian sailors with the surnames Anderson, Larsen and Jensen. The settlers constructed houses of bush slabs or mud bricks with earthen floors, shingle roofs and mud brick chimneys (Pedersen 1987:46; Arnold 2008:140; Elmore Standard 20 October 1893:2 and 24 May 1895:2). Roads today in Kamarooka, Jensens Road and Larsens Road, evidence this period of settlement.
In 1893 a village settlement was also established at Kamarooka in the Parish of Whirrakee on the south side of the Elmore-Raywood Road between Clarke’s Road and Clays Road (Whirrakee Parish Plan 1971). Some of the 70-80 village settlers took up land as family groups, thereby creating larger allotments through farming contiguous blocks (Elmore Standard 24 May 1895:2).
The Kamarooka settlements were ultimately unsuccessful because of the small size of the blocks, the unsuitability of the land for cultivation, and the take up of land by local residents to supplement their income through grazing and wood cutting rather than providing land for the urban unemployed for whom the scheme was intended. Some of the remains of the houses can be seen today.
Under another scheme in 1894, the Bendigo Miners Association applied for 1,000 acres at Kamarooka for a settlement for 'old and worn-out miners’ (Mercury 27 August 1894:3.).
In the buoyant economic climate following World War I, another wave of closer settlement was instigated through a program to settle returned servicemen. Discharged Soldier Settlement Acts, passed in the period 1917-24, in conjunction with the Closer Settlement Acts of 1915, 1918 and 1922, formed the legislative basis for Victorian soldier settlement on the land. The Acts also variously provided for sustenance money to be paid during the farm establishment period, for financial advances to the settlers, and for training of inexperienced farmers. Seen as repaying the ‘debt of honour’, the soldier settlement scheme enjoyed widespread public and political support.
A number of existing large estates in the study area were sold for closer and soldier settlement in these years and subdivided into 200-300 acre lots (see Figure 9).
Eight-thousand acres of the Burnewang Park estate was subdivided in 1922 and made available to returned soldiers from 1923. The Argus reported
The executors of the late Mr. Robert Hunter have sold the Burnewang Park Estate, Elmore, comprising 8,000 acres, to the Closer Settlement Board. Burnewang Park is one of the best station properties in Northern Victoria. The land is rich and fertile, and there is a fine modern homestead, with other farm buildings. The price paid was about £70,000 (Argus 18 September 1922:4).
Soldier settlers also took up land on the Elmore Estate (11,300 acres in the Parish of Minto made up of parts of Bellholme, Burnewang Park and Burnewang North estates), established in 1920 (Lovelace c2002:76-77).
The blocks were often too small to be viable and few of the settlers survived the economic depression of the 1930s. As early as 1922, soldier settlers on the Burnewang Estate were experiencing difficulty in clearing timber and faced a ‘deficiency of grass’ for agistment. Lack of water continued to be a problem and in 1935 the Closer Settlement Board enlarged the blocks to 450 acres where possible (Lovelace c2002:79-80). Sugar gums and pepper trees were planted as windbreaks on farms in the Elmore, Avonmore and Hunter districts at this time and are still in evidence today.
A portion of Adelaide Vale was also taken up for soldier settlement in 1923 (Arnold 2008:507).
21 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 9. A repatriated soldier's home at Hunter, 1923. (Source: Victorian Places 2015).
Further soldier settlement took place in the study area after World War II. Parts of the former Egerton Park, Burnewang and Kamarooka (Piccaninny) estates, for instance, were purchased for soldier settlement in 1947 (Shaw 1966:121; Back to Elmore 1990:87), as was land in the Goornong district. The soldier settlers under these Acts were more successful than those taking up land after World War I as larger acreages were allocated.
Farmhouses constructed in the post-war period of the 1940s-1960s are still in evidence today, even though, in the case of Huntly, farmland has been subdivided for residential development.
Places that represent the theme of ‘Peopling places and landscape’ include:
• pastoral run homesteads ‘Adelaide Vale’, ‘Ellesmere Vale’, ‘Campaspe Park’, ‘Burnewang Park’, ‘Burnewang North’
• the cultural influence of migrants exemplified by the establishment of churches and the design of buildings by German architect, William Vahland
• residences in townships and farm complexes in rural areas that represent eras of settlement from the 1850s through to the 1960s
• land subdivision at Kamarooka, which is a legacy of the 1890s village settlements in that era
22 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
5. Connecting by transport and communications
5.1 Transport Tracks and roads
The first tracks through the study area were made by the Dja Dja Wurrung, Barapa Barapa and Taungurung Aboriginal peoples as they travelled to source food and water, to trade items, and to make ceremony.
From the late 1830s, a number of squatters passed through the area as they drove their stock to the Western District via the Campaspe and Loddon rivers, making use of waterholes in what was to become known as the Five Mile, Yankee, Sandy, Reedy and Bendigo creeks (Shaw 1966:10). By the late 1840s, a track from Deniliquin in the New South Wales Riverina crossed the River Murray at the punt at what was to become Echuca and travelled down the west bank of the Campaspe River (now the Barnadown-Elmore Road) passing by the Elmore Hotel built in 1846. At Barnadown, the road forked to cross to the east bank of the Campaspe River onward to Kyneton and Melbourne, or to Bendigo via today’s Sandy Creek Road (see Figure 32).
It is likely that this track, like others that crossed watercourses, followed existing Aboriginal pathways. The Rocky Crossing area at Barnadown on the Campaspe River, for example, contains a number of Aboriginal cultural heritage sites. Rocky Crossing was also used by drovers in the 1880s bringing cattle from Queensland and New South Wales along the three-chain road from Echuca (see Figure 32) (Webb and Quinlan 1985:42).
Another early track was the Bendigo to Echuca road, known as the ‘high road’ from Bendigo to the Murray, later named Murray Road (part of which is now the Old Murray Road) that travelled from Bendigo through Epsom and Huntly towards Kamarooka before turning and passing through Bagshot to follow the Bendigo Creek and then travelling to Goornong and on to Echuca (see Figure 32). After the Country Roads Board (CRB) was established in 1913 it worked with local governments to build and maintain main roads and in 1928 the Murray Road was rerouted to bypass Bagshot. The Murray Road was later named the Midland Highway to Elmore where it meets the Northern Highway and is known by that name through to Echuca (see Figure 10).
Figure 10. Midland Highway at Bagshot railway crossing, 1940. (Source: PROV VPRS 17684 P3 3900349)
23 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
By the 1850s, a track led from Bendigo to the Rushworth goldfields, crossing the Campaspe River near Goornong. An 1865 map shows the track, which travelled from the Bendigo goldfield via Huntly to the Rushworth goldfields through to Wangaratta, crossing the River Murray at Albury and onto the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales (Map of Victoria 1865). The route was one of Victoria’s busiest gold-era roads, connecting the central goldfields area with the Beechworth-Chiltern goldfields, and ultimately with the New South Wales goldfields (VHD ‘Fergusons Bridge’ VHR H1853, 1999).
As parishes in the study area were surveyed from the 1860s, diagonal three chain stock routes were created to enable the movement of livestock to access markets, railway stations, and Campaspe River crossings. The Elmore-Minto Road and the Elmore-Mitiamo Road are two such extant examples (see Figure 32). Another stock route travelled from the Murray road through the Wellsford State Forest to the Campaspe River crossing at today’s Russells Bridge and is known currently as the Old Stock Route.
Another early road was that constructed by the Campaspe Road Board to deal with the traffic travelling to the Millwood Reef rush at Kamarooka in 1863-64. Ten miles of road were constructed from Lower Huntly, crossing Bendigo Creek and Fiedlers Bridge, through Raine’s crossing, past the Huntly North school to Millwood Diggings, and on to Kamarooka (Arnold 2008:139).
River crossings and bridges
Fords and punts were used to cross waterways before the construction of timber bridges. Some of the first bridges in the study area were built over the Campaspe River and major creeks, such as Bendigo Creek and Piccaninny Creek. The Shire of Huntly took over responsibility for all existing bridges in the study area in 1870.
Six bridges were built in the study area to cross the Campaspe River: on Englishs Road at Barnadown; on the Bendigo-Murchison Road at Elmore; on Avonmore Bridge Road at Elmore; on the Bendigo-Murchison Road in the Goornong district; and on River Road at Ellesmere.
The lessees of the Clare Inn established in 1854 on the Campaspe River on squatter Thomas Robertson’s run at Barnadown, also operated a punt across the river (see Figure 11). Operated by Edward Kennedy from c1855, the punt was used by the Burke and Wills expedition in 1860 to cross the river before Burke and Wills dined at John Harney’s Adelaide Vale property (Shaw 1966:48). Cornishmen James and John Nicholas leased the Clare Inn and the operation of the punt from 1862 (Jones 1990:196). The punt operated until a bridge was built across the river nearby in 1866-67 (Bendigo Advertiser 14 November 1867:2). In 1874, the Huntly Shire constructed approaches for a new bridge on the west bank of the Campaspe River (VGG 2 January 1874:9). Major repairs to the bridge were made in 1894 and 1916, with a replacement bridge erected in 1930. The road was realigned when the current bridge was built in 1969 (Arnold 2008:460).
24 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 11. Kennedy's punt Campaspe River, 1860. (Source: Strafford 1860, SLV)
A low water bridge named Barrow’s Bridge was constructed over the Campaspe River at Runnymede in 1865. This was replaced in 1870 by a high-water timber bridge at today’s Elmore that was reinforced in 1906 (see Figure 12) (Back to Elmore 1990:85; Shaw 1966:82; Arnold 2008:254). A new concrete and steel bridge opened in 1962 to replace the timber bridge (Back to Elmore 1990:87).
25 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 12. Bridge over the Campaspe River c1920-1950s. (Source: Rose Stereograph c1920-1954, SLV)
Russells Bridge across the Campaspe River on River Road at Ellesmere was repaired in 1904 and 1913 before the decking was washed away in floods in 1930. After repairs, the bridge remained open until the mid-1990s when it was deemed unsafe. A new low-level crossing replaced the bridge in 2002 (Arnold 2008:544).
A ford was built to cross the Campaspe River near Thomas Robertson’s homestead site on today’s Bendigo- Murchison Road in the Goornong district. In 1881 a low-level timber bridge named Fergusons Bridge replaced the ford. This in turn was replaced by the extant rare curved-deck timber and steel structure erected in 1939 by the Country Roads Board (VHR H1853; HO709) (VHD ‘Fergusons Bridge’ VHR H1853, 1999). A new bridge has since been built with the 1939 bridge left in situ nearby.
After the opening of the South Elmore (Avonmore) railway station in 1864, a timber bridge, known as Micheel’s Bridge, was built over the Campaspe River at South Elmore. Opened in 1893, the bridge was extensively altered in 1934. The bridge was used frequently by farmers carting their wheat to the Avonmore Railway Station. The bridge was replaced by a new low-level concrete structure in 1986 (Back to Elmore 1990:47; Arnold 2008:392).
English’s Bridge, in today’s Englishs Road, was demolished and replaced by a low-level crossing across the Campaspe River in the early 2000s (Arnold 208:502).
Timber bridges were built over Bendigo Creek, including Knight’s bridge at Epsom built in 1858, rebuilt in 1893, and lengthened in 1904 (Arnold 2008:14). In the Huntly area, Bullocky Bridge was built on the Kamarooka- Tennyson Road (replaced in 1963) and Fiedlers Bridge on the Neilborough Road (replaced in 1972) (Huntly 126 Years 1980:9). Bridges were also built across Piccaninny Creek in the Bagshot area at Mulcairs Road in 1908, and at McKenzies Road in 1890, the latter of which was replaced in 1914 (Arnold 2008:408).
Railways
26 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
The construction of railway lines in the colony of Victoria followed the spread of settlement, with the first railway lines built with private capital. Surveyor General, Captain Andrew Clarke, was authorised to undertake surveys for railways throughout the central portion of the colony in the 1850s. By the end of 1855, survey parties had completed surveys for lines, including the Main Trunk Lines from Melbourne to the Murray River at Echuca and Geelong to Ballarat.
In 1862, the Melbourne-Murray River railway line reached Bendigo and in 1859-64 the line was extended to Echuca to access the Murray River and Darling River paddle-steamer trade, opening on 19 September 1864. Stations or sidings were built in the study area along the line in a northerly direction from Bendigo: at Bendigo North, White Hills, Ascot (racecourse), Epsom, Huntly, Bagshot, Wellsford, Goornong, South Elmore (later Avonmore), and Runnymede (Elmore). A series of brick arched bridges were constructed on the line, as were bluestone and brick drainage culverts. In 1915, the Elmore-Cohuna railway line opened with the Hunter station the only railway station located in the study area.
Passenger services on the Elmore-Cohuna line were withdrawn in 1977 and the line closed in 1986. Passenger services on the Melbourne-Murray River line ceased in 1987 with coaches taking over daily passenger transport but were re-established in 1998.
The construction of the Melbourne-Murray River railway line in 1859-64 brought significant change to the study area by providing transport to markets for farming selectors, a number of whom were railway workers who stayed on to take up land in the area. In addition, the Burnewang run, formed in 1841 as an area of 112,913 acres, was subdivided into Burnewang East and Burnewang West (Back to Elmore 1990:52).
Some settlements in the Shire of Huntly were served by sidings only. Special trains, for example, delivered passengers to the Ascot siding, also known as the Bendigo racecourse platform, for attendance at meetings at the nearby Epsom racecourse.
A dedicated siding to service the Bendigo Pottery opened at Epsom in 1882, where rail lines can still be seen in Station Street today. In 1914, a shelter shed was provided at the siding (see Figure 13) (Turner 2014:32). In the 1920s, the station became an important export hub for the tomatoes grown in the district. In 1929, for instance, up until the middle of February, Epsom had dispatched 8,825 cases of tomatoes from the station (Turner 2014:39). A new railway station for Epsom, to cater for recent population growth in the suburb, was built on a nearby site in 2014.
The Wellsford siding was used mostly for the cutting and transport of timber from the Wellsford State Forest, which used for domestic firewood as well as for firewood for industries such as the Bendigo Pottery, for railway sleepers, and for mine props (Turner 2014:62).
Elsewhere in the study area, more substantial station buildings were erected.
27 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 13. Epsom Railway Station in 1984. (Source: photo by Andrew Ward, 1984).
Avonmore Railway Station
A siding and weighbridge operated at South Elmore (later named Avonmore) from 1886, a passenger platform opened in 1887 and a shelter, and a goods shed and platform were constructed in 1888 (Turner 2014:75). The railway house was removed in 1912 and the station closed c1940 (Arnold 2008:391). The Avonmore station closed to traffic in 1940 and in c1942, Bert Knight from Avonmore planted rows of sugar gums on railway land north of the Avonmore rail crossing (Turner 2014:75; Lonsdale 2006:193). These are still in evidence today.
Bagshot Railway Station
Local residents at Bagshot agitated for a railway station for many years before a station was constructed and opened in 1882. The Bagshot Post Office operated from the station from 1884 (Turner 2014:50). The station and railway residence burnt down in 1900 and were rebuilt in 1901 (Arnold 2008:108). Firewood cleared from local selections from the 1860s was transported to the Bagshot station for transport to the mines in Bendigo as well as to Melbourne, and railway sleepers were also milled and shipped from the station (Bagshot, Victoria 1992:40, 42). During the 1943-44 drought, potatoes were delivered to the station for stock feed, and in the 1950s bags of superphosphate ordered by district farmers were railed to the station (Turner 2014:56).
Elmore Railway Station
The Runnymede Railway Station, re-named Elmore in 1876, was built by contractor P Cunningham in 1870. The station complex included a railway station with residence and water tower, both constructed of locally made red bricks, lamp room and toilets, and passenger and goods platforms. The water tower was built to supply Campaspe River water to steam trains and was donated to the Elmore Progress Association in 1972 (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016). In 1884, Victorian Railways accepted a tender from H Cuttance for the
28 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY building of a timber footbridge at Elmore (see Figure 14) (Argus 23 September 1884:7 cited in Lewis 2013, record no 35467).
Opened in 1864 as a siding until the station was built in 1870, Elmore was a busy railway station, serving not only the immediate district but areas to the west as well, which were not serviced by a railway line until 1890 when the Bendigo-Swan Hill line opened. The Elmore station not only catered for passengers but was an important transport point for the export of primary products, mainly wool and wheat, as well as timber from felled trees in the area, and for the import of goods and livestock required by local residents and farmers (Lonsdale 2006:7, 123). A number of railway houses were constructed in McCormicks Road in Elmore to provide accommodation for the station master (replaced in 1911) and railway staff. Some of these houses remain in situ today.
Between the years 1905 to 1907, the wool clip transported from the railway station increased from 1,200 bales to 2,200 bales (Turner 2014:84). During the 1950s, farm machinery and consignments of superphosphate were delivered to the station (Turner 2014:85).
A branch line from Elmore to Cohuna opened in November 1915 and was serviced by the construction of an additional platform at Elmore, and in 1928, the installation of a footbridge (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016). The Queen travelled by train through Elmore on her 1954 tour.
A new footbridge was constructed at the station in c1926 (Turner 2014:82).
The Elmore Progress Association was granted a lease of the Elmore Railway Station offices in 1990 for the establishment of a museum. The overhead footbridge was sold to the Elmore Progress Association Museum in 1980 to link the Campaspe Run complex and the Elmore Progress Association Museum (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016).
The Elmore Railway Station (HO418) remains in use today.
29 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 14. Elmore Railway Station, 1918. (Source: Bendigonian 25 April 1918:18)
Goornong Railway Station
The first settlement at Goornong comprised railway workers who were constructing the Bendigo-Echuca section of the Melbourne-Murray River line in the period 1859-64 (Turner 2014:65).
It is not known when the Goornong station building was constructed, but it appears in a photo taken in 1906 (see Figure 15) (Turner 2014:64). A cool store (removed in 1904) was built in 1889 at the Goornong Railway Station and sheep and cattle yards were constructed in 1899 (Turner 2014:68, 70).
The station was a significant receival point for wheat grown on district farms; for example, in one day in February 1905, 945 bags of wheat passed over the weighbridge at the Goornong station (see Figure 16) (Bendigo Advertiser 16 February 1905:2). The station won the prize for the most attractive garden platform in 1918 (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975).
The Grain Elevators Board erected a concrete wheat silo at Goornong Railway Station in 1942; a second and third silo were constructed in 1953 and 1966 respectively. An oats shed was built in 1965, followed by the erection of a barley shed (Arnold 2008:442).
Planning and design work for a new train station at Goornong to provide for a projected growth in population in the township commenced in 2018 (Pedler 2020).
Figure 15. Goornong Railway Station, 1906. (Source: Goornong and District Heritage Trail signage 2016, at Goornong)
30 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 16. Farmers loading chaff at the Goornong station in 1926. (Source: Weekly Times 28 August 1926:46)
Huntly Railway Station
A siding was opened one mile east of Huntly as part of the Melbourne-Murray River railway line in 1864, however a railway station was not erected until 1889. Local goods such as firewood, clay, and tomatoes were transported from the station (Arnold 1980:65). In 1929, up until the middle of February, Huntly had dispatched 10,791 cases of tomatoes from the station (Turner 2014:39).
The Huntly Railway Station also incorporated a dedicated wheat siding on which a large storage shed for bagged wheat was constructed in 1918 (Shepparton Advertiser 4 May 1943:2). Another two storage sheds were built in 1937 and in 1943 to serve as a terminal for the storage of bags of wheat before they were shipped to the seaboard. The latter buildings were erected as part of a government initiative to store Australia’s wheat harvest away from wharves, and thus shield it from potential enemy attack during World War II (Turner 20145:41, 45).
The Huntly Railway Station was reduced to the status of a siding in 1930 and was closed to all traffic in 1954 (Huntly 126 Years 1980:75-76).
Planning and design work for a new train station at Huntly to provide for the growing local community commenced in 2018 (Pedler 2020).
Hunter Railway Station
The Hunter station opened in 1915 with the construction of the Elmore-Cohuna railway line. It was heavily used by soldier settlers from the 1920s for transporting wheat and in 1941-42, silos were opened. The station was de-staffed in 1945.
5.2 Communications Post offices, telegraph and telephone services
31 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Arrangements for postal services were made in the years soon after the settlement of towns and districts in the study area. Telecommunications in Victoria began in 1854 with a telegraph line constructed from Melbourne to Williamstown. By 1856 the length of line in Victoria had grown to 36 miles, with 14,738 telegraph messages sent in that year, increasing to 35,792 messages in 1857. By 1858, a telegraph line ran from Melbourne to Echuca via Elmore (Back to Elmore 1990:89).
Early repositories for mail included trees, particularly in goldfield areas, where letters were pinned for pick up. The first official post offices were often incorporated into existing buildings such as hotels, railway stations or stores. With government surveys of townships, formal post office reserves were established.
The first post offices opened in the study area in the towns of Epsom (1857), Barnedown (1858) and Huntly (1860), the latter of which was named Huntley until c1867.
