Victoria History
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Travel Tips for History of Victoria
Beechworth, Victoria, Australia
Beechworth used to be the centre for the goldfields in the Ovens Valley, and is now a pretty and historic town. The Burke Museum tells about the history of the town, and its link with the goldfields.
There are plenty of other museums and historic places of interest you can visit around the town including the Carriage Museum, Historic Courthouse and the MB Historic Cellars. A great way to see the historic sites is on the Beechworth Stagecoach or on the historic tour offered by Beechworth Bus Lines.
There are plenty of other museums and historic places of interest you can visit around the town including the Carriage Museum, Historic Courthouse and the MB Historic Cellars. A great way to see the historic sites is on the Beechworth Stagecoach or on the historic tour offered by Beechworth Bus Lines.
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Halls Gap, Victoria, Australia
Halls Gap is located on the floor of the picturesque Fyans Valley, 250 metres above sea-level. By road it is 251 km north-west of Melbourne via Ararat. It is essentially a tourist village at the eastern edge of Grampians National Park - one of the state's most outstanding natural features and a major destination for holidaymakers and bushwalkers.
Aborigines have been living on the land hereabouts for at least 5000 years.
The annual Halls Gap Festival of Flowers and Art is held at the Halls Gap Community Hall in October. It features native plants of the Grampians for sale, guided wildflower, history and birdwatching walks and talks, wildflower field guides and Victorian bird-call audio tapes. The Grampians Jazz Festival is held in February and the Grampians Gourmet Weekend in May.
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Winton, Victoria, Australia
Winton
The town where 'Waltzing Matilda' was written.
Located 849 km west of Rockhampton, nearly 1400 km north west Brisbane and 186 m above sea level, Winton is the centre of an important cattle and sheep raising region (although the annual rainfall of 410 mm makes it prone to drought) and, since early settlement, has been a vital transportation point. Winton, originally known as Pelican Waterhole, owes its existence to the abortive Burke and Wills expedition and the subsequent expeditions which scoured central Queensland looking for the missing explorers. Undoubtedly Winton's greatest claim to fame is its association with 'Banjo' Paterson and particularly with the writing, and first performance of, 'Waltzing Matilda'. No one knows exactly what prompted Paterson to write his tale of the swaggie who, rather than surrender to the police, decided to commit suicide by jumping into a billabong. However the blurry pieces of the puzzle are intriguing. On 4 September 1894 the Brisbane Courier reported: 'Information has been received at Winton that a man named Hoffmeister, a prominent unionist, was found dead about two miles from Kynuna. The local impression is that he was one of the attacking mob at Dagworth and was wounded there. There were seven unionists with Hoffmeister when he died. These assert that he committed suicide.' It is now widely believed that this story was the inspiration for the song although the Winton town history (published in 1975) offers a more romantic version. Paterson was staying at Dagworth Station (the ruins are located approximately 100 km north west of Winton and can be visited after permission is obtained from the North Australian Pastoral Company on (07) 4657 1957) in 1895 when Christina Macpherson played the tune 'Craiglea' for the guests. Paterson liked the tune and inquired about the words. Macpherson explained that she did not know of any words. This was enough to inspire Paterson. The lyrics which he wrote were an intermingling of a series of events which occurred while he was staying at Dagworth Station. During his stay Paterson saw a sheep which appeared to have died but on closer examination it had been killed, presumably by a swagman, and portions of it carefully removed to give the impression of natural death. This was possibly the inspiration for 'the crime'. A second strand to the story focusses on Combo Waterhole. This waterhole on Belfast Station 145 km north west of Winton (it was opened for some years but damage by excessive numbers of visitors saw its closure in September 1989) is clearly the setting for the poem. It is argued that Paterson used the setting after he had been told the story of Hoffmeister at Combo Waterhole by Robert Macpherson. There has been some suggestion that the story Paterson heard was not about Hoffmeister but about an unknown swagman and a stockman named Harry Wood. Wood had beaten an Aboriginal boy named Charlie to death and the Winton police, while trying to locate him, happened upon the swagman sitting by the billabong. It is also claimed that the expression 'Waltzing Matilda' was first mentioned to Paterson at Dagworth Station by a jackeroo named Jack Carter. In a letter to The Australian in 1995, at the time of the centenary celebrations of 'Waltzing Matilda', Dr Ross Fitzgerald, Associate Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University in Queensland, stated quite categorically: 'The song was written by Banjo Paterson in January 1895 just 14 weeks after an armed battle at Dagworth woolshed in September 1894 between striking shearers and the station owners, the Macphersons. In the 'Battle of Dagworth' 140 lambs were burnt to death, while one of the sixteen striking insurrectionists, Samuel 'French' Hoffmeister died, supposedly by committing suicide, beside a billabong near Macpherson's Dagworth Station. 