OLD WOODEND

Below is an article originally published in “The Argus” in 1935 describing Woodend and the surrounding districts.

On the Road to the Diggings By H. W. L. SCHUCHARD - 4 May 1935

Source: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12235589

THE old Mount Alexander road the grand trunk highway to the Forest Creek diggings was the most picturesque and noteable of all the early Victorian highways. Only one steeped in the lore of the gold era could do justice to its colourful past.

On the road from Melbourne to the diggings the first landmark of note was old Travancore Hugh Glass's splendid mansion which was passed on the right between Flemington and Ascot Vale. McCracken, the brewer, had a fine property and residence almost immediately opposite. Passing a chain of ponds, Diggers Rest was soon reached. With Aitkens Gap left behind Macedon or Mount Wentworth as it was called for a time was the next landmark.

“Woodend was the end of the first stage for the goldseekers and as such it was a nest of hotels”

Once round its western flanks Woodend was the first halting place north of the Divide. Woodend was the end of the first stage for the goldseekers and as such it was a nest of hotels. The Woodend Inn presided over by "the genial Edmund Lutrell"; William Sampson's Victoria ; Henry Sutton's Mount Macedon ; the Duke of Edinburgh, now burnt down but at that time on the site of the present post office; Alfred McKenzies London and Liverpool Arms, the chief residental house, Alice Ibbotson's Cumberland Inn ; Fitzsimmon's Sydney Hotel; and the magniloquently named Macedonia were but a few of the places of refreshment available to the thirsty stream of diggers.

At Springfield Josiah Russell's Highland Chief and John Kenny's Springfield Hotel attached to which was the district post office added to the tally a few miles along the road Keatings Hotel bears a name that goes back to the beginnings of Australian history William Dalrymple Keating, the veteran member of a family widely represented in the district to-day was the first white child born in Tasmania. Port Dalrymple the port of Launceston was named after this pioneer who was born at Georgetown near the mouth of the River Tamar early in 1804.

The First Overlanders originally known as the Five Mile, from the five Mile Creek flowing eastward to the Lancefield district the name Woodend had a topographical origin unlike Kyneton which was named after the original station of that name. Strangely the adjoining station of Newham has given its name to the small village originally called Springfield after the run which lay on its eastern boundary.

Among the first overlanders from the North who opened the Woodend district Charles H. Ebden was the most notable Ebden the pioneer settler of the Albury district, had disposed of his station Bonegilla on the Murray, and, journeying south with 2,000 head of sheep he was much taken with the wide pass through the Divide between Mount Macedon and Mount Franklyn, or Lar-ne- barrmul, the Home of the Emu as the natives called it. He pastured his flocks at Carlsruhe, or Garth's Station as it came to be called. All round him the slopes of the hills comprising the present districts of Woodend and Kyneton were then clad with the densest and finest forest of timber south of the Murray, and the country was soon taken up by succeeding pastoralists.

Ebden transferred his interest to Charles Peters in 1839, Peters being associated with Edward Dry- den, who took up Newham in 1844. Newham was the chief station of the Woodend country, and Dryden was the leading spirit in the social and sporting life of the district until his death in 1886.

“The 1864 Woodend Cup was won by Dryden’s Commodore”

An old programme of one of the race meetings on the Woodend course in 1864 records the winning of the cup by Dryden's Commodore. The race was established in 1860 and is one of the oldest in Victoria.The original racecourse which is marked out on Racecourse Hill now Golf Hill—was the scene of many of the most enjoyable rural sports meetings held anywhere in Victoria. Such events as the hurry-scurry race and many ingenious novelty contests were features of the meetings. The auctioneering of the winner, as on most country courses in those days was a custom. "The winner to be sold at auction for £50 was a normal condition attached to each sale during the sixties and seventies. It was not till some years later that this aspect of the meetings was reduced to a single selling race on each programme. Those present at the first meeting of the Woodend Race Club included Messrs. John Bloomfield Joseph Davies Alfred McKenzie, Thomas Fitzsimmons, and George Burgoyne as stewards; John Harper as treasurer and Charles Lilley as honorary secretary. The starter was William Keating, and the Judge was Joseph Huff and the clerk of course was Hugh MacDonald.

“Many Fine Horses”

The bleeding of horses for the Turf and the development of the stud farm were noteworthy features of the northern slopes of the Divide during the sixties and the 'seventies. The Brock brothers who took up Bullanda Vale and Camerons run, near Lancefield in 1855 ably seconded the efforts of the Drydens In this direction. When Christopher Neville Bagot succeeded them in the possession of Bullanda Vale the tradition was carried on.

The well-known handicap of New Year's Day perpetuates the name of Bagot in Turf history. Rock House, Kyneton, acquired by the late G. N. Buckley some years ago is now a notable cradle of thoroughbreds.

The Lancefleld-Pyalong road to the McIvor diggings (Heathcote) and the Sydney road through Seymour were the rival highways to the north, but the Mount Alexander road was far the busiest of the three, and, although Woodend was never anything but a small town, it was a lively one in those days. It was created a district on December 3, 1861, and was proclaimed a shire on April 5 1871.

Muntz was a very "live wire " in the district

An official register of that period shows the names of H. Muntz, J Davies, and J. Harper as the Justices, with J. Savage as chairman of the road board and J. J. Stammers as secretary. Muntz was a very "live wire " in the district and Davies was the son of Mrs Sara Davies, a pioneer of Kyneton of 1850, where she took over the first hotel of the district. the family later engaged in farming at Woodend. John Harper was a noted member of the committee of the racing club, the progress association, and other welfare organisations.

I have examined the manuscript application for an hotel licence by Alffred MacKenzie, who had been a storekeeper in the town since the forties . The application was received In 1863. The hotel stood till 1884 when it was burnt down, and was succeeded by the building, MacKenzie's Hotel that now stands.

As elsewhere the squatters of the Coliban and Campaspe rivers made combined and strenuous efforts in the late sixties to stem the tide of closer settlement but ineffectually. By the time the shire was proclaimed the old runs had all been subdivided and in many instances only the homesteads remained. James Smith, in his "Cyclopaedia of Victoria," published in 1904, described the district as it was 30 years ago — "There is a superb prospect of the country to the north with Kyneton in the far distance. Numerous homesteads, neighboured by stackyards and environed by squares of yellowing corn, paddocks of brown fallow, dark green breadths of potatoes, and pastures flecked by sheep or dotted with cattle. Fields bordered by hedgerows of black-berries, with here and there a country road margined by trees, and occasional charcoal-burner's hut; all else is unadorned. "

OLD WOODEND (1935, May 4). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), p. 8. Retrieved July 30, 2022, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12235589