An Acrostic Seasonal history of the Casey Cardinia region - Festive Season!

We take an acrostic, historic and eclectic look at the Casey Cardinia region looking at themes suggested by the letters in Festive Season. In 2018, we looked at Holidays, and in 2016, we did Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

F is for Females. Traditionally women were hidden from history, as many history books concentrated on public history - politicians, business owners, explorers etc - and they all tended to be men, while the women stayed in the background raising families, prevented from voting or standing for Council amongst other impediments to public life. Here are some of my favourite women - Sarah Fagan - hotel keeper and shipwreck survivor from Lyndhurst; Eliza Gooch another publican and ship wreck survivor; Elizabeth Andrews - a farmer from Hallam; Sister Hollis and Sister Lewis, Infant Welfare Centre Nurses at Pakenham and Kathleen Kinsella, Army Nurse.

Sarah Fagan

Image: The Good Country: Cranbourne Shire.

E is for Ewes and rams - or sheep as they are collectively known.  We don't really consider this a sheep growing area - it's more of a Western District activity - but we did have  an early sheep industry. The book Rural Industry in the Port Phillip Region, 1835 - 1880 by Lynnette J. Peel (Melbourne University Press, 1974) lists livestock numbers in selected areas. These are the sheep figures in the Berwick region - 1856/57 - 1,600; 1859/60 - 2,597; 1871 - 10, 994 and 1880/81 - 30,777. In comparison here are the cattle figures - 1856/57 - 4,212; 1859/60 - 15,438; 1871 - 20,406 and 1880/81 - 22,149. As you can see sheep farming in the area took off in the 1870s, however these sheep numbers were dwarfed by areas such as Sunbury and Bannockburn which in 1880 each had over 116,000 of the animals. Some of the early sheep farmers were William Lyall, who farmed Cotswald sheep in the 1850s at his Yallock and Tooradin properties; Duncan MacGregor breed Leicester sheep in the 1870s at his Dalmore property and Alexander McMillan who had Merinos at his Caldermeade property. Rural Industry in the Port Phillip Region, 1835 - 1880 is an interesting book, I will do a post on it one day

S is for Shows - Agricultural Shows. The earliest show society was the Mornington Farmers' Society (Mornington being the County of Mornington, the land administration area that covers this district) established in 1856. They held their first show, in the form of a ploughing match,  in 1857 at Mr Walton's farm at Narre Warren -  now the location of the Fountain Gate Shopping Centre. The 1858 show was held at the farm of the Reverend Alexander Duff in Cranbourne. Read about these shows, here. The  Mornington Farmers' Society became the Berwick and District Agricultural and Horticultural Society in 1918.

T is for Trees - The first thing about trees that comes to mind is the notable tree grower, Carl Nobelius  Carl started the Gembrook Nursery at Emerald in 1886. Nobelius produced  a yearly catalogue and by 1903 Nobelius was advertising over one million trees for sale and this had increased to three million trees just before the First World War. The nursery concentrated on fruit and ornamental trees and supplied trees world wide, including to South Africa to replant their orchards after the Boer War. Read more about the Nursery on the Emerald Museum website, here. Another significant set of trees are the Oak trees that line the Princes Highway at Narre Warren, planted in 1890 by Sidney Webb. You can read about them here. The trees were supplied by the Nobelius Gembrook Nursery.The area also has some Avenues of Honor, planted in memory of Great War Soldiers. I have written about some of them here. The City of Casey have also published a booklet on their Avenues, Our Living Memorials, read it here.

The Nursery at Emerald. Photographer: Rose Stereograph Co.

State Library of Victoria Image H2001.88/10

I is for Infant Welfare Centres. The Baby Health Care movement began in Victoria in June 1917 when Dr Isabella Younger Ross opened a centre in Richmond. She was one of many experts who   emphasised the importance of teaching women hygiene, nutrition etc with the ultimate aim of lowering the child mortality rates. Infant Welfare Centres started a bit later in this area than in the City and the first mention I could find was in 1935 when both Garfield and Bunyip had a Centre. Read more here.  They are interesting because many of these buildings were established due to women organising local committees to fund raise for the buildings and once they were opened women were on the Committees to manage the operation of the service. One of the more unusual Infant Welfare Centres in the area is the one at Emerald. It was opened in March 13, 1940 and built in the Art Deco style.

V is for Volcanoes. On Wednesday, August 17, 1904, Mr J.H.L. Morgan gave  a lecture at the Berwick Mechanics' Institute on Geology. You can read the report in the South Bourke & Mornington Journal, here. This is part of Mr Morgan's talk - We had at least several distinct periods of volcanic activity, that latest being the great lava flows which spread over the whole of the south western part of the State. Berwick, Cranbourne, Flemington and Collingwood are instances of older volcanic periods. It was explained that Berwick hill was not an extinct volcano as is commonly supposed, but a dome of concretionary lava, the result of some plutonic force. From the hills here may be had a splendid view of the great valley of Victoria which extends from the far western boundary right through to the Gippsland Lakes. The southern boundary of this valley is almost worn away, probably as a result of the great subsidence which resulted in is Bass Strait. The Otway Ranges and the South Gippsland Ranges only remain. Striking evidence of volcanic activity existed in Narre Warren  North in the form of columnar basalt, part of an thick lava flow. You can read about this here.