'Banjo visited the homestead shortly after the battle. While the site of old Dagworth Station where Banjo stayed is now a heap of rubble, thants to Richard Magoffin's brilliant detective work Samuel Hoffmeister's grave at Kynuna Station, on the southern side of the Diamantina River, has been discovered, and a stone cairn placed beside the billabong. The three policemen involved have been revealed to be Senior Constables Austin Cafferty (number 420), Michael Daly, (89), and Robert Dyer (175). 'It is clear that Miss Christina Macpherson, who had heard the Scottish tune Craigilee played by a band at the annual Steeplechase race meeting at Warrnambool Victoria in April 1884, met Paterson when he visited her brother, Bob Macpherson, at Dagworth. There being no piano at the homestead, the tune that Christina had memorised she played to him on an autoharp, which is like a zither. To this tune, as Magoffin and Clement Semmler demonstrate, Banjo added the words to the song Waltzing Matilda, just 14 weeks after the Battle at Dagworth Station. 'It is important to note that in the original verses the swagman was camped in, not by, the billabong and that there were three policemen, not - as one theory has it - one fictitious trooper 'number 123'....Contrary to the sanitised version of the so-called 'jolly swagman', which did not exist in Paterson's original version, Waltzing Matilda is actually a powerful political allegory based on the 1894 Shearers' Strike.'
The town where 'Waltzing Matilda' was written.
Located 849 km west of Rockhampton, nearly 1400 km north west Brisbane and 186 m above sea level, Winton is the centre of an important cattle and sheep raising region (although the annual rainfall of 410 mm makes it prone to drought) and, since early settlement, has been a vital transportation point. Winton, originally known as Pelican Waterhole, owes its existence to the abortive Burke and Wills expedition and the subsequent expeditions which scoured central Queensland looking for the missing explorers. Undoubtedly Winton's greatest claim to fame is its association with 'Banjo' Paterson and particularly with the writing, and first performance of, 'Waltzing Matilda'. No one knows exactly what prompted Paterson to write his tale of the swaggie who, rather than surrender to the police, decided to commit suicide by jumping into a billabong. However the blurry pieces of the puzzle are intriguing. On 4 September 1894 the Brisbane Courier reported: 'Information has been received at Winton that a man named Hoffmeister, a prominent unionist, was found dead about two miles from Kynuna. The local impression is that he was one of the attacking mob at Dagworth and was wounded there. There were seven unionists with Hoffmeister when he died. These assert that he committed suicide.' It is now widely believed that this story was the inspiration for the song although the Winton town history (published in 1975) offers a more romantic version. Paterson was staying at Dagworth Station (the ruins are located approximately 100 km north west of Winton and can be visited after permission is obtained from the North Australian Pastoral Company on (07) 4657 1957) in 1895 when Christina Macpherson played the tune 'Craiglea' for the guests. Paterson liked the tune and inquired about the words. Macpherson explained that she did not know of any words. This was enough to inspire Paterson. The lyrics which he wrote were an intermingling of a series of events which occurred while he was staying at Dagworth Station. During his stay Paterson saw a sheep which appeared to have died but on closer examination it had been killed, presumably by a swagman, and portions of it carefully removed to give the impression of natural death. This was possibly the inspiration for 'the crime'. A second strand to the story focusses on Combo Waterhole. This waterhole on Belfast Station 145 km north west of Winton (it was opened for some years but damage by excessive numbers of visitors saw its closure in September 1989) is clearly the setting for the poem. It is argued that Paterson used the setting after he had been told the story of Hoffmeister at Combo Waterhole by Robert Macpherson. There has been some suggestion that the story Paterson heard was not about Hoffmeister but about an unknown swagman and a stockman named Harry Wood. Wood had beaten an Aboriginal boy named Charlie to death and the Winton police, while trying to locate him, happened upon the swagman sitting by the billabong. It is also claimed that the expression 