The Huntly Post Office operated for some years from a small timber building, which was moved to various locations along the main road depending on where the current post officer lived. Its last location was in front of the Hewett’s house opposite the Huntly Shire Chambers. It is now located beside the former Shire of Huntly chambers, home to the Huntly and Districts Historical Society who take care of the building (H&DHS 2020). The Huntly Post Office became part of the Huntly store in 1975 (see Figure 17) (Huntly 126 Years 1980:62; Arnold 2008:92). Telephone services were established at Huntly by 1912 (Arnold 2008:92).
Figure 17. Huntly Post Office, c1975. (Source: NAA c1975, ‘Huntly Post Office’ B5919, 942)
The first post office in the township of what was to become Elmore was established at the Runnymede Inn in Railway Place West, today’s Simmie Street. In 1876, when the name of the railway station was changed from Runnymede to Elmore, the post office was established at 14 Cardwell Street (Arnold 2008:288, 251). A new post office building, consisting of a large public office, telephone room, portico, and residence was constructed
32 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY in 1910 from local bricks by contractor C Millward of Bendigo (see Figure 18). Elmore remained a corporate post office until December 1994 (Back to Elmore 2001:89).
Figure 18. Elmore Post Office in 1917. (Source: ‘Elmore Post Office’ 1917, SLV)
A post office opened at Goornong in 1864 and a new post office and residence were built in 1909 (Arnold 2008:433).
The Bagshot Post Office operated from 1883 to 1893 concurrently with the Bagshot Railway Station Post Office, the latter providing services until 1967. Another post office opened at Bagshot North in 1910. It was known as Lyndale until 1927, in which year it was renamed Bagshot North. It closed in 1977 (Bagshot, Victoria 1992:37-38).
Hunter Post Office opened in 1921 to provide services for soldier settler families who had taken up land in the area. An old disused school building from Burnewang Park was moved next to the Hunter Hall in Keane Road where it was refurbished as a house with post office and telephone exchange (Arnold 2008:226). The building is used today as a private residence.
A post office opened at Fosterville in 1897 and operated until 1974 (Arnold 2008:538).
Places that represent the theme ‘Connecting by transport and communications’ include:
• bridges over the Campaspe River, Piccaninny Creek and Bendigo Creek
• roads in use today that follow the alignment of early droving and goldfield routes
• infrastructure associated with the Bendigo-Echuca section of the Melbourne-Murray River railway line and the Elmore-Cohuna railway line (now closed)
• railway residences in Elmore
33 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
• post office buildings at Huntly, Avonmore, Bagshot, Goornong and Elmore
6. Transforming and managing land and natural resources
6.1 Grazing and cropping Squatters who took over large tracts of land in the study area from the early 1840s depended on the native grasses of the plains’ country for the grazing of sheep and cattle. Grazing continued to a lesser degree when broadacre wheat farming was established from the 1870s.
After taking up land under the Land Acts of the 1860s, by the 1880s farmers on the plains country of the study area were sowing paddocks to a crop in the first year, grazing livestock on the same paddocks in the second year, and in the third year, resting the paddocks. By the turn of the century, farmers were incorporating bare fallowing into this three-year rotation. Bare fallowing, or breaking up the soil, was believed to diminish weed growth and prevent evaporation through reducing water take up by weeds and by positing of a dust layer over the soil.
Grazing and cropping regimes removed vast areas of native grasslands and caused land degradation and soil erosion. In addition, the halting of Aboriginal burning impacted on the growth of woodlands and grasslands, as did the introduction of pest animals such as rabbits.
In recognition of the natural and cultural significance of native grasses to local Aboriginal peoples, in 2019 the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation received a $1.82 million grant to assess the potential of Kangaroo Grass (Themeda Triandra) as a viable cropping option in the face of climate change. The money will also be used to support the upskilling of land managers and traditional owner groups to grow the grass (Grain Central 2019). One of the areas under consideration for the location of the program is Kamarooka.
The Hunter Rail Reserve Grassland Site (HO474) at Hunter contains remnant native grasslands.
6.2 Gold mining The gold-bearing quartz of the Midlands region of the Western Victorian Uplands facilitated one of the richest rushes in the world (see Section 4.3), which extensively impacted on the region’s Box-Ironbark forests and woodlands. Trees in the study area, used for fuel for cooking and warmth and for fuel for boilers, building, fencing, railway sleepers, and propping up gold mine pits and shafts, were swiftly felled. Nearly all that remains of the Box-Ironbark today is significantly modified, including changed composition in under-storey plants, thinner, coppiced and more densely spaced over-storey trees and fragmented remnants of vegetation (Lovell Chen 2013b:12).
In addition, gold mining significantly disturbed drainage patterns and the flow of water across flood plains by producing thin sheets of alluvium downstream into the creek valley floors or as alluvial fans onto the plains (VRO 2020). In 1839, William Haverfield drove his sheep and cattle through the area and in later years recalled the Bendigo Creek at Epsom before the mining of gold:
Lined with tall gums, wattle trees bloomed profusely right down to the water’s edge, and wildflowers of every colour of the grassy slopes. The creek itself consisted of a chain of crystal clear pools of sweat running water. The only sounds with those of many lovely birds, kingfishers and parrots giving bright colour to the scene. Platypus and kangaroos a dingo appeared (Shaw 1966:10).
34 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
At the peak of gold puddling activity in the Bendigo district in 1858, some 10,000 men and 5,000 horses worked 2,000 machines (Lennon 2001:48). The valley was stripped to bedrock and its soil washed in puddlers. Complaints were received about the ‘stream of mud’ pouring from the machines into the gullies and creeks and onto the roads. T B Simpson noted in the Argus newspaper that mud and mine residue destroyed the ‘clear waters’ of Bendigo Creek, turning the waterway into ‘a long slow-moving channel of yellow sludge’ (Argus 2 April 1931:15).
Local residents agitated to improve conditions and laws were passed to prevent sludge from impacting on waterways and public property. In 1859, a Royal Commission recommended that a ten-mile timber box drain be constructed along the length of the Bendigo Creek valley to drain the sludge into Tysons Swamp, below Huntly, a project that was commenced in 1860. The introduction of a sludge tax in August 1861 prompted the operators of many horse-powered puddlers on the Bendigo field to abandon their machines and join the gold rush to New Zealand (Bannear 1993:5).
Even though puddling activity declined, sluicing continued, and in 1887 the sludge channel was full to the level of the bridges along Bendigo Creek, and the creek itself was obliterated at Huntly (Lawrence and Davies 2019:169). In 1902, the Huntly Shire requested £1,200 from the Minister of Public Works to complete the Huntly sludge channel, and in 1905, a Sludge Abatement Board was constituted to regulate the disposal of sludge, sand and debris from the goldfield, which, by then, covered vast areas.
It has been estimated that an area of approximately 735 square kilometres, including agricultural and grazing lands downstream of Bendigo Creek as far north as Kow Swamp, is covered by a hard-setting clay sludge layer that has severely disrupted natural drainage patterns and buried soils (Petersen 1996:96). Much of this land lies in the former Shire of Huntly.
After gold mining in Bendigo slowed in the 1950s, a program of shaft filling and mine site reclamation commenced. Undertaken by Land Reclamation committees at Bendigo and Eaglehawk, in cooperation with the Bendigo City council and the Department of Mines, thousands of shafts were filled and covered in the period 1951-1975 and in 1960-61 reclamation (shifting, levelling and compacting) of mine sites began. Mine tailing dumps are still evident in the landscape of the study area today.
6.3 Forests The Box-Ironbark forests of the study area, including the former Egerton and Kamarooka State Forest, the Whipstick State Park (both now part of the Greater Bendigo National Park) and the Wellsford State Forest, have supported a number of significant industries, and like other forests in the City of Greater Bendigo, have been critical to the economic development of the district. The forests have provided hard, durable timber for sawmill logs, sleepers, fence posts, piles, firewood, building materials and mining timbers; eucalyptus oil; honey; charcoal; wattle bark and land for grazing. These industries, in turn, have impacted on the forests in myriad ways, including through environmental impacts and through the introduction of infrastructure associated with the forest activities.
In the 1860s, after public concern at the significant degradation wrought to the landscape by gold mining and a series of Public Inquiries and Royal Commissions, the Victorian government implemented regulations to actively conserve forests, repair damage, and encourage growth. Forest areas for 'the protection and growth of timber' were reserved under the 1865 and 1869 Land Acts and local boards appointed to oversee their management. Forests in the study area were subsequently reserved, including the Egerton and Kamarooka Timber Reserve in 1873 and the Wellsford Timber Reserve in 1882. By the turn of the century, the Victorian
35 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY government had put in place a system of forest management, including plantations, nurseries, thinning operations, and a royalty system (Bannear 1997:6).
Forests, including those in the study area, were thinned through removing stunted and diseased trees, under- storey debris was burnt and firebreaks were constructed. In 1907 the Forests Act was enacted to create a Department of State Forests (the precursor to the Forests Commission established in 1918) to more effectively manage forests in Victoria. Under this legislation the Kamarooka State Forest and the Wellsford State Forest were reserved.
In the economic depression of the 1930s, unemployed men were paid by the government to work with some of the work undertaken in the forests of Victoria. At the height of the scheme, about 9,900 men were at work, clearing fire-damaged timber, cutting access tracks, establishing plantations and undertaking extensive thinning operations (Bannear 1997:9, 17). Forest Commission camps were established at the Kamarooka and Wellsford forests. In 1937 it was reported that most of the 60 relief workers, all from the Bendigo district, were at work at Kamarooka with the remainder at Wellsford (Argus 1 March 1937:5 and 18 March 1937:7).
In 1939, forest officers at Bendigo reported that the policy of thinning in the state forests commenced in the early 1900s and carried on 'scientifically by permanent gangs over the last 15 years' would assure an inexhaustible supply of good timber. They described how the region’s forests were 'ravaged' in the early mining days but had 'now become a definite asset'. Officers noted that currently the forests, including Kamarooka, were supplying poles for the postal department. In addition, Bendigo industries used about 30,000 tons of wood annually from the forests, and heavy demands were also made for fuel for household purposes (Argus 10 July 1939:4).
The Greater Bendigo National Park of 17,007 hectares was established in 2002 following a Environmental Conservation Council’s (now Victorian Environment Assessment Council) investigation of Victoria's Box- Ironbark forests. The national park incorporates the former Whipstick State Park and Kamarooka State Forest and Park.
6.4 Water management Water courses in the study area have been manipulated to prevent flooding and to increase food or water supply since human occupation, with Aboriginal peoples, for example, building fish traps and creating soaks.
With the goldrushes, and the subsequent demand for water for mining and domestic use, legislation was introduced in the colony of Victoria to establish and manage water schemes. One such scheme was developed by the Bendigo Water Works Company, formed in 1858, who appointed Irish civil engineer Joseph Brady, who had worked on the Yan Yean reservoir, to survey and lay out Bendigo’s first water supply system. In May 1862, Brady planned the construction of a large reservoir at Malmsbury on the Coliban River and storage reservoirs and miles of channels to gravity-feed mining and town water to Sandhurst and Castlemaine. Funding came via the Waterworks Act of 1865. After massive delays and spiralling costs, the scheme finally opened in 1877.
Urban and rural waterworks trusts, managed by local committees, were later formed under the 1881 Water Conservation Act to supply water for stock and domestic use. Irrigation districts were formed under the 1886 Irrigation Act with a small section of the Campaspe Irrigation District included in the study area.
Under the Water Act 1905 the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission (SRWSC) formed in 1906 and took over the management of all existing Victorian water trusts and irrigation schemes, including the Coliban system of waterworks and the Elmore and Bagshot water trusts. Some SRWSC infrastructure was established in Elmore after 1906.
36 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
The SRWSC was replaced by the Rural Water Commission in 1984. In 1992 Coliban Water was established as a Regional Urban Water Authority under the Water Act 1989. In 2007, the Authority became the Coliban Region Water Corporation.
In 1923, the Bendigo Sewerage Authority opened treatment works at Epsom; by 1981 the authority controlled over 500 acres of land, some of which comprised the original Bendigo Pottery site (Arnold 2008:37). The Bendigo Water Treatment Plant (WRP) was opened at Epsom in 2008. Sewage flows via gravity or is pumped to the Bendigo WRP where it is treated to produce three classes of recycled water.
In addition to securing a water supply, authorities have been long involved in flood mitigation schemes in the study area, much of which comprises a flood plain. From 1915, for example, the Bendigo Creek Improvement Trust, with representatives from the municipalities of Bendigo, Eaglehawk, Marong, Huntly and Strathfieldsaye systematically worked to straighten and maintain the creek. Significant grading of the creek occurred from that time, and levee banks were constructed between Epsom and Huntly to protect property and market gardens on the flood plain.
The regulation of water for human use in the study area has caused major changes in stream flows. This is particularly so for the Campaspe River over summer when the pre-regulation flow downstream of Eppalock Weir is increased by as much as 1,200 per cent through letting water out of the weir. Similarly, the quality of groundwater in the study area has been affected, with salinity increasing from east to west. Generally, water quality of streams decreases as streams flow north; the exception to this trend is the Bendigo Creek where there is some improvement downstream from urban areas (ECC 1997:49).
Rural water supplies
Squatters who occupied the former Shire of Huntly from the early 1840s secured a stock and domestic water supply by constructing tanks and dams, often at the sites of Aboriginal soaks, and by accessing natural watercourses. In later years, more sophisticated water schemes were established. After purchasing the Burnewang run in 1884, the Hunter brothers, for example, built a private irrigation channel system, which relied on water from the Campaspe River (Minto Parish Plan 1954; Australasian 25 January 1913:8).
Some squatters took advantage of available water resources and their proximity to the Bendigo goldfield to grow food for the mining population. Thomas Robertson, for example, established 30 acres of vegetable garden at his Break O Day farm on the Campaspe River in the late 1850s. A beam pump, driven by a steam engine, lifted the water from a 30 foot hole in the river to where a bank have been built along the river bank to the nearby billabong. Here the water was flumed across the billabong to 30 acres of river flat. A number of local people were employed in working the gardens in the 1860s (Shaw 1966: 29). Similarly, on his Adelaide Vale run, by 1868 John Harney had set up a 24-horsepower pumping engine connected to iron pumping hydrants and pipes from the Campaspe River to water an extensive vegetable garden and vineyard (Healy 1988:27).
Small-scale irrigation was essential to the establishment of the local fruit and vegetable industry, with early vegetable and fruit growers in the Shire of Huntly accessing local waterways. In the 1850s, James Rogers, for example, flood irrigated his apple orchard at Goornong from the Gunyah Creek (Shaw 1966:68). Market gardens were extended in the Huntly, Ascot and Epsom areas after the opening of a water channel from the Grassy Flat reservoir in 1864.
Under the Land Acts, from the 1860s farmers dug dams and erected windmills to channel water from creeks and rivers. Others tapped into groundwater supplies through the excavation of bores and wells.
37 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Under the 1881 Water Conservation Act, land in the Huntly Shire between Piccaninny Creek and Bendigo Creek and the Campaspe River north of Goornong was supplied with water from a weir constructed on the Campaspe River (‘Supply of water to the Northern Plains’ 1881).
A small section of the former Campaspe Irrigation District, formed in 1889 under the 1886 Irrigation Act and developed as an intensive dairying area in the period 1964-76, falls within the study area, however the district was decommissioned in 2010-11 (NCCMA 2014:14).
Water channels were constructed in the Huntly district after the Ascot channel was extended to the area in the 1920s. Parts of this system are in use today. In the same period, a section of the Wellsford Parish was subdivided by the Bendigo Irrigation Settlement and allotments provided water from the Axe Creek race that was excavated after World War I (Arnold 2008:561).
A weir on the Campaspe River to supply water to the northern plains, including the study area, was planned as early as 1903 near the junction of Axe Creek. In the 1920s, the Eppalock Water League formed to lobby, on behalf of soldier settlers at Hunter amongst others, for the construction of the weir, but preliminary work did not begin until 1927. A scheme to impound 60,000 acre-feet with a concrete wall began in 1930 as an unemployment relief measure. After having expended £150,000, however, construction was stopped in 1936. In 1948, the proposal was again put to the Parliamentary Public Works Committee by the SRWSC, and after another enquiry in 1959, influenced by strong support for the scheme from irrigators in the Elmore and Rochester districts, the Huntly and District Water Users Association, and evidence from the SRWSC with regard to augmenting Bendigo's water supply, the storage was finally constructed and opened in 1964.
Several bores were in use in the Elmore district by 1961 to supply irrigation water. In that year, one bore yielded 23,500 gallons per hour from a sand aquifer between 125 and 140 feet deep, with salinity varying between about 500 and 1000 parts per million. This bore water, still in use today, is localised to a narrow strip adjacent to the Campaspe River and is thought to be due to local influent seepage (Johns and Lawrence 196:3).
Private water schemes were also formed to secure a rural water supply. The Kamarooka Water Supply Scheme, for instance, was established by local landholders in 1983 to deliver water to their concrete storage tanks by pumping from the Waranga Channel (Pedersen 1987:2).
In 2008, the Ascot channel system, including the Huntly-Goornong channel, was supplied with recycled water from the water treatment plant. The water is pumped up to Spring Gully reservoir, then fed to the channel system for use in filling dams and irrigating pastures (Sargent 2020).
Today, some private irrigation from the Campaspe River is carried out in the study area in the Goornong and Barnadown districts under the authority of Goulburn Murray Water. The Bellholme Group and the Baranadown Co-op Irrigators operate irrigation schemes that pump water from the Campaspe River to grow lucerne and fat lambs. An area south of Elmore is also irrigated from bores on the deep aquifer that follows the Campaspe River valley.
Urban water supplies
Water supplies were established early in the history of townships, often through the sinking of wells, some of which are still in evidence at hotel sites in the study area. The Lonsdale family in Elmore, for example, were employed for many years in boring wells in the district (Lonsdale 2020).
By 1863 at Runnymede (Elmore), a pump to supply railway workers and steam engines had been installed on the Campaspe River by contractors building the railway line. In 1864 the government installed a pumping plant
38 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY and weir on the Campaspe River at Elmore to supply the town (Back to Elmore 1990:85). The weir was constructed using piles and two Harcourt granite spalls, which can still be seen today when the river is low (Lonsdale 2006:125). Township water supplies were also accessed through sinking wells. Three wells, for example, were sunk in the period 1882-1902 to serve the township of Kamarooka (Arnold 2008:142).
Under the Coliban scheme, by 1863 two reservoirs had been built at Grassy Flat, which supplied water by channel to Huntly and Epsom in 1864. The majority of the water supplied was used for goldmining at Huntly, particularly through the dry summers of the 1870s (Bannear 1993:10).
In 1892 tenders were called for the excavation of a 2000-yard dam to supply water to the Goornong township (Arnold 2008:411). In 1901, the township and farmers between Fosterville and Goornong were supplied water channelled from Fosterville to a dam excavated in 1897 by the Huntly Shire on the western end of the Goornong Recreation Reserve. Because of poor water quality, the Goornong Water Trust was constituted in 1906 to take control of the water supply. A wooden water tower was subsequently erected and pipes laid by the Shire of Huntly in 1914 (see Figure 19). Water was then pumped to a tank on the top of the tower and gravity fed to Goornong’s residents. When Eppalock Weir was completed in 1964 on the Campaspe River, an electric pump was installed to transfer water from the river to a new water tower installed in Goornong (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975: unpaginated).
Figure 19. Goornong water tower in 1933. (Source: Goornong and District Heritage Trail signage 2016, at Goornong)
39 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
A 26-mile channel was cut by miners contracted to dig the channel by hand through the Wellsford State Forest to the Fosterville goldfield so that water from Grassy Flat reservoir could be diverted from the Huntly (Ascot) channel to supply Fosterville. Opening in 1896, the race was extended to Ellesmere and Barnadown and, by 1901, to Goornong (Arnold 2008:507). In the 1920s, the Ascot channel was extended through the Huntly area to provide water for tomato growing.
The Elmore Water Trust was formed in 1891, and later that year water was supplied to the township from a pumping station driven by a steam boiler that pumped water from the Campaspe River, held back by a weir constructed by contractor James Small, to a brick water tower. A weatherboard residence for the secretary of the Trust, designed by William Vahland, was built next to the water tower c1898 (‘Elmore Water Trust Minutes’ 10 August 1898, EPA Museum). The water tower (HO416) and associated residence remain today (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016; Lonsdale 2006:127; Arnold 2008:259).
A new weir, called the Campaspe Weir, was constructed between Elmore and Rochester in the 1880s and was extensively remodelled as part of the Lake Eppalock system, which opened in 1964.
In Elmore, bores to access underground water formed by the Calivil Fault were sunk from 1953 and in 1964 a new water tower at Elmore was erected to which underground water was pumped for distribution to the township (Back to Elmore 1990:66). Today Elmore continues to be supplied from underground water sources.