'Waltzing Matilda' was first mentioned to Paterson at Dagworth Station by a jackeroo named Jack Carter. In a letter to The Australian in 1995, at the time of the centenary celebrations of 'Waltzing Matilda', Dr Ross Fitzgerald, Associate Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University in Queensland, stated quite categorically: 'The song was written by Banjo Paterson in January 1895 just 14 weeks after an armed battle at Dagworth woolshed in September 1894 between striking shearers and the station owners, the Macphersons. In the 'Battle of Dagworth' 140 lambs were burnt to death, while one of the sixteen striking insurrectionists, Samuel 'French' Hoffmeister died, supposedly by committing suicide, beside a billabong near Macpherson's Dagworth Station. 'Banjo visited the homestead shortly after the battle. While the site of old Dagworth Station where Banjo stayed is now a heap of rubble, thants to Richard Magoffin's brilliant detective work Samuel Hoffmeister's grave at Kynuna Station, on the southern side of the Diamantina River, has been discovered, and a stone cairn placed beside the billabong. The three policemen involved have been revealed to be Senior Constables Austin Cafferty (number 420), Michael Daly, (89), and Robert Dyer (175). 'It is clear that Miss Christina Macpherson, who had heard the Scottish tune Craigilee played by a band at the annual Steeplechase race meeting at Warrnambool Victoria in April 1884, met Paterson when he visited her brother, Bob Macpherson, at Dagworth. There being no piano at the homestead, the tune that Christina had memorised she played to him on an autoharp, which is like a zither. To this tune, as Magoffin and Clement Semmler demonstrate, Banjo added the words to the song Waltzing Matilda, just 14 weeks after the Battle at Dagworth Station. 'It is important to note that in the original verses the swagman was camped in, not by, the billabong and that there were three policemen, not - as one theory has it - one fictitious trooper 'number 123'....Contrary to the sanitised version of the so-called 'jolly swagman', which did not exist in Paterson's original version, Waltzing Matilda is actually a powerful political allegory based on the 1894 Shearers' Strike.'
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Daylesford, Victoria, Australia
Daylesford is clearly a city that was built on gold, and the convent gallery is a true expression of how industrious the citizens of a gold town could be once a building was erected. Still today, this pioneer spirit shows through in the building's third incarnation. As a prime piece of realty in the 1860's, this land was built as the private house for the gold commissioner. Twenty years later, it was sold to the Catholic Church as a boarding school for girls, where it was operational for almost 100 years. Then in 1973, the church left it and the property spent the next 25 years falling into disrepair. That was when an industrious Daylesford woman named Tina purchased the land, and began a renovation. The renovation did not necessarily change the history, but rather accentuated it. Now in the halls where people worshipped, weddings are held. Where there was an infirmary is now a gallery for art. Where the masses met for a meal, the masses... well, meet for a meal. This is definitely worth a pass through when you visit Daylesford.
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Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
Ballarat
Historic gold mining city of great elegance and charm.
The blue-and-white Southern Cross flags which flutter throughout Ballarat symbolise the strong association of the city with the Eureka Rebellion - an event with great resonance in Australian history - and thus with its goldmining past. Ballarat is a very major provincial centre located 110 km west of Melbourne via the Western Freeway and 441 metres above sea-level. The current population is 83 000, making it Victoria's largest inland city. Tourism, retail, manufacturing and community services are now the city's major industries. Visually, Ballarat creates an impression of stateliness and grandeur by virtue of its magnificent wide thoroughfare, the Victorian and Edwardian architecture, tree-lined avenues, parks, gardens and statuary, and its substantial educational institutions. The town's name derives from the indigenous occupants of the area (said to be the Wathawurung) who called it 'Balla-arat' which is said to mean 'a good resting place'. This is thought to be a reference to the fact that they formed a camp here by Lake Wendouree (then a swamp). Ballarat is a beautiful and historic city with wide, tree-lined streets that are replete with elegant heritage buildings. Thankfully the Tourist Information Centre have put together a detailed and excellent self-guided Heritage Walk which covers the history of the inner city's streets, buildings and sites. It is not to be missed. The Eureka Trail was developed in 1996. It is a 3.5-km walk which retraces the route taken by the police and soldiers from the government camp to the Eureka Stockade in 1854. The intention was to take