Places that represent the theme ‘Transforming and managing land and natural resources’ include:
• reserved forests at Kamarooka and Wellsford
• Hunter Rail Reserve Grassland Site
• sludge layer along Bendigo Creek and Piccaninny Creek
• mine site reclamation
• water channels associated with the Burnewang run, the Campaspe Irrigation District, and the Huntly- Goornong, Ascot and Axe Creek channel systems
• water towers at Goornong and Elmore, the latter includes a house built for the Elmore Water Trust secretary
• Campaspe Weir on the Campaspe River
• chock and log fence at Drummartin
7. Building industries and the workforce The agricultural industry has been the main contributor to the economy of the study area over time. In 1980- 81 in the Shire of Huntly, 13,000 acres were under wheat; 26,000 acres were sown to pasture; native grasses grew on 11,000 acres; sheep were grazed on 119,000 acres; and vegetables were grown on 115,000 acres (Webb and Quinlan 1985:292). In 1994 farming took up 73 per cent of the Shire of Huntly’s area, on which 7,300 cattle, 83,000 pigs and 106,000 sheep and lambs were raised. In addition, nearly 13,000 tonnes of wheat were grown in that year (Victorian Places 2015). In 2017-18, cropping and grazing modified pasture, mainly for sheep, were the main land uses in the City of Greater Bendigo (ABARES 2020).
40 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Agricultural industries in the former Shire of Huntly have, historically, developed in distinct areas. Because of the provision of a water supply from the Coliban scheme, the southern portion the study area was the focus of horticultural activity. Sheep grazing and the cultivation of crops were adopted in the northern section of the study area.
Forest industry activity was established in what was to become the Kamarooka State Forest, the Whipstick State Park (both now part of the Greater Bendigo National Park) and the Wellsford State Forest.
7.1 Grazing The Riverine Plain of the study area, with its flat topography and vast areas of native grasslands, was eminently suited to large-scale grazing.
Sheep grazing for the export of wool to England, which by 1850 was Port Phillip District's most valuable export, was the first industry to be taken up by white occupiers of the study area (see Section 4.2). Squatters in the 1840s grazed mainly sheep to grow wool for shipping to the textile mills of England, and by 1850, the transporting of wool to England was the Port Phillip District's most valuable export. In 1852, the colony of Victoria boasted 6.5 million sheep and was exporting 9,112 tonnes of wool with an estimated value of £1,062,787 (ABS 2003). Wool grown in the study area contributed to this lucrative export market and was carted to Melbourne in drays, and from 1864, by rail from stations on the Bendigo-Echuca section of the Melbourne-Murray River railway line.
With the Victorian gold rushes of the 1850s, demand for meat increased and many pastoralists replaced their sheep flocks with cattle herds. James Tyson, one of New South Wales’ wealthiest squatters who bred and fattened stock for metropolitan markets, drove cattle down to the Bendigo diggings, slaughtered them there himself, and sold the meat to the diggers. In 1857, he purchased 320 acres in Goornong Parish and other blocks for use as holding paddocks (Shaw 1966:30-31).
In 1884, the last de-pasturing license still in operation in the former Shire of Huntly was cancelled when the Hunter brothers purchased the Burnewang homestead (Shaw 1966:98).
Selectors who took up the land in the study area under the 1860s Land Acts continued the grazing of sheep, combined with cropping, as an integral part of their farming of the land. Irrigated pastures in the study area today comprise mostly sub-clover and lucerne grown for winter stock feed.
Examples of places established for the management of livestock include a shearing shed and sheep dip at Kamarooka built by the Hay family in the late 1890s (Pedersen 1987:68).
7.2 Gold mining The Bendigo goldfield, comprising the Sandhurst, Eaglehawk and Raywood Divisions, constituted the world’s greatest nineteenth century quartz mining centre. The hoarding of vast quantities of Californian and Victorian gold by banks in America, England and France provided a basis for currencies and financial systems around the globe and supported a huge credit expansion that bankrolled world trade, shipping and manufacturing (Lovell Chen 2013b:90).
Mining on the Bendigo goldfield declined in the 1930s and had all but ceased in the 1950s, however rising gold prices from the late 1970s led to renewed interest in the Bendigo field.
The major periods of development of gold mining in the study area are outlined below.
41 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
1851-1858 Alluvial mining rushes
One party’s success on the Bendigo goldfield in 1852 started a large rush that extended the Bendigo Creek diggings to Epsom Flat and north to Huntly (see Figure 20) (Bannear 1993:1). A fresh rush to Epsom started in 1856, when 300 claims were put down in one week, and a similar rush occurred to Huntly in 1859 (Shaw 1966:28). By 1860 in Huntly, 1,600 puddling machines were at work (Huntly 126 Years 1980:5). Alluvial gold discoveries in the Whipstick extended the field to the northwest in 1858 (Bannear 1993:3).
Figure 20. A view of puddling on the Epsom road, c1870. (Source: Stopps c1870, SLV)
1859-1869 Formation of quartz mining companies and deep lead mining
During the 1860s, Sandhurst’s mining industry changed from alluvial mining to an industry dominated by limited liability companies operating quartz claims. The claims proved remarkably profitable in the early 1870s, attracting both miners and investors to the field. Between 1861 and 1871, the population of the Bendigo field grew from 13,020 to 28,577, and by 1881, was almost 36,000 persons (Charles Fahey in Butcher and Collins 2005:105).
Quartz mining was taken up at the Millwood diggings at Kamarooka in 1863-64. The ore was carted to Raywood for crushing until James Hedley & Company erected a twelve head battery at Kamarooka in 1865. Because of the geology of the area, the reefs were mostly thin strips of quartz and therefore the open cut method was popular. The rush at Kamarooka had finished by 1870, but company mining continued through to the first decade of the twentieth century (Arnold 2008:139-140).
Although quartz mining dominated the Bendigo field, deep lead mining also played an important role. Deep lead mining exploits the alluvial material found in ancient buried stream beds. The most prominent deep lead of the Bendigo goldfield was the Huntly Deep Lead, which begins in White Hills, continues to Epsom and Huntly,
42 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY on to the area of what was the Bagshot Railway Station, and then in an easterly direction to the Campaspe River, generally deepening as it heads north (Birrell and Lerk 2001:4).
Shafts were sunk to a depth of over 100 feet on the Huntly Deep Lead and the material brought to the surface for crushing, mostly by batteries. The lead was the major focus of Bendigo’s alluvial mining companies during the 1860s, who also concentrated, to a lesser extent, on the conglomerate gutter at Epsom. The main technology employed on these deep-sinking fields was battery crushing. By 1860, eight crushers were in the course of erection at Huntly. One of these had 40 head of stamps, and, for its time, was probably the largest battery on the Bendigo goldfield (Bannear 1993:5). The Bagshot Steam Crushing Company was also in operation by early 1860, and by 1870, held a lease of 200 acres and was working the deep lead with two engines and a battery of 20 stamp heads (Bannear 1993:10).
In May 1860, three batteries were operating at the Epsom gravels; the largest, comprising 16 heads, was operated by Nicholl and Company (Bannear 1993:5).
The Huntly lead was ‘partially lost’ in March 1861 and not rediscovered until 1863. In that year, Thomas Britt sank a shaft to bedrock at 43 metres and installed large Cornish beam pumps to extract more than 20,000 ounces of gold (Birrell and Lerk 2001:5). For the remainder of the decade, a number of companies, including the True Briton, Morning Light and Telegraph at Huntly, and the Caledonian, North Star and Ajax at Pottery Flat, continued to work in the area with a fair degree of success (Bannear 1993:5). Other companies operating on the deep lead in the 1860s included, from south to north, the Cambridge Company; Dowsey’s; Britts; Huntly Deep Lead; Deep Lead Extended; Alabama; Bendigo and Ballarat; Annabella and the Bagshot Company (Shaw 1966:90).
Once alluvial mining companies had claimed the older auriferous areas, lone fossickers and small-time puddler operators were forced to move northwards into the Whipstick where several small rushes occurred in the 1860s (Bannear 1993:5-6).
In May 1869, gold was found near Egerton, triggering the May Reef gold rush (Shaw 1966:84).
1870-1887 Deep lead and quartz mining
Throughout the 1870s, Huntly remained the Bendigo region’s principal locality for alluvial mining with the area the scene of a deep lead mining revival between 1871 and mid-1875. In 1870, the Bagshot Company held a lease of 200 acres and was working the deep lead with two engines and a battery of 20 stamp heads (Bannear 1993:10).
By the mid-1870s, the mining boom on the Bendigo field was in decline. Shares in major companies plummeted, gold yields decreased markedly between 1876 and 1880, and accumulation of water in abandoned claims caused significant drainage problems from the late 1870s.
During the 1880s, alluvial mining continued to focus on deep lead mining at Huntly and on sluicing. The Huntly deep lead had been lost in the 1870s, and by the 1880s only a few companies were left prospecting the field, principally the Britt Freehold Company at Bagshot, near Huntly. As of May 1887, this company had yet to meet with success (Bannear 1993:14).
The Welcome Flat mine, located one mile south of the Kamarooka township, and the Homeward Bound mining company at Kamarooka were in operation in 1882 (Arnold 2008:140). Under section 65 of the 1884 Land Act which granted 20-acre auriferous licenses, 20 families took up land at Kamarooka to extend the quartz mine
43 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY activity being then conducted by Messrs Demeo, Moxom and Morris (Shaw 1966:97). Pembroke Castle Reef at Kamarooka East was also mined at this time (Arnold 2008:140).
1888-1920s New reefs and cyaniding
Bendigo fared better during the widespread economic depression of the 1890s than many other places because of its gold mining industry. Individual prospectors tried their hand at mining, moving out to the more isolated area of Kamarooka East where the Pembroke reef continued to be mined and where a township had been established (Shaw 1996:101). A number of companies mined the reef at Kamarooka until c1910.
In 1894, reefs were opened at Egerton near the Sugarloaf Range, which became the township of Fosterville (Shaw 1966:103-05). By December 1896, 600 men were employed at Fosterville, where the ore body was mined using open-cuts (Shaw 1966:107) At least five batteries were erected to crush the ore, with companies in operation including Thomas United, Stewarts Extended, Fosterville, Daley and Watsons, and Central Ellesmere (see Figure 21) (Shaw 1966:105; Bannear and Watson 1994:39). As the Fosterville area was extremely dry, the Mines Department constructed a water race to provide sufficient water for the crushing operations (see Section 6.4). The field expanded further, with Fosterville supporting at least eleven batteries by 1897, ranging up to 20-head of stamps (Bannear and Watson 1994:38).
Figure 21. Goldminers working for Daley and Watson at Fosterville, 1896. (Source: Goornong and District Heritage Trail signage 2016, at Fosterville)
Cyaniding was introduced to Victoria in 1896, but the thoroughness of the Bendigo field’s gold separation processes meant that its tailings were too low in gold content to make cyanide processing a paying proposition.
44 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
However, some cyaniding activity did occur, with several large-scale cyanide works operating at Fosterville from the 1890s, in Epsom from 1911, the latter operated by the Duncan brothers, and at Huntly (Bannear and Watson 1994:40; Huntly 126 Years 1980:11).
Mining declined from the early years of the twentieth century. From 1910, pumping water from the deepest mines became a challenge, and the outbreak of World War I in 1914 saw the further decline of mining activity. Shortly before World War I, a large number of men were profitably employed in cyaniding the residue from the old batteries on the Epsom to Huntly alluvial deep lead (see Figure 22) (Bannear 1993:20).
Figure 22. Cyaniding at Smith’s plant in Huntly, 1915. (Source: Bendigonian 2 February 1915:17)
1930s-1970s Rationalisation
In the 1930s economic depression, the high price of gold led a mining revival. The price of gold rose sufficiently at this time to make the cyaniding of Bendigo quartz tailings viable, a process that continued until the outbreak of World War II.
In addition, the government subsidised thousands of unemployed city men to fossick for gold. By 1934, some 2,271 men were engaged locally in mining. Nearly half of them worked for the 34 quartz mining companies, with the rest variously employed in fossicking, cyaniding, and sluicing, including two puddlers at work in the Whipstick (Bannear 1993:23).
By 1948, mining activity in the Bendigo district has declined considerably and ceased altogether in 1954 with the closing of the North Deborah and Central Deborah mines (Bannear and Annear 1990: unpaginated).
1970s-2000s Renewal
45 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Rising gold prices in the 1970s triggered a renewed interest in the Bendigo goldfield. In 1974, at Myers Creek metallurgist David Wright began treating tailings from Huntly using the carbon in pulp method of gold extraction (Birrell and Lerk 2001:136)
The Perseverance Corporation began open cut mining oxide ore at Fosterville in 1992, and in the period to 2002 produced 385,000 ounces of gold. Mining recommenced in April 2004, and underground mining started in mid-2006 (Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd 2020). The gold mine is currently owned and operated by Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd.
7.3 Cropping Selectors cultivated land on the Riverine Plain of the study area to grow crops (mainly wheat with some oats and barley) from the 1870s, making use of stations and sidings on the Bendigo-Echuca railway line to transport their crops. Resources were limited and implements primitive and few, and without fallow, yields were erratic, however bountiful wheat crops were grown in high rainfall years. In the Shire of Huntly in 1886-87 over 70,000 bushels of wheat and 20,000 bushels of oats were harvested (‘Report of the Proceedings of the Land Act’ 1887).
As advised by the Department of Agriculture, from 1903 bare fallowing was combined with the application of light dressings of ‘phosphatic manures’ to increase yields. By 1905, superphosphate was in common use. In addition, improved varieties of wheat were developed through systematic crossbreeding of seed saved by farmers from plants displaying drought or rust-resistant qualities. Over the period 1908-13, the resultant increased yields coincided with stronger prices of around 3s per bushel (Ballinger 2009:185). Through adapting their dryland practices, by 1912-13 farmers in the Northern District, including the study area, were cultivating 599,287 acres of wheat, equivalent to 32.09 per cent of the wheat grown in the state in that year (Handbook to Victoria cited in Ballinger 2009:185).
In 1939, 139,000 bags of wheat (approximately 6000 tonnes) were delivered to the Elmore Railway Station (Back to Elmore 1990:86). By the mid-1940s, wheat growing in the Shire of Huntly was the dominant agricultural activity with Elmore at its centre.
With strong market demand and mechanisation in the period after World War II, coupled with consolidation of farm holdings, crop yields were again boosted over the 20 years from 1948 (Victorian Places 2015; Back to Elmore 1990:92).
Bulk handling of wheat was introduced in Victoria with the 1939-40 harvest by the Grain Elevators Board established in 1935. Silos and weigh bridges were subsequently constructed at railway stations across the study area. Steel bins and silos were introduced in the 1950s and 1960s to deal with the bumper wheat crops of the time.
Concrete Williamstown-style silos holding 3,100 tonnes were erected at Elmore in 1941 (Back to Elmore 1990:86). A steel annex bin was built in 1956 at the Elmore Railway Station and two Ascom silos were operating by the 1966-67 season, bringing the total capacity of the bulk storage at Elmore at that time to almost 10,000 tonnes (Back to Elmore 1990:91). A wheat bunker opened at the Elmore Railway Station in 1979, with 13,000 tonnes of wheat emptied into it for the 1979-80 season (Back to Elmore 1990:88).
A Williamstown-style concrete silo for wheat with a capacity of 75,000 bushels was erected at Goornong Railway Station, extended in 1953 with a 65,000 bushel steel silo, and in 1966 with another 85,000 bushel steel
46 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY bin, a total of approximately 6,000 tonnes. An oat shed with a capacity of 60,000 bushels was erected at Goornong in 1966. Barley was also accepted into the silos in the 1960s (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975).
A 2,000 tonne Williamstown-style concrete silo was erected at Hunter Railway Station and opened for receivals in 1941-42. A steel Ascom annex with a capacity of 1,900 tonnes was added to the silo in the 1960s. A wheat bunker, the second in Victoria, was also built in Hunter Road at Hunter in 1978 and is still in use today (Lonsdale 2020).
In more recent years, crops grown in the study area have included canola, lupins, peas, chickpeas, vetch and triticale. In addition, some land has been sown to lucerne and clover for the growing of prime lambs.
Other industries in the study area today include the growing and harvesting of hay for export to east Asia by the Gilmac company at Goornong. The Bickley family at Goornong also grows and transports hay nationally as does Jenharwill Baling who operates a depot at Elmore.
Structures that testify to the importance of cropping include silos which exist at the Goornong and Elmore railway stations.
7.4 Forest industries The Box-Ironbark forests of the study area, including the Kamarooka, Whipstick and Wellsford forests, have supported a number of significant industries.
Timber felling and saw milling
Extensive areas of the Box-Ironbark forest were cut down from the 1850s through to the 1930s to feed the boilers of the steam engines that pumped water from mines and drove quartz-crushing machinery. Railway sleepers were also cut from forests, including forests in the Shire of Huntly. After the demise of gold mining in the Huntly and Elmore districts from 1880, many of the trees felled in the area were used by the Epsom Pottery for fuel (Huntly 126 Years 1980:7).
The Jeffrey Brothers, saw millers from Kyneton, bought the ‘right of station’ for Burnewang in 1853 to cut trees down for domestic use. From 1857 to 1867, Henry Charles Jeffreys, by then the sole operator of the Burnewang run, applied for a license to cut and sell wood from the run to local mines and to the railways for use as sleepers. When the Burnewang run was bisected by the Bendigo-Echuca section of the Melbourne-Murray River railway, the construction of which commenced in 1859, huge grey box trees were split into sleepers and sold to the railways (Shaw 1966:28). Selectors also carted wood from the clearing of their farms to Bagshot or Wellsford railway yards for trucking, or carted wood themselves directly to the mines in Bendigo (Shaw 1966:62).
In addition, firewood was cut by selectors and transported by dray to railway sidings. William and Thomas Clay, for instance, bought land on Bendigo Creek and Reedy Creek at Bagshot. William’s son, Thomas, established a sawmill on the farm. Known as ‘Saw Mill Tom’, he supplied firewood to local residents and Melbourne dwellers via the Bagshot railway yards (Shaw 1966:30). Nearby, a spur line was built south of Goornong to access a sawmill operated by the Blake family until the late 1940s. The Marshall Sons & Company engine that drove the sawmill was later transported to the Village Green at Goornong where it remins today (Arnold 2008:411).
Tenders for timber for use by various Victorian government departments were advertised throughout the nineteenth century. In 1892, the Victorian Railways, for instance, called for the supply of 1,000 tons of firewood at Goornong for transportation by rail to Melbourne. In 1917, tenders were invited for the cartage of 2,400 poles of 20-30-foot length from the Kamarooka State Forest to the Goornong Railway Station (Arnold 2008:411).
47 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Eucalyptus distilling
Eucalyptus distilling was a significant industry in central Victoria. The green mallee (E viridis) and blue mallee (E polybractea) varieties of the Whipstick forest produced high grade eucalyptus oil. The blue mallee extended from Bagshot North into the Whipstick (Shaw 1966:111). The mallee was cut using hooks, carted to square iron tanks used as vats, and distilled using copper stills. The crude oil was sent in four-gallon demijohns to the Melbourne refineries (Shaw 1966:111).
From the 1890s, steam traction engines with large rollers were used to remove hundreds of acres of forest in the Whipstick. The area was then burnt and the re-growth cut at ground level for use in distilling eucalyptus oil (Webb and Quinlan 1985:243).
The 1899 Land Act provided for licenses to cut leaf in state forests and from 1900 through to the 1940s, the eucalyptus oil distilling industry enjoyed boom conditions with local farmers involved in cutting and distilling to supplement farm incomes. At its peak, 30 eucalyptus plants were working in the former Shire of Huntly (Shaw 1966:112). Early producers of eucalyptus oil included Albert Hartland and Matthew Hodgson at Huntly North in 1890 (Neil 1973:58). The Hartlands eucalyptus distillery (HO480) continues to operate today in Hartlands Road, Huntly North.
A government eucalyptus distillery was established in the Wellsford State Forest in 1926 and was managed by the Forests Commission for 25 years (see Figure 23). The operation of the government-owned distillery caused much angst in the industry, which considered the government was cutting into their markets (Groch 2015).
Figure 23. Cutting eucalyptus leaves for the Forests Commission’s eucalyptus distillery at Wellsford. Most of the leaves used in this plant were from red and white ironbark trees. (Source: photo supplied by Stuart Fraser)
48 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
The industry typically attracted itinerant or short-term workers, and during the economic depression of the 1930s the local unemployed looked to ‘eucy ’, as it was commonly known, as a source of income. At this time the Whipstick was the centre of production. However, in the 1930s prices crashed for eucalyptus oil and many small operators closed.
Land for eucalyptus oil production were set aside in 1936-46 in the study area in the Parishes of Huntly and Whirrakee, with reserves gazetted in the Kamarooka State Forest in 1938-39 for the ‘Growth of Timber for the Manufacture of Eucalyptus Oil’ (Whirrakee Parish Plan 1971).
By the 1960s, leaves were cut by machinery and each distillery plant processed leaf from 1,000 to 2,000 acres using brick vats lined with oregon sunk into the earth (Shaw 1966:111-12). By 1967, only eleven stills operated in the Bendigo area, with some farming families in the study area continuing to rely in part on income from cutting eucalyptus leaves (Lovell Chen 2013b:60).
Remains can be seen today of the Campbell brothers eucalyptus distillery off Campbells Road, and also the remains of the Hardinge Smith eucalyptus distillery off Morrisons Road, both in the former Kamarooka State Forest (now part of the Greater Bendigo National Park) (Arnold 2008 134-136).
Charcoal burning
During World War II, charcoal, an alternative to liquid fuel, was used to power gas-producing units fitted to trucks and cars. Charcoal was also required for the production of gas masks and other filtering equipment. The Forests Commission in this period co-ordinated all production of charcoal from private sources, as well as constructing and operating its own kilns. Charcoal production statistics from 1942 indicate a variety of kilns were used, including pits, earthen, metal and brick kilns. Operations ranged from small operators (such as farmers) with one or two kilns, to large facilities with 20 to 40 kilns (Bannear 1997:9-10).
Charcoal burning was carried out in the Kamarooka State Forest at Bagshot North and Kamarooka East during the first decades of the twentieth century, where the remains of charcoal burning pits can be seen today off Mulga Dam Road (Arnold 2008:133, 141).
Elsewhere, Bill and Len Nicholas of Barnadown are believed to have been the first in the district to develop a gas producing plant for charcoal use in motor vehicles. The brothers purchased charcoal or made their own from the timber remains of the bridge that crossed the Campaspe River at Barnadown that was replaced in the 1930s and used it to run their farm vehicles from 1934 to 1944 (Webb and Quinlan 1985:157).
Wattle bark harvesting
The bark of wattles contains high levels of tannin and in the nineteenth century was one of the world’s best barks for use in leather tanning. The bark was stripped from the trees by axe, with small branches also removed. By the 1870s, wattle bark harvesting had grown into a significant industry that supplied both local and export markets. This remained the case until the 1950s when chromium salts replaced the bark as the main ingredient in the tanning process (Bannear 1997:5). Farmers in Kamarooka cut wattle bark from the Kamarooka forest to supplement their incomes.
7.5 Dairying Dairying was an important addition to farm income in the study area, particularly during the land selection era from the 1860s. From the early 1880s, farmers took their milk to local creameries where it was processed using steam driven separators, and the cream sent to factories.
49 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
In the 1870s, John Harney established a dairy herd and constructed a large corrugated iron milking shed (later used as a shearing shed) and stone cheese factory at his Adelaide Vale property on the Campaspe River where he employed 25 men and boys in milking and cheese-making (Shaw 1966:86).
A creamery factory was opened in the 1890s at Warragamba by August Fiedler, who, with steam power, separated 4,000 gallons of milk a day supplied by 44 local farmers. Creameries also operated at Kamarooka on the corner of Drummartin and Milloo roads, at Avonmore on the Campaspe River bank, and at Barnadown near the bridge (Shaw 1966:95).
After farmers purchased their own cream separators in the early 1900s, central butter factories were opened and the creameries in the study area subsequently closed (Shaw 1966:111).
7.6 Poultry Most small farms and urban households kept chickens for domestic use. From the 1920s, chicken were grown on a more extensive scale. In 1939, F Fiedler established the first poultry farm in Huntly, which was followed by other poultry enterprises after electricity was bought to the area in the 1940s. Peak production occurred in the 1960s (Huntly 126 Years 1980:16).
In 1983, Allied Mills opened a large layer breeder and hatchery operation at Bagshot (Bagshot, Victoria 1992:42). Large-scale poultry industries continue today in the Huntly and Bagshot areas, including Kean’s Free Range Eggs, which have operated from the Huntly area since 1952.
7.7 Piggeries A 6,400-sow piggery was established in 1964 on the Huntly-Kamarooka Road, Bagshot, which by 1967 was employing 50 people. The piggery, which mainly supplied Mayfair Bacon, located in East Bendigo, was expanded in 1981 (Webb and Quinlan 1985:220). Riverlea also operates a piggery at Huntly North and another piggery, established on the Bendigo-Tennyson Road in 1964, operates at Bagshot North (Arnold 2008:125).
7.8 Horticulture The horticulture industry in the study area was located mainly in the southern section of the former Shire of Huntly where small allotments near watercourses, particularly the Bendigo Creek, were taken up under the first Land Acts of the 1860s. Water from the Grassy Flat reservoir was made available to Huntly and Epsom in 1864, with the channel system extended in the 1920s.
Fruit and vegetables
Fruit and vegetables were grown intensively in the study area from the 1850s to meet demand from goldfields’ communities. In later years, fruit and vegetables were sent to local factories that made jam, pickles and sauces.
Some pastoralists with land on the Campaspe River grew vegetables for the growing Bendigo goldfield. Thomas Robertson of Campapse Park, for example, established his Break O Day farm in 1855 where he grew vegetables and carried them by bullock wagon to the diggings watered by the Campaspe River (see Section 7.8) (Shaw 1966:29).
Commercial fruit orchards were established at Ascot, near the Epsom railway station, from the 1860s. One of these properties, ‘Taxonia’ (HO51) located on 21 acres in 1891, was described in a sale advertisement in that year as comprising ‘a magnificent residence built of brick, containing 14 rooms’, in addition to a greenhouse
50 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY and fernery; hothouse; dairy; six acres of gardens; 11 acres of vineyards; and four acres of fruit trees (Bendigo Advertiser 15 October 1898:8).
Chinese people were active in market gardening. Garden licenses for market gardening, issued under the Land Acts of 1869, 1884 and 1890, enabled the holder to occupy land for one year for the purpose of establishing a garden and residence. Because the license could be revoked at any time without compensation, the Chinese erected temporary shacks that were often lived in for years. Most Chinese market gardening had ceased by the 1960s.
Chinese market gardens were established along watercourses and water races throughout the study area, including at Bagshot, Epsom, Elmore, Fosterville and Huntly. In June 1898, Ah Dore notified his customers that his Chinese garden in Elmore (in today’s Wright Street) had changed hands and was now under the management of the new firm Wing Sing and Co (Elmore Standard 10 June 1898:2). Devastated by flood in 1906, a fund was established to seek donations to reinstate the garden, which was still in operation in 1911 (Arnold 2208:351). The market garden grew Pomalo trees that were planted after importing a case of the fruit in 1900. These trees were used to supply Bendigo with Pomalos, a favour returned by Russell Jack when a Bendigo Pomalo tree was planted in the lawns between the railway station and post office at Elmore in 2001. (Back to Elmore 2001:8; Back to Elmore 1990:86). Unfortunately the tree has since died, but plans are in hand for a replacement (Anderson 2020).
Chinese market gardeners grew tomatoes around Bendigo as early as 1860 (Webb and Quinlan 1985:238). Other early growers included A and J Watts at Huntly, who grew tomatoes from 1893 watered by a channel from the Grassy Flat reservoir, employing seasonal labourers who worked at the eucalyptus distilleries to plant and harvest their fruit (Mitchell 2005:20).
The tomato-growing industry in the study area was at its most active in the period 1919-40, with tomatoes worth £200,000 grown in the Bendigo district in 1929 (see Figure 24) (State Savings Bank of Victoria 1930). By 1928, with the Ascot channel extended through Huntly, the Huntly Tomato Growers Association had formed and in 1930 the first load of tomatoes from Elmore was transported to Melbourne (Geraldton Guardian 19 January 1928:2; Lonsdale 2006:154).
Figure 24. Picking tomatoes, grown without water, at Albert Feidler’s property in 1939. (Weekly Times April 1939:30).
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In 1933, due to strong demand for tomato pulp, particularly from factories in New South Wales, more tomatoes were planted in a number of areas of Bendigo, including at Huntly and Epsom (Argus 1 November 1933:18). Bendigo tomatoes were processed at local plants, including Williams’ factory at Epsom, with large consignments also sent to Melbourne (Webb and Quinlan 1985:238).
After the 1938 drought and subsequent water restrictions on the Coliban system, some tomato-growing activity moved to the irrigated districts of Calivil and Rochester. After the closure of the Bendigo Preserving Company’s factory in Bendigo, local tomatoes were sent to Shepparton, Melbourne and Swan Hill for processing (Webb and Quinlan 1985:238). The industry declined in the 1960s, but in 2010, tomato growing was again taken up in the Elmore district.
Wine making
Wine making, established in the study area from 1855 for the most part by French and Swiss-Italian immigrants, was an important industry in the Bendigo region in the nineteenth century, reaching a peak in the 1880s. In the Shire of Huntly in 1871-72, 10,794 gallons of wine were produced, and in 1886-87, 8,307 gallons were made (‘Report of the Proceedings of the Land Act’ 1874 and 1887).
In the study area, Luigi Griggi established a vineyard and cellar in Pitt Street in Huntly in 1856, six acres of vines had been established at ‘Waverley’ at Goornong by 1860, and Robert Hocking and Henry Giles were growing grapes for wine making in Epsom by 1864. Another winemaker in Huntly, Swiss-Italian vigneron Aime Ruedin, purchased a vineyard from Monsignor Bladmire and by the 1870s had established 40 acres of vines (Arnold 2008:95; Shaw 1966:66-67; Webb and Quinlan 1985:230). Thomas Sargent also grew grapes at his St Agnes vineyard in Huntly in the 1880s and 1890s (Leader 25 March 1893:25).
John Nicholas, lessee of the Clare Inn at Barnadown from 1862 with his brother James, established a 20-acre vineyard in the 1860s, storing his wine in a cellar constructed under his brother’s flour mill located nearby (see Section 5.1). The wine was sold to buyers who brought their own demijohns. The winery survived until c1918; the building was demolished in 1949 (Jones 1990:197).
The viticulture industry was decimated by the Phylloxera insect in the 1890s but did not affect vines in the Goornong and Elmore district until 1920 (Shaw 1966:67).
Local historian Marjorie Shaw writes that sheds and storerooms have since been constructed over some wine cellars in the areas of Epsom and Huntly (Shaw 1966:67).
7.9 Quarrying Fine white Kaolin clay, highly valued for ceramic pottery, was extracted from Axedale, Epsom and Huntly and used by the Bendigo Pottery at Epsom.
7.10 Saleyards After 135 years at its Charleston Road site in Bendigo, the Bendigo saleyards re-located to Wallenjoe Road in Huntly in 1997. Between that year and 2017, more than 20 million sheep and lambs and some 300,000-plus cattle passed through the Huntly-Bendigo yards. In 2007, it was noted as Victoria’s second-largest sheep saleyards, consistently drawing stock from the Mallee, Wimmera, northeast and Gippsland also well as New South Wales and Tasmania (Arnel 2017).
52 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Places that represent the theme ‘Building industries and the workforce’ include:
• goldmining sites
• forestry camp, eucalyptus distillery and charcoal burning sites in the Wellsford and Kamarooka forests
• farm outbuildings associated with grazing and cropping
• grain silos and sheds at Goornong, Hunter and Elmore railway stations
• dairy complexes associated with residences
• poultry sheds
• wine cellars
• saleyards at Huntly
8. Manufacturing Local manufacturing was driven by the demand for machinery and equipment on the Bendigo goldfield. As mining declined, the local economy slowed and little development in manufacturing occurred in the period from 1915 to 1950. However, with the post-World War II economic boom, industry experienced significant growth. This development was aided by a policy of decentralisation of industry from the capital cities to rural areas implemented in the 1960s and 1970s when state governments in Victoria and New South Wales joined the Whitlam government to create programs designed to achieve what many people at the time termed 'balanced development’.
Manufacturing industry today in the study area is concentrated in sections of Huntly and Epsom, including on the Midland Highway and on the site of the former Epsom Market.
8.1 Foundries and engineering works Foundries and engineering works were established in the study area from the 1850s to keep pace with the demand for mining equipment and machinery on the Bendigo goldfield. A number of small foundries were established in the study area, including Roberts and Sons foundry at Epsom (Argus 20 June 1898:7). John Goyne established a larger enterprise, his steam stamper grating factory, which made gold sieves and grates, in Epsom in 1858. Goyne, also a Huntly Shire councillor in the late 1880s, became known as the highest quality gauze manufacturer in the colony, exporting his product around the world to places including New Zealand and South Africa (Context 2016:91). His factory, which is not located in the study area, operated until World War I when mining declined (Arnold 2008:28).
The development of agriculture also drove the founding of engineering works in the study area. Nathaniel McKay and his family moved from the Raywood mines in the early 1870s to settle at Drummartin (Webb and Quinlan 1985:41). With his brother John and his father Nathaniel, Hugh Victor McKay assembled a stripper- harvester from existing implements and machines. The prototype was completed in January 1885, trialled in the field and patented on 24 March 1885. Hugh Victor persuaded the plough makers McCalman, Garde & Co of North Melbourne to manufacture the machine, which was exhibited at the National Agricultural Society Show in August 1885. This laid the foundation for the establishment of the H V Sunshine Harvester company in Sunshine, Melbourne (see Figure 25). Contrary to popular belief H V McKay was not the first to invent the
53 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY stripper-harvester. James Morrow from Melbourne had perfected, patented and exhibited a stripper-harvester more than a year earlier (Lack 1986).
At Elmore, David Bremner, a blacksmith and wheelwright who manufactured a variety of tools and implements from premises in Railway Place East, was the first to add an extra furrow to the single-furrow plough in 1872 (Webb and Quinlan 1985:42). Bremner was awarded a medal for his single furrow plough at the Sandhurst Exhibition in 1887 (Arnold 2008:328). Bremner was succeeded by his son, James Bremner, a well-known and respected community member, who often sat on a seat, known as ‘Brummy’s seat’, under an elm tree (since removed) near his business premises on the south side of the intersection of Clarke Street and Railway Place. The Elmore Progress Association has placed a plaque nearby (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016). Bremner’s tools and implements are now collectors’ items. Also at Elmore, blacksmith and wheelwright R E Dick invented a wheat pickler c1907 (Arnold 2008:332).
Another early blacksmith and wheelwright works, W T Watts and Son, operated from the 1890s at Drummartin on the corner of the Bendigo-Tennyson Road and Tandarra Road. The building is still in evidence today.
In the early 1930s, Bill and Len Nicholas of Barnadown were the first in the district to mechanise the topdressing of pastures with superphosphate by modifying a seed broadcaster. This was at a time when growers were encouraged to top dress rather than grow wheat because of the surplus of wheat created by the Grow More Wheat campaign (Webb and Quinlan 1985:157).
Figure 25. Smithy at Sunshine in 1933 on which is the inscription ‘The first Harvester was manufactured in 1884 in this smithy at Drummartin, Victoria, by Hugh Victor McKay’. (Source: Sunshine Harvester Works 1933, SLV)
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8.2 Building materials A number of clay pits, which provided the material for the making of bricks, were established at Elmore. In 1870 Peter Heil opened brickworks, known as the Elmore Brick Yards, between Michie and Hervey streets. Bricks were moulded by hand in brick moulds, sun dried then fired, forming what was known as ‘soft bricks’. The works continued to operate until 1909, supplying bricks for the majority of the new brick buildings constructed in the area over this time (EPA News undated:18). In addition, James Tregurtha had opened a brick yard at the north end of the township by 1874 (Arnold 2008:336). Many of Elmore’s existing commercial buildings at the northern end of Railway Place are constructed of local brick (EPA News undated:18).
The post-war construction boom in Australia facilitated the establishment of companies that supplied building materials for the construction of homes, and decentralisation policies encouraged companies to set up business in rural areas. By 1951, Green Bros builders had established a company in Epsom that constructed two and three-bedroom prefabricated homes. The firm provided houses to private owners as well as to the SRWSC, who in 1951 ordered two prefab residences for staff working in the Campaspe Irrigation District. The company closed in 1981 (Shaw 1966:125; Age 23 June 1951:23 and 1 July 1981:27; Riverine Herald 28 August 1951:2).
8.3 Food processing Food processing industries in the Shire of Huntly included flour milling and a sauce and pickle factory. The sauce and pickle factory, which processed large quantities of local tomatoes, operated at the corner of Station and Howard streets in Huntly (Arnold 2008:99), and flour mills operated at Barnadown and Elmore.
In 1862, Cornishmen James and John Nicholas leased the Clare Inn and the operation of a punt on the Campaspe River at Barnadown from squatter Thomas Robertson of the Campaspe River run. James Nicholas gained a 99-year lease on five acres of land where he established a sawmill used to produce materials for the construction of a three-storey timber flour mill, designed by his wife, Rebecca, and constructed in 1865 on the same land. The sawmill was operated during the day, and the flour mill at night, by a 16-horsepower steam engine that used water from the Campaspe River. The flour mill was not profitable and worked only intermittently during the 1880s, closing in the 1890s. The building was demolished in 1949 and is evidenced today by pepper trees on the west side of the Campaspe River at the Barnadown bridge (Jones 1990:196-197).
The Runnymede (later Elmore) flour mill was constructed in 1873 on the western bank of the Campaspe River for J Jones and Son. The mill was sold to John Butcher in 1878 who, by 1903, was using a 120-horsepower Harkness & Company steam engine from Bendigo to mill the flour (see Figure 26). In 1944, the mill continued to operate as the Elmore Flour Mills Pty Ltd until 1957. It was demolished and a petrol station built on the site in the 1960s (Jones 1990:205-206; Back to Elmore 1990:87).
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Figure 26. The Runnymede Flour Mills, then in the ownership of J Butcher, also showing the bridge alignment across the Campaspe River before today’s bridge was opened further south in 1962. (Source: signage at bridge)
8.4 Textiles The post-World War II expansion of manufacturing included the textile industry, which, along with decentralisation policies of the time, saw a textile company, the Elmore Weaving Mills, in operation by 1952. It appears that the owner of the firm was living in Northcote in 1953 (Age 29 October 1952:21 and 7 February 1953:21; Arnold 2008:352).
8.5 Other manufacturing The Bendigo Pottery (HO420; VHR H0674)) was established by Scottish entrepreneur George Duncan Guthrie in 1857 in the Huntly area where he found good clays, but it closed soon after (VHD ‘Bendigo Pottery’ VHR H0674, 2006).
In 1864 Guthrie established the current works in Epsom close to the former pottery site. The success of the enterprise was helped by the opening of the Bendigo-Echuca section of the Melbourne-Murray River railway in 1864 and the establishment of a depot in Melbourne in 1866 to distribute the pottery's products. Stables, designed by architect Robert Alexander Love, were built in 1873 (VHD ‘Bendigo Pottery’ VHR H0674, 2006).
In 1883 a spur line from the nearby railway line was constructed to the factory and was used for transporting clays to the site and finished products to markets such as Melbourne. At the end of the nineteenth century the pottery employed a large workforce producing a vast range of goods that included household goods, a large range of special use bottles, pipes and sanitary ware and a range of pressed decorative ware (see Figure 27) (VHD ‘Bendigo Pottery’ VHR H0674, 2006).
By the 1950s production had narrowed into pipework, tiling and industrial ware. Humes Pipes subsequently took over the pottery and thereupon followed a further decline. Despite several more changes of ownership, the pottery has continued to operate as a manufacturing, retailing and tourism concern (VHD ‘Bendigo Pottery’ VHR H0674, 2006).
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Figure 27. Aerial view of Bendigo Pottery c1920-1930. (Source: Pratt c1920-30, SLV)
Places that represent the theme ‘Manufacturing’ include:
• the McKay residence and outbuildings in Drummartin associated with the H V McKay Sunshine Harvester
• the Green family home at Epsom associated with Green Brothers prefabricated houses
• flour mill sites at Barnadown and Elmore
• the Bendigo Pottery at Epsom
• W T Watts & Son blacksmith and wheelwright building in Kamarooka
9. Commerce Commercial enterprises were quick to establish across the study area to cater for the needs of the first white settlers, with some of the first businesses comprising inns and wine shanties that provided food and drink to drovers moving stock between squatting runs and livestock markets. As settlements were formed, business owners offered a plethora of goods and services for sale. As further development occurred, commercial centres developed on the main, or ‘high’, street of townships. This process has continued through to present day, with the Midland Highway at Epsom, for instance, the location of a number of businesses such as car yards and stock and station agents.
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Other early commercial ventures included local livestock markets regularly held in rural towns and often viewed as a social gathering as well as a day to undertake general shopping. This concept has been revisited in recent times with the establishment of farmers markets. In the study area, the Epsom Market, which opened c1980, was considered the largest undercover market in Victoria at the time. It proved a popular venue for market goers until its closure in 2004 (Ridnell and Leunig 2004).
9.1 Hotels Hotels and wine shanties, often with stores attached, were some of the first buildings to be constructed along main travel routes in the Shire of Huntly. They provided food, drink and accommodation for travellers and yards for stock. Hotel buildings were also used as morgues, entertainment spaces for concerts and dances, meeting rooms for clubs and lodges, venues for political meetings, and as accommodation for church services. After the prohibition of alcohol was lifted in May 1854, a wave of hotels sprung up on the Bendigo goldfield.