the miners by surprise so they followed an indirect path through gullies, rivers and hills which is now denoted by directional bollards and interpretive signs. It takes in the fine Victorian architecture of Lydiard St (the site of the original government camp), the Eastern Oval, bluestone channels, the banks of the Yarrowee River, the Black Hill Lookout and Reserve and old miners' cottages in Ballarat East and it provides linkages with the Yarrowee River Trail and the Great Dividing Trail. The trail starts at the post office in Lydiard St and concludes at the Eureka Stockade Centre. For further information contact the Information Centre, the Eureka Stockade Centre (03 5333 1854)or ring (03) 5320 5500. Sovereign Hill is the town's primary tourist attraction, drawing over 500 000 visitors a year. It is a 35-acre open-air museum established in 1970 near the site of the first gold strike at Ballarat and on the site of the Sovereign Quartz Mining Company which sank a shaft of 216 metres near the summit of this hill. This non-profit organisation seeks to recreate aspects of Ballarat as it was in the goldmining heyday of the 1850s. Thus each of the 60 buildings is a duplicate of an original structure, as photographed, drawn or painted at the time. 250 actors in authentic costumes populate the historical park on a rostered basis. They engage in activities appropriate to the era, employ 1850s technology and bespeak contemporary social values and attitudes. Even the sounds of Sovereign Hill are what you might have expected to hear at the time - working steam engines, stamper batteries, horses' hooves, passenger coaches etc. The complex is essentially divided into four parts - the Diggings 1851-1855, the Township 1854-1861, the Chinese Village 1859, and the Sovereign Quartz Mine, covering the period1861 to 1918. The Red Hill Gully Diggings reflect the earliest days when prospectors arrived from around the world to garner the alluvial gold. You can see the simple dwellings they lived in, the types of goldmining machinery they employed and the gold commissioner's camp. Visitors are encouraged to pan for gold in the creek. Gold can be purchased at the Waterloo Store and the Lemonade Tent sells old-fashioned lemonade on Sundays and on holidays in the summer. The Township is a recreation of the emerging city indicating the support services that emerged with the influx of people to the goldfields. The shops of Main St sell the types of goods that would have been available in the 1850s - ironware, tin and brassware, saddlery, pottery, woodworks, confectioneries, printed material, draperies and various grocery and toiletry items. You can take a ride on a coach from 10.30 a.m. daily, watch craftsmen working at traditional pursuits (such as sweet-making, baking, horse-shoeing, pill-rolling, coach-wheel making and wood-turning) with period tools, have your photograph taken in period dress at the Red Hill Photographic Rooms, and visit the stables, newspaper office, apothecaries, a period cottage, a slab hut, the tentmaker, the watch and clockmakers, the timber merchants, bank, gold office, mechanics' institute and free library, foundry, furniture warehouse and fire station. There are also free shows in the theatre on most days. At this time, between one-sixth and one-quarter of the population was Chinese although they were forced into six separate protectorates or villages from 1855 due to the hostility of the Europeans. Especially appointed government protectors determined that this was the best way to avoid the kind of conflict which generated the Lambing Flat riots (see entry on Young ). As the Chinese were forbidden from camping within 250 metres of a European dwelling the Chinese Village (a recreation of the original Golden Point Village) is at a remove from the main street of the complex. There is a Chinese store, a scribe, a herbalist, miners' tents and a Joss House (temple). TheSovereign Quartz Mine reflects the period when mining shifted from small-scale alluvial and shaft mining to corporate deep-lead mining aimed at extracting the gold which was buried deep underground in quartz reefs (c.1860-1918). The dominant feature is the enormous poppet head and opposite is a Mine Information Centre which can shed light on the fine collection of working steam-driven machinery such as the stamper battery, the engine house, the winder and the Cornish beam pump. You can also take a tour below ground through a 600-metre shaft. Here you will see displays and dioramas illustrating the chronological development of quartz mining technology and the conditions under which miners worked. When the underground tunnel was being dug the workings of the North Normanby mine were discovered and incorporated into the present mine display. The Secret Chamber offers a multimedia 10-minute special effects presentation to tell the story of the Chinese on Ballarat's goldfields (also available in Mandarin and Cantonese) and, at the Sovereign Quartz Mining Company Gold Smelting Works, visitors can witness molten gold being poured into a bar or ingot.
Historic gold mining city of great elegance and charm.