Some hotels in the study area were rebuilt during the economic boom of the 1880s with earlier utilitarian buildings replaced by more elaborate constructions. Another wave of change occurred in the first decade of the twentieth century when, because of the impact of the temperance movement, the License Reduction Board recommended the cancellation of a number of hotel licenses and the upgrade of accommodation at others.
Early hotels on stock and goldfield routes
One of the earliest hotels in the study area was the brick Elmore Hotel built with stockyards in 1846 on the west side of the Campaspe River on the Murray Road near Thomas Robertson’s Break O Day farm (Bendigo Advertiser 23 December 1857:3; Back to Elmore 1990:84; Arnold 2008:249). A second Elmore Hotel was built at South Elmore (Avonmore) in 1867. By 1887 it was owned by the Cohn brothers of Bendigo. It closed in 1927 (EPA Museum 2020).
The Clare Inn on the Campaspe River at Barnadown was established in 1854, with Patrick McGowan the first publican. After McGowan drowned in the Campaspe River, the hotel lease was taken over by Edward Kennedy c1855, and by John and James Nicholas in 1862. The Clare Inn continued to operate until 1912 (Age 6 December 1912:15). The building was pulled down in 1954, but the brick store and stables associated with the inn survive as part of Clare Cottage (Webb and Quinlan 1985:189).
The Sandy Creek Hotel, built to the west of Five Ways on Sandy Creek Road, Sandy Creek, was in operation by 1860. Outbuildings and trees mark the site today (Arnold 2008:565).
The Seven Door hotel was opened at Barnadown by 1860 at the junction of the Elmore-Barnadown and Goornong-Barnadown roads. Remains of the hotel are in evidence today (Webb and Quinlan 1985:42).
At Goornong, Alexander Eastman had opened his public house on the Murray road by 1862 to serve travellers journeying from the Echuca and New South Wales Riverina to the Bendigo diggings. The building was renamed the Goornong Hotel in 1865 (Goornong Souvenir Booklet 1975; Bendigo Advertiser 22 December 1865:3).
From the 1870s at Warragamba, the Farmers Arms Hotel operated on the three-chain road between Elmore and Mitiamo at the corner of today’s Kellys Road. The site is known today as Pine Tree Corner (Arnold 2008:230).
The Ellesmere Hotel was built c1870 at the intersection of the Axedale-Goornong Road and Russells Bridge Road, the latter which crossed the Campaspe River (see Figure 28). It closed in 1914 (Goornong and District Heritage Trail signage 2016, at Fosterville).
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Figure 28. The Ellesmere Hotel, date unknown. (Goornong and District Heritage Trail signage 2016, at Fosterville)
Hotels in townships
The Turf Tavern Hotel (HO419), first built as a slab building, opened in 1854 at the junction of today’s Golf Course Road and Taylor and Station streets, Epsom. After a fire destroyed the building in 1901, it was rebuilt in brick (Arnold 2008:27).
By 1859, three hotels were operating on the west side of Murray Road at Huntly: the Bird in the Hand; the Rose, Shamrock and Thistle; and Sample’s Camp Hotel (Arnold 2008:94). The Victoria Hotel, now trading as the Huntly Hotel, was built in 1860 by W W Watts and is the oldest surviving building in Huntly (see Figure 29). Also at Huntly, the Huntly and Bagshot Hotel operated from 1862-91 and the Union Hotel from 1861 to 1913 (H&DHS 2020).
Figure 29. Victoria Hotel (now the Huntly Hotel). Signage on the three arches reads from left to right: ‘Victoria Hotel’, ‘1860’ and ‘MUOOF Hall’, date unknown. (Source: H&DHS)
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Three hotels operate in Elmore today. The Railway Hotel and store at Elmore were built c1865 and operate today as Elmore’s oldest building; the hotel’s interior and exterior were significantly altered in 1967. Elmore’s Victoria Hotel, originally built c1868, was replaced by a new building in the 1880s. This in turn was demolished and replaced by the current hotel building constructed in 1969. The Shamrock Hotel and store at Elmore was built c1881 and the building was re-modelled in 1965-75 (Arnold 2008:296-97). Other hotels built in Elmore, and since demolished, include the Commercial Hotel (1866), the Bridge Hotel (in operation by 1880), and the Runnymede Hotel (in operation by 1881) (Arnold 2008:298-302).
A number of hotels serviced Goornong: Hampton’s Hotel in operation by 1883; the Railway Hotel and store built by 1862 and licensed to the Cohn brothers by 1917; the Farmers Arms Hotel opened by 1860 (demolished when the highway was realigned and marked today by trees); the Commercial Hotel and store opened in 1864; the Black Swan Hotel opened by 1882 (since demolished); and the Drovers Arms Hotel opened in 1870 (demolished in 2000 and replaced by a new red brick building) (Arnold 2008:436-39).
The site of the Kamarooka Hotel, opened in c1875 in the Kamarooka township on the Elmore-Raywood Road, is known today as Moxom’s corner and is marked by a plaque (Arnold 2008:171). It closed in 1924.
9.2 Banks With the goldrushes of the 1850s, the decade saw the number and character of Victoria’s banks transformed and bankers and financiers came to occupy a place of prominence. Similarly in the 1880s, 1920s and 1950s the booming economy needed credit, specialist payment services and a place for savings. Banks were especially integral to the economy of country towns through providing lending services.
In Epsom, the Oriental Bank and the Bank of Victoria had opened by 1864 (Bendigo Advertiser 24 October 1864:3) and in later years a State Savings Bank of Victoria operated from the corner of Howard Street and the Midland Highway in Epsom (H&DHS 2020).
A number of banks were built in Elmore. A branch of the Bank of Victoria, designed by architect George Jobbins, was built in Elmore in 1884 (Argus 24 July 1884:3 cited in Lewis 2013, record no 7218).
In 1924, the State Savings Bank of Victoria opened a two-storey branch with residence at Elmore in Cardwell Street to a design by architects Stephensen and Meldrum. The bank continued to operate from the premises until 1973 when a new bank building and residence opened. In order to control the historical cracking of brick work in Elmore, the 1973 building was designed as four separate linked units to allow for movement of the clay subsoil (Back to Elmore 1990:48, 50). The bank became part of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
An agency for the Bank of New South Wales opened in Runnymede (Elmore) in 1873, with a new building, designed by architect A R Butler, constructed in 1939 (see Figure 30) (Argus 27 April 1939 cited in Lewis 2013, record no 7217).
The CBC Bank at Elmore was rebuilt in 1958 (Back to Elmore 1990:86, 87). The building now houses the Bendigo Bank.
60 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Figure 30. Sketch of the Bank of New South Wales planned for Elmore, 1939. (Argus 27 April 1939:2)
9.3 Garages and service stations With the motorcar gaining popularity in the first decades of the twentieth century, a number of former blacksmiths, wheelwrights and engineering works that serviced horse-drawn and steam-driven vehicles adapted their buildings to provide fuel and repairs to cars.
In Elmore, by 1918 blacksmith and wheelwright, R E Dick, was operating Dicks Motor Garage and Engineering Works. From 1920, Dick leased a garage in Railway Place east, which was also the agency for Oaklands, Chalmers, Fiat and Fordson tractors and sold Ford parts and accessories (Arnold 2008:332-33). The business premises were later relocated to Cardwell Street.
At Drummartin on the Bendigo-Tennyson Road, W T Watts and Son, blacksmiths and wheelwrights who operated from the 1890s, in later years offered mechanic services and petrol. The corrugated iron building is still in evidence today.
New, more substantial, brick garages were built in the 1920s-1930s at Huntly (today’s Trickey’s Diesel building) and Goornong (today’s Goornong Mechanical).
Another wave of garages were constructed in the 1950s-1960s to incorporate petrol stations. An example from this era is the ‘Old Mill’ garage and petrol station (now closed) at Elmore.
9.4 Tourism Elmore receives high numbers of tourists on route to the River Murray. After the loss of banking and hospital facilities, and major employers, such as the Post Master General (PMG), Victoria Railways, and the State Electricity Commission (SEC), the Elmore Progress Association called public meetings to canvas ideas to secure Elmore’s economic future. A sub-committee, the Advance Elmore Committee, was formed and were successful in receiving funding for the establishment of the tourism attraction, Campaspe Run H V McKay Rural Discovery Centre, opened in 1998 to record and celebrate the contribution of agriculture to the local area (Back to Elmore 2001:8).
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Places that represent the theme ‘Commerce’ include:
• functioning hotels from the Victorian era at Elmore and Huntly, as well as a number of former hotel sites located on early droving and goldfield routes
• former bank buildings at Huntly
• former garages built in the 1920s-1950s at Goornong, Huntly and Elmore
10. Building towns and the area
10.1 Surveying and land sales In 1865, apart from the survey of parishes undertaken in a northerly direction from Bendigo, the majority of the study area had not been surveyed in any detail. The Huntly Parish was surveyed by Charles W Russell in 1854; government surveyor A E Allan surveyed the Elmore district in 1856; and S Breen surveyed the Elmore Parish in 1857 (Back to Elmore 1990:89)
The only townships in the Shire of Huntly shown on an 1865 map were Huntly and Elmore. Other features included the Melbourne-Murray River railway line, tracks, and waterways; the remainder of the area was referred to generally as ‘Grassy open plains’ (see Figures 31 and 32).
As part of the survey of townships in the study area from the 1860s, public land was reserved for schools, halls, police and court buildings, halls, churches, cemeteries, post offices, parks and recreation grounds. In some towns, substantial public buildings and churches were erected. Plants to generate gas and electricity were installed in later years. Water supplies were provided and drainage infrastructure constructed. Mains electricity was connected to rural districts of the study area from the 1930s.
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Figure 31. An extract from a c1865 map of Victoria showing, in the study area, the squatting runs of Kamarooka and Burnewang; the townships of Ascot, Huntley and Elmore; the Melbourne-Murray River Railway; the Campaspe River; and the Bendigo Creek and Piccaninny Creek. (Source: Map of Victoria 1865?)
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5
4
6
3
1
2
Figure 32. An 1881 map showing the parishes of the study area: Wellsford, Ellesmere, Huntly, Bagshot, Goornong, Nolan, Elmore, Diggora, Warragamba, Minto, Kamarooka, Egerton and Whirrakee. Travel and droving routes established by this year include the Murray Road, running from Epsom and Huntly to Elmore via Goornong (part of which is today’s Old Murray Road) (1); a track between Epsom and Barnadown (today’s Epsom-Fosterville/Sandy Creek-Barnadown Road) (2); a track between Barnadown and Elmore (today’s Elmore-Barnadown Road) (3); a track between Elmore and Mitiamo (today’s Elmore-Mitiamo Road) (4); the Elmore-Minto Road (5); and the Elmore-Raywood Road (6). (Source: Map of Victoria 1881).
10.2 Towns and settlements Towns and settlements were established in the study area for different reasons. The townships of Epsom (surveyed in 1863), Huntly (surveyed in 1863); and Fosterville (surveyed in 1897) developed as part of the growth of the Bendigo goldfield; Barnadown was established as a river crossing on the Campaspe River, as was Runnymede (not in the study area), whose population later moved to Elmore (initially also named Runnymede) surveyed in 1864 and opened as a railway station in the same year.
Other townships, including Bagshot and the township of Goornong (surveyed in 1864), and the settlement at Drummartin, were founded as centres for farming populations. A general store and post office opened at Kamarooka in 1882, the same year the township was surveyed. The Kamarooka village was surveyed by J F
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O’Dwyer c1893 to cater for settlers taking up land under the Village Settlement Act (see Section 4.5) (Arnold 2008:140).
Little remains of some settlements. The former township of South Elmore, (also known as Bennett’s Crossing, and from 1909, Avonmore), developed around the railway siding of South Elmore and comprised a hotel, hall, blacksmith, and general store/post office (see Figure 33). It is marked today by a few houses and poplars that once grew at the Elmore Hotel (Back to Elmore 1990:70; Arnold 2007:14).
Figure 33. Avonmore Post Office, c1952. (Source: NAA c1952 ‘Avonmore Post Office’, B5919, 74)
Similarly, after a flour mill and bridge were built at the Campaspe River crossing at Barnadown in 1867, by 1872 a small township, comprising a saddler’s, blacksmith's, shoemaker's, butcher's, storekeeper’s, draper's, and carpenter's, was in operation (see Figure 34) (Bendigo Advertiser 30 March 1872:2). Today all that remains of the village is buildings associated with the Clare Inn and pepper trees that mark the site of the flour mill.
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Figure 34. A painting of Barnadown c 1870 viewed from the eastern approach of the bridge over the Campaspe River. (Source: Goornong and District Heritage Trail signage 2016, at Barnadown)
Similarly, little remains of the township of Fosterville, 199 township allotments surveyed in 1895. By 1901 the township comprised an ironmonger, restaurant, several stores, boot maker’s, wheelwright, baker’s, butcher’s and wine shanties, but was all but deserted by 1905, with 80 per cent of the houses either removed or burnt by fire (Arnold 2008:539).
The movement of buildings between towns and districts as populations rose and fell was a common practice. A café in Elmore, for example, is housed in a former army hut, thought to have been moved from Corop and relocated to the site after World War II for use as a newsagency.
Conversely, development in areas close to Bendigo, Ascot, Epsom and Huntly, has intensified, as can be seen by the aerial photo in Figure 35 showing the Ascot area in 1920-30.
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Figure 35. An aerial view of the intersection of roads and the railway line at Ascot, c1920-30. (Pratt c1920-30, SLV)
The history of the study area’s three main townships is provided below.
Elmore
Elmore was part of the Burnewang run established in 1841. The fist hotel in the area, the Elmore Hotel, was established on the Murray Road in 1846 (see Section 9.1)
A route made by drovers and followed by gold seekers travelling from Bendigo to the Ovens/North East goldfields existed on the east bank of the Campaspe River, and a village, named Runnymede, was surveyed on that road in 1855.
With the nearby township of Runnymede located on the east side of the Campaspe River, it was expected that South Elmore (today’s Avonmore) would be the town established on the west side. However, a site for a township, also named Runnymede (later Elmore), was actually surveyed in 1864 at the point where the railway line passed closest to the Campaspe River (Back to Elmore 2001:4).
With the opening of the Bendigo-Echuca section of the Melbourne-Murray River railway in 1864, Elmore township was surveyed by Horace Walker and town lots sold in July 1864 on the west side of the line before the actual opening of the railway line in September 1864, many to speculators at the upset price of £4 per acre (Elmore Township Plan 1949; Shaw 1966:61). The bulk of the township allotments were purchased over the period 1864-76, but most were not built on immediately (Elmore Township Plan 1949). As a consequence of the settlement at the new site, Runnymede on the west side of the Campaspe River declined, with the bridging
67 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY of the river in 1870 hastening the process. By 1871, Elmore supported a population of 153 (Victorian Places 2015).
Railway Place West (now Simmie Street) was envisaged as the main street of Elmore, however commercial activity gravitated to the east side of the railway line where the Railway Hotel was located. The main commercial centre subsequently formed in the Railway Place East and Cardwell Street area. Historic traffic flow was altered when the Midland Highway/Northern Highway was constructed along Margaret Street, with a new bridge over the Campaspe River, in 1961-62 (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016). This led to the closure of a number of businesses in Cardwell Street. River Street, a part of the original town survey, was renamed Jeffrey Street by the early 1870s (Arnold 2008:303; Bendigo Advertiser 7 April 1873:4).
The Elmore township is built on the alluvial clay banks of the Campaspe River, which shrinks in summer and expands in winter. Over time this has caused cracking in some of the township’s brick buildings, many of which have been fashioned from the same clay (Back to Elmore 1990:50). Local bricks were made from two pits that operated in Elmore (see Section 8.2); these were filled in when sewerage was connected to the town in the early 1900s.
The first buildings in Elmore comprised a butcher’s shop and huts along the Campaspe River, constructed for railway workers. In 1864, the Railway Hotel was erected as a hotel and store. A private school was opened in Elmore in 1865 and replaced by a government school in 1875.
The population of Elmore increased almost four-fold from 153 people in 1871 to 612 in 1881 (Victorian Places 2015). Wearings Cosmopolitan Store opened in 1875 and by 1893 was owned by Thomas Parsons, who added several extensions to the building (‘Elmore Plaque Project’). The Elmore Pioneer newspaper was established in 1877 and renamed the Elmore Standard in 1881 (Arnold 2008:294). Early residences were built in Michie, Hervey and Jeffrey streets in proximity to the commercial centre and railway station.
A number of local builders were involved in the construction of buildings in the town. Builder Samuel H Farrell was active in the period 1873 to 1914, and builders and carpenters Charles and Henry Joseph Fudge, senior worked in the area as bricklayers from 1878, operating from new premises, which included a timber yard, built in Hervey Street in 1914. After Fudge senior’s death in 1914, his son, also named Henry Joesph Fudge, formed a partnership to trade as Messrs Fudge & Dunstan. The business was sold to G. Arblaster, another local builder, in 1919 (Arnold 2008:336).
In 1880, Elmore comprised two banks, a school, a flour mill, three churches, three hotels and a newspaper. A mechanics’ institute was opened by 1882 and in 1884, approximately 250 people lived in Elmore (Arnold 2008:252). The Elmore Dining Rooms, in operation in 1882, moved to the corner of Cardwell and River (Jeffrey) streets in 1886 becoming, by 1890, the Elmore Coffee Palace, serving wine and coffee shop (Arnold 2008:303- 04).
Recovery from the 1890s economic depression accompanied by new farming technology (see Section 7.3) and the opening of the Cohuna railway extension resulted in a population increase in Elmore; by 1901 Elmore’s population was 614, which increased to 893 in 1921 (Elmore’s peak population) (Victorian Places 2015). Consequently, a number of new residences were built over this period.
In 1903 the Australian Handbook described the township:
Elmore is a postal, savings bank, money-order, and telegraph town within ¼ mile west bank of the Campaspe river, lying 428 feet above sea level. It is a station on the Echuca railway line…A coach runs daily to Corop, and tri-weekly to Rushworth. Hotels are Victoria, Commercial, Runnymede,
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Bridge, Railway, Shamrock, and Elmore. It has branches of the N. S. Wales and Victoria Banks, a State school (No.1,515), Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and Bible Christian places of worship, Athenaeum, and a public library of 1,200 vols., and A.N.A. and M.U. I.0.0.F. societies. Court of petty sessions held here. The Elmore Waterworks Trust supplies the township and railway department with water. The neighbourhood is agricultural and pastoral. Gold has been found about 5 miles west. The Campaspe river, in which there is an abundance of fish, flows between Runnymede and Elmore. Lake Cooper is 10 miles E., Whipstick Ranges (a beautiful belt of undulating hills) about 14 miles distant. An agricultural show is held annually. Population of parish 900, mostly engaged in farming pursuits, of whom 700 live in the township. Newspaper, Elmore Standard, published on Thursday (cited in Victorian Places 2015).
Figure 36. Railway Place, Elmore, date unknown. Note the street tree plantings. (Source: EPA Museum)
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Figure 37. View of Elmore from the water tower, looking west along Cardwell Street, c1912. Note the street tree plantings. (Source: ‘Bird’s-eye View’ 1912, SLV)
Views of Elmore can be seen in Figures 36 and 37. Business activity increased in the town when a branch railway line was opened from Elmore to Cohuna in 1915.
Elmore residents purchased an electric generator and the Elmore Electric Light and Power Company was subsequently formed in 1918, with the State Electricity Commission (SEC) taking over supply in 1948 (Back to Elmore 1990:86, 87).
Elmore developed a diverse farming base, including vineyards (until affected by Phylloxera in the 1920s), dairying, poultry, sheep grazing and cereals. Milk was supplied to the Rochester dairy factory and saleyards were opened in 1912, running weekly sales with Rochester. The flour mill, which opened in 1873, operated continuously until 1957 (Victorian Places 2015).
Linked closely to its agricultural hinterland, a number of Elmore’s businesses comprised auctioneers and stock and station agents, wool and skin merchants, farm machinery sellers, and grain dealers.
Elmore’s Bush Nursing Hospital opened on 3 December 1939 and survived a threat of closure in the early 1990s before being amalgamated to form the Rochester and District Health Service in 1993. Soldier settlement after World War II took place in the area, and by 1961, Elmore’s population had reached 735 (Victorian Places 2015).
In 1964, the first annual agricultural and machinery field days was held at Elmore, an event that continues today. The Campaspe Run Rural Discovery Centre opened at Elmore in 1998.
In 2014, the Elmore Primary School had an enrolment of 34 pupils (Victorian Places 2015). In 2016, 776 people lived in Elmore (ABS 2016).
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Goornong
The Goornong district was beyond the area of the Bendigo goldfields and its activities were exclusively agricultural.
The original Goornong settlement was established between Sharkeys and Pethericks roads at the Crabhole Creek Water Reserve, where a school and houses were located, before moving to a site on Murray Road near Howards Bridge. Today’s township was surveyed in 1864 by Richard Larritt, who also surveyed the township of Bendigo, near the Melbourne-Murray River railway line, which opened in 1864. Residents relocated to the new site soon after (Oberin 2020; Lovell Chen 2013b:106).