The blue-and-white Southern Cross flags which flutter throughout Ballarat symbolise the strong association of the city with the Eureka Rebellion - an event with great resonance in Australian history - and thus with its goldmining past. Ballarat is a very major provincial centre located 110 km west of Melbourne via the Western Freeway and 441 metres above sea-level. The current population is 83 000, making it Victoria's largest inland city. Tourism, retail, manufacturing and community services are now the city's major industries. Visually, Ballarat creates an impression of stateliness and grandeur by virtue of its magnificent wide thoroughfare, the Victorian and Edwardian architecture, tree-lined avenues, parks, gardens and statuary, and its substantial educational institutions. The town's name derives from the indigenous occupants of the area (said to be the Wathawurung) who called it 'Balla-arat' which is said to mean 'a good resting place'. This is thought to be a reference to the fact that they formed a camp here by Lake Wendouree (then a swamp). Ballarat is a beautiful and historic city with wide, tree-lined streets that are replete with elegant heritage buildings. Thankfully the Tourist Information Centre have put together a detailed and excellent self-guided Heritage Walk which covers the history of the inner city's streets, buildings and sites. It is not to be missed. The Eureka Trail was developed in 1996. It is a 3.5-km walk which retraces the route taken by the police and soldiers from the government camp to the Eureka Stockade in 1854. The intention was to take the miners by surprise so they followed an indirect path through gullies, rivers and hills which is now denoted by directional bollards and interpretive signs. It takes in the fine Victorian architecture of Lydiard St (the site of the original government camp), the Eastern Oval, bluestone channels, the banks of the Yarrowee River, the Black Hill Lookout and Reserve and old miners' cottages in Ballarat East and it provides linkages with the Yarrowee River Trail and the Great Dividing Trail. The trail starts at the post office in Lydiard St and concludes at the Eureka Stockade Centre. For further information contact the Information Centre, the Eureka Stockade Centre (03 5333 1854)or ring (03) 5320 5500. Sovereign Hill is the town's primary tourist attraction, drawing over 500 000 visitors a year. It is a 35-acre open-air museum established in 1970 near the site of the first gold strike at Ballarat and on the site of the Sovereign Quartz Mining Company which sank a shaft of 216 metres near the summit of this hill. This non-profit organisation seeks to recreate aspects of Ballarat as it was in the goldmining heyday of the 1850s. Thus each of the 60 buildings is a duplicate of an original structure, as photographed, drawn or painted at the time. 250 actors in authentic costumes populate the historical park on a rostered basis. They engage in activities appropriate to the era, employ 1850s technology and bespeak contemporary social values and attitudes. Even the sounds of Sovereign Hill are what you might have expected to hear at the time - working steam engines, stamper batteries, horses' hooves, passenger coaches etc. The complex is essentially divided into four parts - the Diggings 1851-1855, the Township 1854-1861, the Chinese Village 1859, and the Sovereign Quartz Mine, covering the period1861 to 1918. The Red Hill Gully Diggings reflect the earliest days when prospectors arrived from around the world to garner the alluvial gold. You can see the simple dwellings they lived in, the types of goldmining machinery they employed and the gold commissioner's camp. Visitors are encouraged to pan for gold in the creek. Gold can be purchased at the Waterloo Store and the Lemonade Tent sells old-fashioned lemonade on Sundays and on holidays in the summer. The Township is a recreation of the emerging city indicating the support services that emerged with the influx of people to the goldfields. The shops of Main St sell the types of goods that would have been available in the 1850s - ironware, tin and brassware, saddlery, pottery, woodworks, confectioneries, printed material, draperies and various grocery and toiletry items. You can take a ride on a coach from 10.30 a.m. daily, watch craftsmen working at traditional pursuits (such as sweet-making, baking, horse-shoeing, pill-rolling, coach-wheel making and wood-turning) with period tools, have your photograph taken in period dress at the Red Hill Photographic Rooms, and visit the stables, newspaper office, apothecaries, a period cottage, a slab hut, the tentmaker, the watch and clockmakers, the timber merchants, bank, gold office, mechanics' institute and free library, foundry, furniture warehouse and fire station. There are also free shows in the theatre on most days. At this time, between one-sixth and one-quarter of the population was Chinese although they were forced into six separate protectorates or villages from 1855 due to the hostility of the Europeans. Especially appointed government protectors determined that this was the best way to avoid the kind of conflict which generated the Lambing Flat riots (see entry on Young ). As the Chinese were forbidden from camping within 250 metres of a European dwelling the Chinese Village (a recreation of the original Golden Point Village) is at a remove from the main street of the complex. There is a Chinese store, a scribe, a herbalist, miners' tents and a Joss House (temple). TheSovereign Quartz Mine reflects the period when mining shifted from small-scale alluvial and shaft mining to corporate deep-lead mining aimed at extracting the gold which was buried deep underground in quartz reefs (c.1860-1918). The dominant feature is the enormous poppet head and opposite is a Mine Information Centre which can shed light on the fine collection of working steam-driven machinery such as the stamper battery, the engine house, the winder and the Cornish beam pump. You can also take a tour below ground through a 600-metre shaft. Here you will see displays and dioramas illustrating the chronological development of quartz mining technology and the conditions under which miners worked. When the underground tunnel was being dug the workings of the North Normanby mine were discovered and incorporated into the present mine display. The Secret Chamber offers a multimedia 10-minute special effects presentation to tell the story of the Chinese on Ballarat's goldfields (also available in Mandarin and Cantonese) and, at the Sovereign Quartz Mining Company Gold Smelting Works, visitors can witness molten gold being poured into a bar or ingot.
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