Goornong was a tent town during the construction of the railway line. The Railway Hotel and store, built by George Slingo to serve the railway contractors on the site of Langdon’s shanty, was one of the first buildings to be constructed in the town (Arnold 2008:436). Allotments in the Goornong township were first sold on the east side of the railway line in the period 1864-73 in the block bounded by Railway Place (Midland Highway), the Goornong-Fosterville Road, Bagshot Street, and Tyler Street (Goornong Township Plan 1953).
In 1864, Franz Pfau opened a bootmaker's shop and residence made from timber supplied by the Baranadown sawmill. Another early building, a butcher’s shop, later housed a cafe/milk bar (now closed). George Matthews built a hay and corn store next to the saddlery in the main street. Jacob Honeychurch built the Commercial Hotel and store in Goornong in 1864 from timber supplied by the Barnadown sawmill (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975). Honeychurch built a new brick store in 1903 (see Figure 38) (Arnold 2008:441).
Figure 38. Honeychurch’s store in Goornong. (Source: Goornong and District Heritage Trail signage 2016, at Goornong)
In 1865 Bailliere’s Victorian Gazetteer listed two hotels in Goornong: the Railway and the Goornong, and stated that the township supported ‘a small but increasing population’. The Goornong Farmers Common opened in the same year (Arnold 2008:408).
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A Presbyterian school opened in 1873 and was replaced by a government school in 1875. An Anglican church was opened in 1878, and an agricultural hall in 1889 (Victorian Places 2015).
During the 1880s the district’s population was approximately 1,500 persons, with 72 people living in the Goornong township in 1881 and 130 people in residence in 1891 (Victorian Places 2015; Arnold 2008:408).
In 1883, the Bendigo Advertiser wrote that Goornong had recently undergone some improvements:
a pile of brick buildings [have been] erected by Mr. Edmond Hayes, consisting of a grain store capable of storing 500 bags, a large retail store, and a large and commodious hotel of eleven rooms, the whole costing about £1,000. In addition to this Mr. Hayes has bricks burnt for the erection of premises for a bank. The next pile of buildings are those of Mr. Hans Fick, which are built externally of weatherboards…[they consist of] twelve rooms, bar and store (Bendigo Advertiser 25 April 1883:1).
In 1903, the Australian Handbook described Goornong, then with a population of 200, as
a postal town, with telegraph and money-order offices, electoral district of Mandurang…and police district of Goornong…It is a railway station on the Melbourne and Echuca line… Hotels: Drovers Arms, Railway, Black Swan, Commercial. A coach runs to Barnedown thrice weekly…and to Muskerry and Toolleen thrice weekly…Daily mail to Fosterville…There is a State school (No. 1598), a Church of England, and a police station; water from Council dam and race from Coliban. The population of the district, who are mainly engaged in agricultural pursuits, numbers 1,500 persons; that of the township, about 200 (cited in Victorian Places 2015).
Water from the Coliban water scheme’s Grassy Flat reservoir channelled to Fosterville in 1896 was supplied to Goornong by 1901 via an extension of the race (Arnold 2008:507). As a consequence, the population of Goornong increased three-fold during the period 1901-11 from 137 people to 398 (its peak population) (Victorian Places 2015). A number of new residences and commercial buildings were erected over this period. Views of Goornong in 1926 and 1932 can be seen in Figures 39 and 40.
The grain silos at the railway station, which had provided substantial employment and services to the local farming community from the 1940s, closed in 2003. New residents have moved into Goornong in the last decades, with the population of the town increasing from 189 people in 1961 to 303 in 1991 (Victorian Places 2015).
Today, Goornong’s services include the provision of a large reserve that incorporates sports facilities and a swimming pool; a garage and engineering works; the Drovers Arms hotel; an Anglican church; a school with 43 pupils (2014); and a memorial hall (Victorian Places 2015).
At the 2016 census, Goornong had a population of 654 (ABS 2016). The Goornong CFA continues to train and meet regularly.
A well-known Victorian, Sir Eugene Gorman, QC (1891-1973) was born in Goornong and attended the local school. He achieved distinction in World War I, was a foundation member of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties and pursued a wide range of interests (Victorian Places 2015).
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Figure 39. Goorong in 1926. (Source: Weekly Times 28 August 1926:46)
Figure 40. Goornong in 1932. (Source: Weekly Times 16 July 1932:34)
Huntly
Known as Huntley until c1867, the Huntly area was part of the Barnedown run established in 1841. From the early 1850s, French, Swiss-Italian, Spanish and Chinese immigrants grew fruit and vegetables along Bendigo Creek and Back Creek at Huntly to supply the growing population of the Bendigo goldfield.
Allotments had been surveyed in the district by 1854, and lots on Murray Road in the settlement of Huntly ‘near the present lead’ were sold in 1856 and 1857 (Bendigo Advertiser 1 November 1856:3; 14 February 1857:4).
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Huntly became a part of the Bendigo goldfield in 1859. An alluvial rush to the area occurred in that year and the mining of the Huntly Deep Lead commenced from 1860.
Horace Walter had surveyed the township of Huntly by 1863, where the streets were laid out on a diagonal grid and surrounded to the east and west by small farming allotments. Township reservations included land for a Presbyterian church, Primitive Methodist church, public recreation reserve, public garden reserve, cemetery, and a pound (Huntly Township Plan 1931). The township survey was laid over a number of existing buildings that housed two bakers, five banks, two blacksmiths, four bootmakers, five butchers, two cab drivers, two doctors, three drapers, nine hotels, seven stores, two wine shanties, a saddler, a saw mill and a wheelwright (Arnold 2008:57).
In 1857 an Anglican school was opened at Huntly, and a Presbyterian school in 1860. The post office, named Huntley, opened in 1860 and was renamed Huntly c1867 (Premier Postal Auctions 2005).
Several hotels were opened and trees for mine props and railway sleepers were cut from forests and milled at sawmills in the township. Vegetable and fruit growing intensified on small allotments along Bendigo Creek and Back Creek with the introduction of the first Land Act in 1862.
In 1861, the Campaspe District Roads Board was created, and was followed by the formation of the Huntly Shire on 13 July 1866. Both institutions held meetings at Huntly, with new Huntly Shire Chambers opened in 1867.
In 1864, as part of the Melbourne-Murray River railway line, the section from Bendigo to Echuca was opened, with a station at Huntly. A cemetery was established in 1867 and a courthouse opened in Huntly in 1874. Huntly’s population in 1871 was 495, which increased to 670 in 1881 (Victorian Places 2015). A number of residences were subsequently built in this period. The town of Huntly was gazetted in 1885.
By 1901, mining at Huntly had declined and the population stood at 279 (Victorian Places 2015). In 1903, the Australian Handbook described Huntly:
It is a railway flag station on the Bendigo line…Cabs run to Bendigo…Hotels: Camp, Victoria and Comer. There is a State school (No. 306), three churches, Anglican, Wesleyan, and Roman Catholic, a police camp, and a shire hall. Anglican services are held in the Presbyterian Church. The district is principally a gold-mining one, though farming operations, fruit growing, and wine producing are carried on to some extent. In 1901, 26,848 acres were under cultivation, the chief crops being wheat, oats, hay. and vines. Net annual value of property in the shire is £30,445, area 335 sq. miles, ratepayers 900, dwellings 920…Population of town, 200; of shire, 4,100 (cited in Victorian Places 2015).
A memorial hall opened in 1922. In 1930, the Manchester Unity Lodge took over the courthouse building for its meetings (Weekly Times 8 April 1939:30).
During the 1920s the industries of pipe (white) clay mining and tomato growing were established. Until irrigation in the Goulburn Valley increased tomato growing in that area, Huntly tomatoes supplied Melbourne markets and preserving factories. During the 1940s-60s large quantities of poultry and eggs were also supplied from Huntly (Victorian Places 2015).
The gradual loss of population to neighbouring Bendigo has been reversed since the 1980s (the population of Huntly rose from 251 residents in 1961 to 612 in 1996, and to 1,492 people by 2006; Victorian Places 2015) with new residential development established at Huntly within commuting distance of Bendigo. Under a Federal
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Government funding program in 2012, skilled workers were encouraged to build in a subsidised housing estate in Huntly (Worthington 2012).
In 2016, 2,379 people lived in Huntly (ABS 2016).
10.4 Public reserves, gardens and trees An important element of early township surveys in Victoria was the inclusion of sites for commons (on which residents could graze cattle and sheep) and public gardens. The latter reserves provided meeting and recreation places for local residents, particularly important for places like Huntly, which was located amongst the noise and pollution of the goldfields. Recreation reserves were also gazetted (see Section 13.2)
In 1866, a site for the Huntly Public Gardens was reserved at the corner of Brunel and Pasley streets and was subsequently planted out with exotic tree species such as elms, oaks and stone pines. The Huntly Farmers’ Common was opened by 1865, and by 1900 was known as the Huntly, Bagshot, Goornong, Ellesmere and Nolan United Town and Farmers’ Common (Arnold 2008:108). Another two-acre reserve was established at Huntly in 1975 by the Shire of Huntly and named the Pennington Reserve in honour of the family who occupied the site under a miner’s right from 1866 to 1942 (Arnold 2008:99).
A recreation reserve, put aside at Elmore in 1870, became the Elmore Public Park in 1877. By 1882, 582 trees had been grubbed from the reserve. In 1894, it was returned to a recreation reserve (Lonsdale 2006:191; Elmore Standard 1 June 1894:2).
In addition, street trees were planted by the Shire of Huntly council, progress associations, private residents and school children, sometimes to celebrate Arbour Day, an event that originated in America and that was observed in Australia from 1889. Other trees were planted to mark the visits of important and famous people.
At Elmore in 1898, pepper trees, donated by Mr Butcher, likely the owner of the Elmore Flour Mills, to the Elmore Water Trust, were planted in an avenue along the west bank of the Campaspe River between the Campaspe River Bridge and Childers Street (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016; ‘Elmore Water Trust Minutes’ 16 November 1898, EPA Museum). Avenues of elm and pepper trees were also planted in Railway Place East and Cardwell Street, however few of these remain.
Palms (HO857) growing today on the corner of Howard Street and the Midland Highway at Epsom were planted in 1897 on what was then the land of J H Knight’s nursery (Arnold 2008:14).
Significant street trees are in evidence today and form an important feature of the study area’s heritage.
10.5 Fire brigades The formation of fire brigades was an integral feature of the early development of towns and districts in the study area. Dry, hot summers resulted in grass fires of some significance and early township buildings, constructed of timber, were constantly at risk of fire damage. Most of the district’s fire brigades were established as volunteer bush brigades that housed equipment in available sheds and in later years, purpose-built corrugated iron buildings. Volunteer CFA fire brigades continue to be active across the study area and are the only group that remain in some rural areas.
The first Elmore Fire Station opened in 1910 in Railway Place on land near the Raywood Road rail crossing that is now Progress Park. A new fire station was opened in 1972 and is the base for the Elmore Fire Brigades Group, comprising the Elmore Rural and Urban, Goornong Rural, Hunter-Diggora Rural, and Kamarooka Rural fire brigades (Back to Elmore 2001:57).
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The Goornong Bush Fire Defence Association formed in 1903 with the Goornong Fire Brigade established in 1945. The first fire engine was received in c1951 and a concrete brick station building opened in c1952. Goornong joined the Elmore Group of Fire Brigades in 1967 (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975; Arnold 2008:442).
A bush fire brigade was formed at Kamarooka in the 1920s, however it was not active until after the Victorian Fire Brigade Association was reformed in 1932. Now a part of the Elmore Group of Fire Brigades, a shed for the fire brigade truck is situated near the intersection of the Bendigo-Tennyson Road and Stephensons Road (Arnold 2008:168).
The Hunter Bush Fire Brigade was established in 1932, merging with the Diggora West fire brigade in 1950 to become the Hunter-Diggora West Rural Fire Brigade (Arnold 2008:230).
The Huntly Fire Brigade was established in 1946. A corrugated iron fire station to house the fire pump and other equipment was built c1966 and a new fire station opened in 1974 (Arnold 2008:89). New premises opened in 2016, and the former c1966 corrugated iron shed was moved to the same site.
In 2010, the Central Victoria Fire Service Preservation Society opened a museum to house historic firefighting machinery at Huntly at the CFA Northern District Training Ground.
10.6 Building homes 1850s-1870s: early-mid Victorian era
Pre-emptive rights (freehold land comprising 640-acres) were established on pastoral holdings in the Port Philip District under the 1847 Order-in-Council with squatters subsequently building substantial homesteads. Homesteads in the study area were built at Adelaide Vale, Burnewang and Campaspe Park. Other early homes were built along the waterways of the Campaspe River, the Bendigo Creek and Piccaninny Creek.
Elsewhere, in Huntly and Epsom, in the 1850s alluvial miners following the gold rushes constructed only temporary, rudimentary homes from tents close to the places they were mining. In the 1860s, with quartz mining providing more stable employment, miners went to work on the main reefs and it was there they built their homes. Simple, small-scale timber miner’s cottages were constructed in the Huntly, Epsom and Ascot areas through to the 1870s, with more substantial cottages built of brick from that time.
Cottages were constructed on Miner’s Rights close to quartz mines. The Miner’s Right was enacted in 1855 and for £1 per year gave the holder the right to dig for gold, vote at parliamentary elections, and reside on land claimed for mining purposes. By 1857, the Residence Area was increased to a quarter acre. After 1865, the Residence Area could be registered and sold together with any improvements, for example, house, garden, sheds and fencing. Because of the popularity of the Miner’s Right and its accompanying Residence Area for the construction of homes, some areas of Epsom and Huntly remained Crown land through to the 1970s.
Both goldmining and farming populations settled in areas based on religion and national background. Huntly, for example, featured a large Cornish population. Similarly, homes were built on farmland purchased through land sales held from the 1850s or taken up under the Land Acts introduced in the 1860s. In some areas, contiguous blocks were selected in family groups, effectively increasing the size of the area that could be farmed.
Farmhouses were often built near watercourse or on stock routes. The Reilly family, for example, settled on Sandy Creek at Bagshot, building a residence in 1855 and moving the Robin Hood Hotel from White Hills to
76 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY the site in 1878 for use as another residence. The residences were joined in later years and are extant today along with outbuildings (Taylor 2015).
Elsewhere, the ‘Waverley’ residence was built in 1858 in the Goornong district from local pit-sawn timber. A stone section was added to the rear of the residence in 1870, part of which housed a wine press and wine cellar for the manufacturing of wine from vines grown on the property. The timber section was destroyed by fire and was replaced by a seven-room brick building. By 1975 ‘Waverley’ was used as a dairy.
1880s-early 1900s: late Victorian era
Over the boom years of the 1880s, and before the advent of the economic depression of the early 1890s, residents of means: wealthy mine owners, business owners and farmers, were able to construct substantial homes, some of which were architect designed.
The ‘Holmlea’ residence was built in Goornong in the early 1900s by John Holmes (see Figure 41), with an adjoining blacksmith, bakery and dairy (Goornnong Souvenir Book 1975).
Figure 41. ‘Holmlea’ in 1973. (Source: Collins 1973, SLV).
‘Providence Cottage’ was built in the Goornong district by G Slingo, who also made the bricks, for owner W Read. The residence became the manse for the Presbyterian minister in 1887. Other houses were moved from the Bendigo goldfield. George Matthews, for example, relocated his house from Fosterville to Grant Street, Goornong, after gold mining waned in the former district (Goornnong Souvenir Book 1975).
The ‘Bellhome’ residence, also at Goornong, was built by 1900 for the manager of the Barnadown East run, Harry Holmes, who married Amy Bell, the daughter of Joseph Bell, the owner of Burnewang House on the
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Burnewang East run (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975; Lonsdale 2006:93). Some of the buildings from the Elmore Estate, also owned by Joseph Bell, and likely the old Elmore Hotel, were moved onto the Goornong property (Arnold 2008:249).
At Bagshot ‘Hope Grange’ was built on the farm of the Pitson family in 1902.
1900s-1918: Edwardian era
The Federation architectural style, built in the Edwardian era of 1901-1918, was inspired by a sense of Australian nationalism and identity, of the transition of Australia from a British colony to a federated country of the British Commonwealth (CoGB 2015:11). As the economy recovered from the economic depression of the 1890s and farming enjoyed boom conditions (see Section 7.3), a number of Edwardian era homes were built in the study area, particularly in Elmore.
Other houses of this era include ‘Stitchel’ at Kamarooka built in 1910 for Andrew Hay, who also owned land in Huntly that he used for fruit growing, and his wife Mary (nee Hunter) in Tandarra Road (Pedersen 1987:11). ‘Wellsford Park’ at Goornong, owned by the Mulcair family, was built by 1904 and in Huntly, ‘Wisteria’ was built in 1914 in Brunel Street by August Fiedler (see Section 7.5) on the site and footings of the original Fiedler family home. The residence continues to be lived in today (see Figure 42).
Figure 42. ‘Wisteria’, the Fiedler family home, date unknown. (Source: H&DHS)
1918-1939: Inter-war era
During the era of mining decline from 1918 through to the 1930s, former mine sites were seen as an opportunity for suburban development with new infill housing development occurring at this time, referred to as the Interwar era, on reclaimed mine land, including in the areas of Huntly and Epsom (CoGB 2015:14). Elsewhere, with high commodity prices brought about by the buoyant economic conditions of the 1920s and the introduction of
78 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY soldier settlement programs, new farmhouses and farm outbuildings were also built across rural districts of the study area.
1945-1970: Post-war era
The post-World War II economic boom brought an increased demand for grain and wool, and, combined with soldier settlement programs, a new wave of construction on farms occurred across the study area from the 1940s through to the 1960s. New residences were also built in Epsom and Huntly at this time.
After World War II, low income housing was provided by the Housing Commission of Victoria, founded in 1938. The church also provided accommodation for people on low incomes. In Elmore, the Catholic church donated a triangle of land at the junction of Campaspe and Jeffrey streets to the former Shire of Huntly to build flats for low income, elderly people, which opened in 1975. The Huntly Shire donated the land to the Victorian Housing Committee, and approximately 20 years later, these flats were handed over to the State authorities and are used today for public housing (Back to Elmore 2001:42).
Places that represent the theme ‘Building towns and the area’ include:
• the original surveyed layout of the townships of Ascot, Epsom, Huntly, Goornong and Elmore, public reserves, tree plantings and key commercial and public buildings in these towns and at the Bagshot, Avonmore, Drummartin and Hunter settlements
• the Huntly Public Gardens
• residences that represent the settlement of the study area from the Victorian era through to the Post- war era. Elmore has a particularly rich and intact housing stock that represent a range of eras of development
• street trees and trees growing in private gardens and business premises
11. Governing
11.1 Local government The Central Roads Board was established in 1851 to oversee the construction of a road network in the colony of Victoria. The responsibility for road works was handed over to local districts, with support given through government grants, rates and tolls, under the Roads Act of 1853.
The Campaspe District Roads Board was established on 10 March 1861, with some of its first projects comprising the erection of an office for the Board at Lower Huntly, the construction of two bridges at Bagshot, the building of two bridges across Piccaninny Creek, and repairs to the road leading from the Shamrock Hotel to the old Campaspe track (Bendigo Advertiser 27 July 1861:4).
The Local Government Act of 1863 consolidated the Roads Act to provide for Road Districts and Shires to administer local affairs. The Campaspe District Roads Board subsequently became the Shire of Huntly on 13 July 1866. Additional areas were added to the municipality in 1876, and boundaries were finally defined in 1884 (VGG 10 March 1876:488; 28 November 1884:3201). The Shire of Huntly was divided into three Ridings in 1879: North, South and West, with three councillors to serve each Riding (Huntly 126 Years 1980:25).
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The Huntly Shire Hall with chambers (VHR H1369, HO475) was built at Huntly in 1867, however agitation from communities in Goornong and Elmore saw meetings held at Goornong for a brief period in the 1880s. From 1908 to 1938, council meetings were held alternately at Huntly and Elmore, from 1939-40 at Huntly only, and from 1941 at both Huntly and Elmore (Huntly 126 Years 1980:25). New municipal offices opened at Huntly c1972 and now house the North Central Catchment Management Authority. The Huntly and Districts Historical Society moved into the former Huntly Shire chambers in 1977 and continue to meet in the premises today.
In 1905, the Takasuka family left Japan for Victoria where Jo Takusuka was granted a five-year permit to occupy land in Swan Hill for the specific use of rice growing. Jo’s son, Sho, settled in the Huntly Shire and during World War II was declared an alien on account of his Japanese birth and arrested. Such was the support from Huntly locals who had played football and cricket with Sho, his tomato crop on the Campaspe River was carefully tended during his detention. Huntly Shire arranged for Sho’s naturalisation in 1961 and he became president of the shire until 1970. He was the first Japanese born person to occupy leadership in Australian local government. A stain glass window in St George’s Anglican Church at Goornong commemorates Sho’s contribution to the former shire (Monument Australia 2020).
In 1994 the new City of Greater Bendigo was formed, bringing together the former City of Bendigo, Rural City of Marong, Borough of Eaglehawk, Shires of Huntly, Strathfieldsaye and McIvor, and the Redesdale district of the Shire of Metcalfe.
11.2 Police and courts A police presence was first established in the district in the early 1840s under the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of Crown Land when members of the mounted police were sent to combat squatter-Aboriginal violence along the Campaspe River (Attwood 2017:69).
From 1851, the Bendigo diggings, including the area of Huntly, were administered from a government camp that kept order and safeguarded gold finds. First established by Assistant Commissioner Horn at Golden Point (Golden Square) in December 1851, the government camp was moved to a rise, which was named Camp Hill, above Bendigo Creek in 1852 (Cusack 2002:117).
Police stations
A portable police station, with a timber lock up, was in operation at Huntly by 1861, and at Elmore a police residence was erected by Samuel Farrell in 1876. It was transferred to the Education Department in 1925 (Arnold 2008:90). A police station opened at Epsom in 1862 (Arnold 2008:14).
The Public Works Department called for tenders for the erection of a new police station and stables at Elmore in 1878 (Argus 7 June 1878:3 cited in Lewis 2013, record no 34600). Tenders were called for additions and repairs to the building in 1887 (Arnold 2008:288). The building is now a private residence. Another Elmore Police Station and residence opened in 1968 and has been replaced in recent years by a new building.
The first police station at Goornong was built in 1875 and a three-acre police reserve was gazetted in 1890 at the corner of Tyler and Grant streets. The police station on the reserve was replaced with another timber building in 1925, built by the Northern Timber Company (Argus 7 November 1925:21). This building, used until c1984, later housed meetings of the Goornong Girl Guides. A portable police station was located to the same site in c1984, and the current brick police station in Railway Parade south opened in 2006 (Arnold 2008:434). After the police presence was removed from Huntly in 1901, the Huntly police residence was moved to the Sebastian State School in 1917, then to Goornong for use as a police residence there (Arnold 2008:14). Today, a rare complex of timber police buildings is located on part of the original police reserve in Grant Street.
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Law Courts
A Court of Petty Sessions was opened in Huntly in 1866 (PROV 2016, ‘Huntly Courts’). Court cases are believed to have been held in the Shire of Huntly council chambers until 1874, in which year a courthouse was built by William Cutler of Richmond (see Figure 43). The building was used until 1915 when court cases were moved to Eaglehawk (Huntly 126 Years 1980:74; Arnold 2008:90). The Huntly Courthouse was sold to the Loyal Sir Henry Barkly Lodge for use as meeting rooms in 1930 and used by them until the late 1970s when it was then transferred into the ownership of the Shire of Huntly (Arnold 2008:90). The building (HO477), now owned by the City of Greater Bendigo, houses a collection of war memorabilia and is managed by the Huntly and Districts Historical Society. The site also contains a timber police lockup.
Figure 43. Huntly Shire Council Chambers in 1964. (Collins 1967, SLV)
A licensing court and Court of Petty Sessions was established in Elmore in 1877 (PROV 2016, ‘Elmore Courts’). From 1884, court cases in Elmore were heard in the library room of the Athenaeum Hall. A new building for a Court of Petty Sessions, from 1970 the Magistrates’ Court, opened in Elmore in 1965 (Back to Elmore 1990:40). The courthouse closed in 1983.
Places that represent the theme ‘Governing’ include:
• former police stations, residences and lock ups at Elmore, Goornong and Huntly. The police building complex at Goornong is particularly significant
• former Shire of Huntly council chambers at Huntly and law courts at Huntly and Elmore
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12. Building community life
12.1 Schools Prior to 1873, primary schools were opened by churches or as common schools, the latter which charged 1s weekly for each scholar. State schools were opened under the 1873 Education Act, which provided fee and secular education to all.
The opening of schools in the study area followed patterns of settlement, with schools established first on the goldfields of Huntly and Epsom, and later in northern areas as land was taken up for farming. Schools opened and closed according to increases and movements of local populations. A brief history of some schools in the former Shire of Huntly is provided below.
Bagshot
At Bagshot, B Farrell opened a private school in his barn before a common school, Bagshot School No 852, opened in 1867 (Blake 1973:453).
Barnadown
The Ellesmere and Nolan Common School at Barnadown opened in 1871 and became Barnedown State School No 1087 in 1873 (see Figure 44). Like other schools in the study area it opened and closed according to shifts in populations, with the school operating half-time with Goornong South State School No 2322 during the 1890s, closing in the 1930s, and reopening over the years 1945-1954 (Blake 1973:460-61).
Figure 44. Barnedown State School No 1087, previously Ellesmere and Nolan school, was built in 1871. (Source: Goornong and District Heritage Trail signage 2016, at Barnadown)
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Elmore
A private school was opened in Elmore by William Bruce in a small bark hut in 1865 and was succeeded by Elmore Common School No 839 in 1869 (Back to Elmore 2001:49). The common school closed in 1874 prior to the establishment of Runnymede (later Elmore) State School No 1515 in 1875 (Blake 1973:453). Elmore State School was erected in 1877 with accommodation for 100 pupils. It is likely that this building is the room at the northern end of the current school. School Boards purchased and planted 100 pepper trees in the grounds of the Elmore and South Elmore (Avonmore) schools in 1899 (Back to Elmore 2001:49). Elmore State School was renovated in 1914 and a new brick teacher’s residence built; a further school room was added in 1927 (Blake 1973:479). Student numbers increased at Elmore after the closure of Kamarooka and Minto schools in 1945 (Back to Elmore 2001:49).
In Elmore, a Catholic school was opened in 1902 in a small building on church property, and for 20 years was located in the old Catholic church building. When the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Convent opened in 1929, the Sisters took over teaching in the old church building, which was moved to a site behind the Convent. Both primary and secondary classes were held, with the secondary school housed in a timber building transported from May Reef in 1944 (destroyed by fire in 1968). Brick classrooms were added to the school c1960 and in 1976, and a library in the 1990s. The school continues to operate today (Back to Elmore 2001:51).
The Elmore Preschool was first opened in the Methodist church hall in Elmore in 1972 and relocated to the refurbished Infant Welfare Centre (built in the 1960s) in 1981 (Back to Elmore 2001:47).
Epsom
A Church of England school opened at Epsom in 1856, which later became State School No 221, then State School No 2367. It was established in a new brick building in 1881 (Blake 1973:434). The building was used until 2017 when it was demolished to construct a new building for Epsom Primary School, which opened in 2018.
Goornong
A Presbyterian Denominational school opened at Goornong in 1863 before becoming Goornong Common School No 292 (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975). The school was transferred to a new building to become Goornong State School No 1598 in 1875. Trees were planted in the school grounds between 1893 and 1911 (Blake 1973:487). Another school at Goornong South operated in the years 1881-1913 (Blake 1973:535).
Following soldier settlement in the area after World War I, a church school opened at St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Goornong in 1922, closing in 1928, reopening in 1940 with soldier settlement in the area, and finally closing in 1944 (Goornong Souvenir Booklet 1975).
Huntly
A Church of England school was opened at Huntly in 1857 and became Huntly Common School No 306 from c1860 to 1869 when the property was vested in the Board of Education.
A new brick building for the Huntly State School No 306 was erected in 1869-70 after a windstorm destroyed the original weatherboard building. The school was extended in the 1870s and 1880s and wattles and six pepper trees were planted on Arbour Day in 1920 (Blake 1973:437 and Arnold 2008:67-69, 71). The school conducted night classes for children from farms for some years (H&DHS 2020).
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The 1880s school building was demolished in 1999 and a new building for the Huntly Primary School constructed on the same site. Two tree plantations established by the Huntly State School in 1940 and 1956 continue to grow in Millwood Road and the Midland Highway (Arnold 2008:74). The latter site is used today as a bush kindergarten.
The Presbyterian Free Church also established a school at Huntly in 1860.
Other districts
The Presbyterian Free Church established a school at Ascot in 1859, which operated until 1872 when Ascot State School No 16 opened on 1 January 1873.
The Yankee Creek rural school likely began as a Methodist church school c1868. The Yankee Creek school was renamed Wellsford State School No 1389 in 1873 (Arnold 2008:562).
The original school at Drummartin, Kamarooka State School No 1473, opened in 1874. A new building was constructed by A M Irwing in 1926 for Drummartin State School No 1473, which closed in 1946, but reopened in 1958 (Blake 1973:477; Arnold 2008:187). The school finally closed in 2015.
The Ellesmere State School No 2885 opened in 1888 (closed 1942) and the Fosterville State School No 3312 opened in 1898 (closed 1953). The schools catered for the children of families involved in gold mining at Fosterville from 1894 (Blake 1973:556).
The original Drummartin school building was moved to Kamarooka East in 1910 to become Kamarooka Village Settlement School (later known as Kamarooka East State School) No 3616, which closed in 1945 (Blake 1973:571-72).
Kamarooka Road State School No 3725 (known as Huntly North from 1919) opened in 1912, closing in 1930 (Blake 1973:573-74).
After World War I, soldier settlement in the Hunter area saw Hunter State School No 4133 opened in 1923 after a petition from soldier settler familes in the district. The school building, previously housing Diggora West State School No 2939 and Warragamba from 1903, was moved to a three-acre site in Hunter in 1922. It closed in 1967 (Blake 1973:578).
12.2 Churches Early church services in the study area were held in a variety of locations including under trees, in private homes, and in hotels. The first Methodist services at Epsom, for example, were held c1859 in a slab grog shop near Knight’s bridge, and the first Baptist services at Epsom in 1854 in a tent (Arnold 2008:14, 24). A brief history of some churches in the former Shire of Huntly is provided below.
Wesleyan and Methodist
Supported by Cornish miners, a Wesleyan church was opened on Murray Road at Huntly in 1860. It was demolished in 1910 (H&DHS 2020).
A weatherboard church was erected at Drummartin c1874 to house both Methodist and Anglican congregations. It was replaced in 1914 by a cement brick Methodist church. The bricks were made on site under the supervision of contractor John McKay from Pyramid Hill. Shrubs were planted on the grounds in 1963 and a pioneer memorial porch was opened in 1964. By the time of the formation of the Uniting Church in 1977, the church had closed. It is used as a private residence today (Arnold 2008:191).
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The Methodist Church at Elmore was built in 1874 and renovated in 1893. A parsonage was built in 1911. The congregation of St Andrews Presbyterian Church amalgamated with the Methodists to form the Methodist Presbyterian United Parish in 1969. After the formation of the Uniting Church in 1977, in 1982 the Methodist church building was purchased for use as a scout and guide hall (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016; Arnold 2008:279).
A weatherboard church building from Raywood was purchased and moved to Bagshot c1866 for use as a Wesleyan church. The church was enlarged to double its size in 1887 and was used for services until 1977. It is now used as a residence (Bagshot, Victoria 1992:30-31; Arnold 2008:120-21).
The Kamarooka Methodist Church was relocated to the corner of Bendigo-Tennyson and Larsens roads in 1921 and was shared with the Methodists from 1948 until 1961, in which year the Methodists purchased the building. The church closed in 1981 and is now used as a private residence (Arnold 2008:163).
A Wesleyan church was built on today’s Midland Highway at Epsom and replaced in 1959 after a fire razed the former building to the ground (Arnold 2008:24). In 2012 the Epsom Methodist Church became the Baptist Union Community Church and continues to be used today for that purpose.
In 1977, when congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, the Presbyterian Church of Australia and the Congregational Union of Australia became the Uniting Church of Australia, most operating Presbyterian churches in the study area became part of the Uniting Church.
Presbyterian
Presbyterian church services were conducted at Runnymede (Elmore) from 1875. Later services were held in the Athenaeum Hall at Elmore, and in St Peter’s Church of England, built in Elmore in 1877. A new Presbyterian church, St Andrew’s, was constructed in Elmore to a design by Bendigo architects, William Vahland & Son, and opened on 18 June 1899. A kitchen and toilets were added in 1916, and a parish hall was built on the grounds in 1933. With falling numbers, the Presbyterian and Methodist congregations combined to become the Elmore United Church in 1969 (Back to Elmore 2001:43; Arnold 2008:278).
The red brick Barnadown Presbyterian Church opened in 1875, and in 1887 a brick residence, ‘Providence Cottage’ at the corner of Bendigo-Barnadown Road and Oberin Road, was purchased for use as a manse. A new manse was built for the Rev Ray, who was the minister for Axedale, Toolleen and Barnadown areas, in 1907. A weatherboard building was relocated from the Colbinabbin area to the church site for use as a Sunday school (Goornong Souvenir Booklet 1975; Arnold 2008:479).
St Andrews Presbyterian Church was in operation in Huntly in the 1880s (H&DHS 2020).
A Presbyterian church, thought to have been removed from the site of the former Goornong township, was relocated to Goornong c1900 and has since been demolished. A manse was also built and is now occupied as a private residence (Arnold 2008:433).
In 1977, when congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, the Presbyterian Church of Australia and the Congregational Union of Australia became the Uniting Church of Australia, most operating Presbyterian churches in the study area became part of the Uniting Church.
Church of England/Anglican
Due to the combined efforts of the Church of England and Presbyterian church congregations, St Peter’s Church of England was built in Childers Street, Elmore, in 1877 and used by both denominations. A new brick
85 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY building for St Peter’s Church of England was built in Michie Street, Elmore, in 1889. In 1893, architects William Vahland & Son were engaged to design a vicarage, which opened in 1894. A timber church hall from Eaglehawk was relocated to the St Peter’s church site in 1920 for use as a parish hall and Sunday school. A chancel was added to the church in 1926 and a porch in 1956. During World War II local volunteers met in the church to watch for enemy planes (Jasper 2020). A new Church of England vicarage was built in Michie Street in 1967, replacing the 1893 rectory, and a new Parish centre opened in 1984, replacing the timber hall. Services continue to be conducted at the church (Back to Elmore 2001:44; Arnold 2008:280).
The weatherboard St George’s Church of England, opened in 1880, was the first church constructed in Goornong. It was replaced by a brick memorial church in 1955, with decorative windows from the former church relocated to the new building and others added (Goornong Souvenir Booklet 1975). A stain glass window was installed in the church to commemorate Sho Takasuka, former president of the Huntly Shire (see Section 11.1).
St Johns Church of England opened in a timber building at Bagshot in 1884. The building was condemned in 1957 and from 1958 services were held at the Methodist church in Bagshot until 1977 (Bagshot, Victoria 1992:31; Arnold 2008:120-21).
A timber Church of England opened at Huntly in 1904, although services had been conducted from the 1860s in the Shire Hall and St Andrews Presbyterian Church. The last service was conducted in the building in 1972. A new brick church building, using the decorative windows from the former building, was opened in 1973 to house St Clements Church of England (Arnold 2008:86-87). The bell tower from the former Epsom Church of England was incorporated into the building (H&DHS 2020). The church is still in use today.
At Fosterville a small corrugated iron building, affectionately known as the Herring Tin, opened for Church of England services in 1896. A new weatherboard building to house St Andrew’s Church of England was built nearby and opened in 1902 (see Figure 45). The church closed in 1964 and is marked today by a memorial plaque (Arnold 2008:545).
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Figure 45. St Andrew’s Church of England, Fosterville, date unknown. (Source: Goornong and District Heritage Trail signage 2016, at Fosterville)
Catholic
A temporary slab church was built for Catholic congregations at Epsom and Huntly in 1856 and was replaced in 1875 with a new brick church building, the Chapel of St Thomas, designed by Bendigo architects Vahland & Getzschmann and erected in Waratah Road, Huntly (Arnold 2008:87). The church is now part of the Waratah Weddings complex.
A Catholic priest from Bendigo visited the Elmore area from c1870, and the first Catholic church at Elmore, a weatherboard building, opened in 1897. The foundation stone of the present red brick Catholic church, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, was laid on 26 June 1904, with the church opening later that year. A Catholic presbytery was built next door in 1908. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Convent opened in 1929 and was refurbished in 1994. Both the church and convent are in operation today (Back to Elmore 2001:41-42).
St Joseph’s Catholic Church at Goornong opened in 1921 and was consecrated as a church in 1922 (Goornong Souvenir Booklet 1975). The church is believed to have closed c1961 (Arnold 2008:431).
12.3 Halls Meeting places provide an important focus for local communities. Social gatherings were held in available buildings: shearing sheds, private homes and hotels. Under the Mackay family’s ownership, for example, dances were held upstairs in the Burnewang Park barn during World War II to raise money for the war effort.
Public, memorial, shire and church halls became the focus of district social life. Some early halls were attached to hotels. The Albert Hall, for example, was attached to the Victoria Hotel in Huntly and was used for a variety of social occasions from c1908 until it burnt down in 1913 (H&DHS 2020; Bendigo Independent (16 October 1908:1 and 15 January 1913:3).
The erection of a public hall, often through the efforts of the local progress association, stood as a measure of faith in the future of the community. Often built of timber, or only partly finished, halls required regular upkeep and often rebuilding, with local communities raising the required funds. Halls housed a variety of activities, including skating, meetings, concerts, dances, card games, film nights, homecomings and farewells, and badminton, and were also used as polling booths.
In the 1880s, the Elmore community met in the Athenaeum Hall, opened in 1886, until a memorial hall opened in 1923. The halls were joined and extensively renovated to form the Elmore Hall Complex, opened in 2002 (see Section 12.7).
In Goornong, Hans Fick built the Goornong Agricultural Hall in 1889. After World War I, local residents purchased the hall, undertook renovations in 1923, and renamed the building the Goornong Soldiers Memorial Hall (see Section 12.7) (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975). The Goornong Memorial Hall is still in operation today.
The first hall at Huntly is believed to have been built in 1889 by the Tucker family (Arnold 2008:87). A memorial hall opened at Huntly in 1922 (see Section 12.7).
A hall at South Elmore (Avonmore) was built c1893 (Bendigo Independent 26 September 1893:2).
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A hall at Bagshot was opened in 1908, with the Bagshot Free Library operating from the hall until 1935. A supper room was added in 1954 and a new entrance and toilets in 1974 (Bagshot, Victoria 1992:25-27). The Bagshot Public Hall is still in operation today.
The Epsom Progress Association was instrumental in erecting a public hall in Broadway, Epsom, which was in operation by 1905 (Bendigo Independent 22 July 1905:4). After falling into disuse, the building was sold and demolished in 2004 (Arnold 2008:25).
The Kamarooka Hall, formerly the Kamarooka Mechanics’ Institute, opened in 1901 (see Section 13.1). A skillion addition, which housed a ladies’ dressing room and a fireplace, was added to the hall in 1924 (Arnold 2008:170). The hall is still used today.
The Hunter Progress Association, formed in 1926, purchased land for a hall from the Soldier Settlement Board in 1927. The Hunter Hall, constructed of ripple iron, opened on the site in 1929, with an extension added to the building in 1950. The hall has housed a number of events for not only Hunter residents, but also for people living in Diggora South, Drummartin, May Reef and Minto (Arnold 2008:227). The hall is still in use today.
12.4 Health Early settlers in the study area experienced increased risks to their health due to the remoteness of settlements and lack of facilities. Prior to the 1890s, few women were allowed admission to hospitals and treatment was carried out at home with the help of visiting bush nurses, midwives or relatives.
A number of private hospitals were established in homes from the 1880s, including the Riverside private hospital run by Sister Gregory in Jeffrey Street in Elmore from 1908 (Arnold 2008:289).
Medical services were provided in later years by doctors, including Dr Norman Wilson who opened the Elmore Private Hospital in 1912 (Arnold 2008:289).
Bush Nursing Centres were introduced in Victoria from 1911 to provide essential nursing care in country areas that were isolated from regular medical services. When Elmore’s hospital, which opened in 1924, faced closure the Hospital Construction League sought donations and subscriptions from the local community for the building of a bush nursing hospital. The Elmore Bush Nursing Hospital, designed by architect K F Elliot, subsequently opened in 1940 (see Figure 46). The brick-veneer hospital comprised a five-bed unit with operating theatre (Age 3 October 1939:6). A nurses’ home was opened at the hospital in 1952 and extensions added to the hospital building in 1964 (Back to Elmore 1990:86, 87).
After a threat of closure, in 1986 the hospital re-opened as the Elmore District Hospital, comprising four acute beds, six nursing home beds, and provision for community health services (Back to Elmore 2001:71). In 1994, when smaller hospitals were amalgamated, the Elmore District Hospital merged with the Rochester War Memorial Hospital to become the Elmore District Health Service, with the Elmore buildings used to house the Primary Care Clinic (Back to Elmore 2001:71).
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Figure 46. A sketch of the planned Elmore Bush Nursing Hospital designed by architect K F Elliot,1939. (Age 3 October 1939:6).
The first Baby Health Centre was established in Melbourne in 1917, and from that time centres were built throughout Melbourne and rural Victoria. From 1918, Baby Health Centres were established at the behest of local groups, such as the Country Women’s Association, with the support of the Victorian Baby Health Centres Association, and from 1920, the Society for the Health of the Women and Children of Victoria. A meeting to establish an Infant Welfare Centre in Goornong was held in 1947, with the centre opening in the Ladies Dressing Room of the Goornong Memorial Hall in 1950 (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975). An Infant Welfare Centre opened in Elmore in 1960 (Arnold 2008:290).
12.5 Community groups Progress associations were formed to gain improvements in services or to lobby local and state government on issues of importance to the residents of the area. One of the earliest progress associations to form in the study area was the Huntly and Epsom Progress Association, established by 1862 (Bendigo Advertiser 22 September 1862:1). In later years the organisation became two entities: the Huntly Progress Association and Epsom Progress Association, with the latter instrumental in building a hall and planting trees as a memorial to service personnel in Howard Street and today’s Midland Highway (Arnold 2008:25).
The Elmore Progress Association was established in 1890 with the object ‘to foster, protect and conserve the political, municipal and social privileges of the township and district’. Early projects included the establishment of a resident doctor; the building of a bridge over the Campaspe River at Avonmore (South Elmore); the improvement of footpaths; the construction of a new post and telegraph office; the establishment of an urban water trust; the building of a teacher’s residence in Elmore, and lobbying for the building of the Elmore-Cohuna and Elmore-Rushworth railway lines. In later years the Elmore Progress Association was instrumental in
89 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY establishing an Honour Roll for World War II; securing Housing Commission flats, a preschool, and Senior Citizens Club; installing seating and picnic tables around town; and assisting sporting clubs and other organisations. The Association, still active today, has also organised a number of Back-to-Elmore celebrations, published the weekly EPA News since 1972, opened the Elmore Museum in 1990, was successful in establishing a pedestrian crossing in Railway Place, and continues to provide, with other community organisations, catering to the Elmore Field Days (Back to Elmore 2001:5-6).
The Goornong Progress Association, formed in 1912 and re-established in 1914, was active in constructing a bowling green and tennis courts in Goornong (Arnold 2008:443).
The Country Women’s Association (CWA), formed initially in Victoria to support the wives and children of returning soldiers, established a branch in Goornong in 1946 and in Elmore in 1947, the latter which closed in 2017.
The Elmore Senior Citizens club formed in 1971, meeting in the Elmore Memorial Hall. New clubrooms were opened in 1983.
The Elmore Loyal Sir Walter Scott Lodge formed in 1882. A Masonic Lodge hall was built in Michie Street, Elmore, in 1923 and is now privately owned. The Huntly Courthouse was sold to the Loyal Sir Henry Barkly Lodge for use as meeting rooms in 1930 and used by them until the late 1970s (Arnold 2008:90, 293).
12.6 Agricultural institutions Agriculture, which has formed an integral part of the economy of the study area, has been supported by, and contributed to, a number of agricultural institutions and organisations.
The Goornong Victorian Famers Union (VFU) formed in 1916 and was instrumental in establishing telephone services to Goornong, Baranadown and Fosterville (Arnold 2008:442). A branch of the VFU was also established at Huntly in 1919 and in Kamarooka in 1916 (Huntly 126 Years 1980:74; Arnold 2008:168).
The Victorian Primary Producers’ Restoration League, established in 1932 to undertake the reconstruction through financial measures of primary industry during the economic depression of the time, was instigated by Goornong resident, Eugene Gorman (Oberin 2020). A branch of the Victorian Wheat and Wool Growers of Association was formed in Goornong in 1941.
The first agricultural show in Elmore was held by the Elmore District Agricultural and Pastoral Association's in 1883 (Elmore Standard 9 October 1891:2) and the Elmore showgrounds were established in Burnewang Street in 1884 (see Figure 47). An iron dairy produce shed was erected at the showgrounds c1888 and a corrugated iron fence to enclose the grounds was built in 1889. The last Elmore Agricultural Show was in 1939 (EPA Museum 2020). Only fence posts remain to evidence the site today.
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Figure 47. Elmore Agricultural Show, 1920s?. (Source: EPA Museum)
An agricultural show was also conducted at the Goornong Recreation Reserve for many years.
A Senior Young Farmers Club was established in Goornong in 1959, with one of its projects the cultivation of the Village Green, a lawn section in front of the railway station (Goornong Souvenir Booklet 1975).
The Elmore Machinery Field Days were established by a voluntary committee in 1964 on Ayson’s Reserve and relocated in 1989 to a new site (Back to Elmore 2001:55-56). Although located outside the study area, the annual Field Days continue to grow in exhibitor numbers and attendance, providing a significant boost to the district’s economy.
12.7 Memorials and commemoration War memorials
Avenues of Honour
Avenues of Honour, lines of trees planted along streets with each tree commemorating a person from the local community who had served, are a uniquely Australian phenomenon. Australians, and in particular Victorians, embraced the idea of planting them more enthusiastically than any other country in the world. During and after World War I avenues of honour became a popular form of commemoration. The avenues represented a new egalitarian approach to the commemoration of soldiers where rank was not a consideration (VWHI).
By the time of World War II avenues of honour had declined in popularity as a means of commemoration. Today it is estimated that over 300 avenues of honour have been planted in Victoria to commemorate service personnel since 1901 (VWHI).
Avenues of Honour were planted across the Shire of Huntly, mainly in townships. In the 1920s, the Epsom Progress Association planted a row of 46 plane trees along the intersection of today’s Midland Highway and Howard Street in the shape of a cross. Each tree had a timber guard to which was affixed a bronze cross in recognition of those who served in World War I (Arnold 2008:25). These trees can be seen today.
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The Goornong Avenue of Honour was planted in the 1920s to commemorate those local residents who fought in World War I (VWHI).
Memorial halls and buildings
The Huntly Soldiers Memorial Hall was built in 1922 as a memorial to Huntly soldiers who served in World War I. Made possible through funds raised by the community by the selling of shares, it was erected by builders Hume and Iser but was not lined with plaster board until the period 1956-67. A brick extension was added to the hall in 1976 (Arnold 2008:88). The hall site also includes a war memorial and a Garden of Remembrance established in 1988 by the Huntly Memorial Hall Committee (Arnold 2008:89). The Garden incorporates a bronze plaque bearing the name and rank of each soldier who enlisted from the Epsom area (H&DHS 2020).
In 1920 in Elmore it was proposed to build a memorial hall to honour the local personnel who had served in World War I and to provide work for some of the returned servicemen (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016). The Elmore Soldiers Memorial Hall was subsequently built in 1923 by local builder G Arblaster. The construction of the hall is unique as it is built of reinforced concrete mixed on site by hand and mixer to combat cracking which occurs in brick buildings in the Elmore area. The hall incorporated a projector box housed in a second- storey and films were shown until the advent of television in the 1950s (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016).
When the restoration of the Athenaeum Hall took place in 2002, that hall and the Memorial Hall were joined by a glass vestibule. The hall complex (HO417) continues to be used today for a variety of community functions (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016).
Through upgrades and extensions to incorporate a new front facade, the 1889 Agricultural Hall in Goornong became the Goornong Soldiers Memorial Hall in 1923. A supper room and kitchen were added in the late 1920s. In 1975, the weatherboards were replaced by brick, and a new supper room, kitchen and toilet block were added (Goornong Souvenir Book 1975).
St George’s Church of England, built as a memorial church to honour local residents who had served in World War II, opened at Goornong in 1955.
In 1918, local blacksmith and wheelwright, William T Watts, built a timber octagonal rotunda to house an Honour Board at the Kamarooka Hall. In 1947, a World War II honour roll was also placed in the building. In 1950, the building was moved to the Kamarooka Recreation Reserve for use as a gate attendant’s shelter (Beasley 1998). Falling into disrepair, the building was restored and moved back to the hall site.
Cemeteries
The Huntly Cemetery was reserved in 1867, with the first burial taking places in that year. A headstone was erected by the Loyal Sir Henry Barkly Lodge in 1901 to commemorate the death of 25-year old James Tuite who drowned in the 1870 floods (Shaw 1966:89). The last burial took place in 1914 (H&DHS). In 1971 most of the bushland that comprised the Huntly Cemetery was excised, with only a small area reserved around the headstone (Arnold 2008:92).
The Elmore Cemetery was gazetted on 22 November 1872, although burials took place in the cemetery from as early as 1867. A Lawn Section was added to the cemetery in 1978 (Back to Elmore 2001:45). A Memorial Wall for cremations has been opened at the cemetery in recent years.
The Goornong Cemetery was gazetted in 1878 (VGG 27 September 1878:2364).
Places that reflect the theme ‘Building community life’ include:
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• still functioning Victorian-era schools at Elmore and Goornong, and former school buildings at Diggora South, Drummartin, Bagshot and Hunter
• a number of church buildings representing a variety of denominations
• still functioning public halls at Bagshot, Elmore, Goornong, Huntly, Hunter and Kamarooka
• Elmore Primary Health (the former Elmore Bush Nursing Hospital) and former private hospitals in Elmore
• war memorials are represented across the study area by memorial halls, churches, avenues of honour and memorial monuments and plaques
• cemeteries at Huntly, Goornong and Elmore
13. Shaping cultural and creative life
13.1 Cultural institutions Local communities established varied arts and cultural groups, particularly before the advent of television in Australia in 1956. Elmore, as an example, formed the Elmore Quadrille Assembly in 1882; the Elmore Choral Society in 1882; the Elmore Dramatic Club, which by 1900 was known as the Elmore Serenaders and Dramatic Club; the Elmore Gospel Temperance Union by 1884; and a Mutual Improvement Society in 1888 (Arnold 2008:366-67). Brass bands were formed at Elmore by 1888 and at Huntly and Fosterville by the early 1900s (Arnold 2008:92; Elmore Standard 19 October 1888:2; Bendigo Advertiser 23 January 1902:3). The Kamarooka Mutual Improvement and Debating Society was formed in the 1890s (Pedersen 1987:80).
Mechanics’ institutes and Athenaeum halls and libraries were amongst early cultural institutions established in the study area. The origin of mechanics’ institutes is attributed to Scotsman Dr George Birkbeck, who in 1799 gave a series of free lectures for the working men of Glasgow. At the time, ‘mechanic’ meant artisan, tradesman or working man. These lectures led to facilities dedicated to workers’ education – the Edinburgh School of Arts (1821) and the London Mechanics’ Institute (1823). Mechanics’ institutes were established throughout Britain and its colonies including Canada, New Zealand, America and Australia. In Australia, where they were extremely popular, they had less to do with educating ‘mechanics’ and more to do with providing a model for setting up community facilities and amenities. Mechanics’ institutes in Victoria generally comprised of a hall, library and reading rooms (Prahran Mechanics’ Institute).
A mechanics’ institute was established in Elmore by 1882, and at a public meeting held in 1884 the Elmore Athenaeum and Free Library Association was formed, which was instrumental in opening a library in the former common school building in June 1885 (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016; Arnold 2008:284). The Elmore Athenaeum Hall (H1744; HO417) was subsequently built in front of the library by G Galbraith later in 1885 for £800 to a design by Bendigo architect, W C Vahland. Opening in 1886, the hall provided a venue for public entertainment and was used for services by the Church of England and Presbyterian churches before dedicated church buildings were provided (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016; Back to Elmore 1990:36).
A new library building was added to the building in 1903 to a design by architect William Beebe, with the original library converted to a billiard room (Arnold 2008:284). A skillion addition was added in 1912, and in 1915 the billiard room (the original library building) was demolished and replaced by a new brick addition. The building served as Elmore’s public hall until 1924 when the Elmore Soldiers’ Memorial Hall was constructed behind the
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Athenaeum Hall. In 1925, the Athenaeum Hall was purchased by Elmore Library Committee and part of the old hall then housed a billiard room with tables (transferred from the Elmore Mechanics’ Institute) from 1924 to 1961; the building was later converted to a new kitchen with supper room (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016; Back to Elmore 1990:36).
The local scout group met at the hall from 1970 to 1982. After the hall fell into disrepair, a committee was formed to save the Athenaeum Hall, which was subsequently restored, joined with the memorial hall, and re- opened in 2002 as the Elmore Hall Complex (Elmore, Small Town, Big Heart 2016).
The Kamarooka Mutual Improvement Society, established c1897, raised money for a mechanics’ institute hall to be erected at the corner of Kamarooka Store Road and Cails Road, near the Kamarooka State School. The unlined weatherboard hall opened on 19 November 1901, with a library in operation by the early 1900s (Arnold 2008:170). It continues to be used today as the Kamarooka Hall.
13.2 Sport and recreation Recreation reserves were established in the Shire of Huntly as part of the first township surveys and continue to provide a vital role in community life today.
The Goornong Recreation Reserve was gazetted in 1883. A three-rail fence with gate posts supplied by the Nolan brothers from Kamarooka was built around part of the reserve in 1884-85 and extended in later years. After the Goornong Jockey Club applied to hold a race meeting at the reserve in 1887, tenders were called for the clearing and levelling of seven acres of the reserve; another ten acres were cleared in 1890. Six pepper trees were planted at the main gate of the reserve in 1891. Another ten pepper trees, ten pine trees, and five elms and five oaks were planted in 1892. A new pavilion and horse stalls were constructed at the eastern end of the ground in 1899, and a shelter shed, seats and toilets were built in 1916 (Arnold 2008:445; Goornong Souvenir Booklet 1975). Brick club rooms were constructed at the reserve in the 1950s and a swimming pool was also built.
Picnic days were held intermittently in Hay’s paddock at Kamarooka from 1892 until the late 1980s. In 1948 the local community decided to establish a recreation ground on 15 acres on the corner of Bendigo-Tennyson and Cail roads that was purchased from A Hay. The Kamarooka Recreation Reserve, complete with buildings and fences constructed with funds raised through donations, was opened on 11 April 1950. Tennis, football and cricket were played on the reserve. The Kamarooka war memorial rotunda was moved to the reserve in 1956 for use as the gatekeeper’s hut and has since been relocated to the Kamarooka Hall. The 1955 Kamarooka Golf Club house was moved to the recreation reserve in the 1970s (Arnold 2008:164-68).
The Elmore Recreation Reserve was put aside in 1870, made into Elmore Public Park in 1877, and returned to a recreation reserve in 1894. A small two-room pavilion for use by the Elmore Cricket Club was shifted to the recreation reserve after World War I, with the Elmore Football Club also using the building as a changing room. This was replaced by a football pavilion, constructed in 1934, which has since been replaced by a new pavilion opened in 1977 (Back to Elmore 1990:35; Arnold 2008:360). In 1926 new clubrooms for bowls and golf were erected at the reserve (see Figure 42). Netball facilities were added to the reserve in the 1960s. The Elmore Sporting Complex pavilion was erected at the Elmore Recreation Reserve in 1973 (Back to Elmore 1990:15).
Although prone to flooding, the Bagshot Recreation Reserve opened in 1902 and was used for tennis matches, sports meetings and by the Bagshot football and cricket clubs (Bagshot, Victoria 1992:36).
94 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
The Huntly Recreation Reserve was put aside in 1897. The reserve is known today as the Strauch Reserve after the local Strauch family, who has been represented on the committee of management since the 1920s (Arnold 2008:99).
Figure 48. The new golf house and bowling pavilion at Elmore Recreation Reserve in 1926. (Source: Weekly Times 28 August 1926:46)
Sporting clubs
Football, cricket and netball
A cricket club was formed at Bagshot in 1880, and the Bagshot Footballl Club was in operation by 1892 (Bagshot, Victoria 1992:44-45). A cricket club was formed in Elmore by 1870 and Elmore Football Club in 1874 (Arnold 2008:359). At Huntly, a football team was in operation by 1894 as was a cricket team (Arnold 2008:100). Kamarooka fielded a football team in 1890 and Kamarooka West cricket club was established c1900 (Arnold 2008:165-66). At South Elmore, a cricket club was formed by 1882 and the football club in 1911 (Arnold 2008:399). A cricket team had formed at Goornong by 1885 and at Minto by 1926. The Goornong Football Club was playing by 1900 (Arnold 2008:446-47). Fosterville had formed a cricket club by 1896 and a football club by 1896 (Arnold 2008:546).
A cricket club was formed at Hunter in the 1920s, with the Hunter Football Club established in 1932 (Arnold 2008: 229-30).
The Elmore Basketball (Netball) Club was formed in 1962 with facilities for the game established on the Elmore Recreation Reserve through the 1960s. Extensions to the clubrooms were opened in 1993 (Back to Elmore 2001:85).
Tennis
Tennis games were first played on asphalt courts in Elmore as church competitions. Money was raised by the Elmore Lawn Tennis Club, formed in 1964, to establish lawn courts (Back to Elmore 2001:87). Bagshot Tennis Club was established c1921 and the Goornong Lawn Tennis Club was formed by 1900 (Bagshot, Victoria 1992:46; Arnold 2008:445). Tennis was played at Kamarooka from 1908 and at Huntly from 1916 (Arnold 2008:101, 166).
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A tennis club was formed at Hunter in the 1920s (Arnold 2008: 229-30).
Lawn bowls
The original Elmore Bowls Club rooms were donated by John Butcher who owned the flour mill (see Figure 42). A new clubhouse opened in 1961 and was sold to the Murchison Bowling Club after the new Golf Bowls Country Club House opened in 1988 (Back to Elmore 2001:83).
Golf
In 1901, land was leased from Ben Roper of the Turf Tavern at Epsom to establish a six-hole golf course. The Turf Tavern was referred to as the clubhouse until a timber building (destroyed by fire in 1977) was moved to the site for this use. New holes and fairways to create an 18-hole course were established on racecourse land in c1910 (Arnold 2008:36).
Golf was also played at Kamarooka and Elmore.
Swimming
Residents of the study area have accessed available waterways, particularly the Campaspe River, for swimming for many years. At Elmore a swimming hole with a sandbar on the Campaspe River near the corner of Wright and Childers streets was used by locals for many years. Rocky Crossing on the Campaspe River at Barnadown continues to be a popular swimming and camping area.
Olympic swimming pools were constructed after World War II: in 1959 in Elmore, and in 1954 in Goornong (Back to Elmore 2001:53; Goornong Souvenir Book 1975).
Guides and scouts
Scouting first commenced in Elmore in 1916 when meetings were held in the parish hall of the Church of England. In 1950 the scout group was disbanded but was re-formed in 1971. In 1982, the former Methodist church property was purchased for use by the 1st Elmore Scout group (Back to Elmore 2001:73).
The Goornong scout troop was established in 1923, with meetings held in the vestry of the Goornong Presbyterian Church; the Goornong Guide Company formed in 1965 (Arnold 2008:443; Goornong Souvenir Book 1975). The Elmore Girl Guides group formed in 1963 and operated for many years from the Athenaeum Hall before moving into the Elmore Scout Group hall (Back to Elmore 2001:76).
Horse racing
With the establishment of the Bendigo racecourse in 1854, nearby Epsom was named after the horse racing town of Epsom Downs, Surrey, England, and Ascot also named after an English horse racing place (Victorian Places 2015).
In 1858 the first committee of the Bendigo Jockey Club met and the first Bendigo (Sandhurst) Cup was staged in 1868 at a site in Epsom. In 1873, the Bendigo Jockey Club converted the track at the racecourse to left hand running and the grandstand which stood on the opposite side of the course was replaced by a new structure. This stand was replaced in 1902 by the stand that still stands today. During World War I and World War II the course was occupied by troops. Memorial gates were erected in 1985 to the memory of those who served in the wars (Bendigo Jockey Club). Bendigo racecourse (HO889) has 25 meetings a year and is the venue for the Bendigo, Elmore and Marong Cups. The course was extensively re-modelled in 1998 (Victorian Places 2015).
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Because of the proximity to the Bendigo Racecourse, a number of horse studs and training facilities for horseracing and harness racing were established in the Huntly area from the 1890s, including Adelaide Hill by 1895, the Belmont Stud Farm by 1914, Lone Pine in 1968, and Kerval in 1974 (Arnold 2008:101).
Racecourses were also established in other townships in the study area. The Elmore Racing Club had established a track on three acres of the recreation reserve at Elmore by the early 1880s (Arnold 2008:353). The Elmore Light Harness Club formed in 1971 and used the old racecourse, in conjunction with the golf club, for training. A new track, the Hunter Park Raceway, was established on the site of the former sale yards paddock on the Elmore Recreation Reserve (Back to Elmore 2001:79).
The Goornong Jockey Club held its race meetings at the Goornong Recreation Reserve from 1886 until at least 1920 (Arnold 2008:449). At Barnadown, a racecourse was established near Rocky Crossing on the Campaspe River and was in use in the 1920s (Jasper 2020).
Places that represent the theme ‘Shaping cultural and creative life’ include:
• former mechanics’ institutes (now halls) at Kamarooka and Elmore
• recreation reserves gazetted in original township and parish surveys at Huntly, Bagshot, Goornong and Elmore
• the Kamarooka Recreation Reserve established by local residents
• horseracing venues and training and breeding facilities in Elmore, Epsom and Huntly
• swimming pools built in the 1960s at Goornong and Elmore
97 HISTORY MAKING FORMER SHIRE OF HUNTLY HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 1: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
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