E is for Entertainment - the Movies or Picture Theatres.  The 1920s was a boom time for Picture Theatres. The Garfield Picture Theatre opened with a Grand Ball on Monday, December 22, 1924. Apart from the Picture Theatre locals could also view movies at the Wattle Theatre at Koo Wee Rup, which opened July 1927 and King’s Picture Theatre at Pakenham which opened September 7, 1927. Harrington’s Electra Pictures had been shown at the Garfield Hall and films were shown at Tynong - there is still a bio box or projection room, which is currently inaccessible, at the Hall.  The original Bunyip Hall also showed movies however, when it burnt down in March 1940, the ‘picture plant’ was destroyed. The Garfield Theatre closed in the early 1960s although it did reopen weekends in 1970 and 1971. There was also a picture theatre at Berwick, it was built by the owners of the Pakenham Picture Theatre and opened September 5, 1928.

Garfield Picture Theatre, 1920s.

Image: Koo Wee Rup Swamp Historical Society

S is for Seaside resorts - Tooradin and Lang Lang. Not quite miles of golden sand beaches, more Western Port mudflats, but we used to to go to Tooradin for swimming and water skiing, when I was a girl in the 1960s and 1970s. The Lang Lang beach hosted the annual Sun newspaper Beach Girl contest in the 1950s, the winner of this and other local competitions then competed for the State title.  This competition was hotly contested and women came from everywhere to compete - the 1952 winners were Miss Joan McDonald, of Elwood, with Miss Vilma Rennell, of Glen Iris, and Miss Beth Clyno, of Loch, second and third respectively (Dandenong Journal, January 30, 1952). The Beach Girl competition was one of the ways the community raised money to construct the  Lang Lang swimming pool at the beach which opened on New Years Day in 1956. The local State Schools held their swimming carnivals there. The Lang Lang Pool was closed after the opening of the Koo Wee Rup pool in February 1975.

Lang Lang Beach Girl competition report

Weekly Times  January 23, 1952   http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article224014906

E is for Explorers - and it is also for the book Early Days of Berwick, which is full of interesting information, including this - Mrs Fanny Hume Hutchinson, who was a resident in Peel Street, Berwick, for twenty-nine years, was the granddaughter of Hamilton Hume, the early explorer who came to Australia in 1790 and with Hovell made their memorable journey to Port Phillip in 1824.  Early Days of Berwick also tells us Mr James W. Ogilvy and his family lived on Buchanan's Road for many years. The son of one of Melbourne's earliest solicitors Mr Ogilvy .....witnessed the departure of Burke and Wills Expedition in 1860.

A is for Accouchement - or giving birth. A dangerous occupation in the past (and still is in many third world and war torn countries). Large families were the norm in the 1800s. For instance, Catherine Bourke, who with her husband Michael established the La Trobe Inn, on the Toomuc Creek in Pakenham  in 1849, had 14 children between 1839 and 1864. Susan Bain, who operated the Berwick Inn on High Street Berwick had eleven children between 1860 and 1880, of which eight pre-deceased her.  Australian figures show that  maternal mortality remains high at 500 to 600 per 100,000 live births until 1937. In 1937, the maternal mortality drops, and continues to tumble in quite an extraordinary way to reach around 109/100,000 by 1950, and below 10/100,000 by 1975 (1). Those early figures mean five mothers would die for every 1,000 live births. According to recent Government figures the maternal mortality rate for 2012 - 2014 is now 6.8 per 100,000.

Even if the mother survived the birth process, the baby often didn't. Infant Mortality rates have dropped from an average of  120 from 1870 to 1910,  to an average of 70 in the 1910s, 31 in the 1940s and 13 in the 1970s. It is now around 3.  The Infant Mortality rate is the number of infant deaths in a year per thousand births registered that year. So in the 1870s to the 1890s - each year on average 120 babies under the age of one would die out of every 1,000 born (2).

Susan and Robert Bain and their family in the 1880s, showing their nine surviving children. 

Image:  Berwick Mechanics' Institute and Free Library by Richard Meyers. 

S is for Stones - gem stones. The most obvious place you might search for gems would be Gembrook. Gembrook was named by Albert Le Souef who was a member of  a mining syndicate searching for gemstones in a creek, four miles west of William Wallace Creek, in the 1870s. Le Souef named this creek Gem brook. Emeralds, garnets and sapphires were apparently found in these creeks. This information comes from the history of Gembrook, written by Genseric Parker, Forest to Farming.  All sorts of gemstones can still be found in the creeks - Cardinia Creek and Wallace Creek, west and east, of Gembrook respectively, are known sources of sapphires, topaz, amethysts, agates and pebbles of variously coloured chalcedony....Zircon and cassiterite are also reported in the Gembrook area... sapphires, zircons, tourmaline and agate are reported at Berwick. This is according to the book How and where to find Gemstones in Australia and New Zealand edited by Bill Myatt (Lansdown Press, 1987). Happy fossicking, but before you go and seek your fortune in the local creeks - you will need a permit - all the details on 'Recreational fossicking' are here.

Zircon gems found in the Bunyip River (eastern branch), 17 km north of Longwarry. Photographer: Frank Coffa.

Museums Victoria https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/specimens/47322

O is for On the Beach - the book and the film. On the beach was  a novel written by Nevil Shute when he was living at Langwarrin, then part of the Shire of Cranbourne. It was published in 1957. It was later made into a film, some of which was filmed at George Wilson's property in Berwick. Shute Avenue and Kramer Drive in Berwick are permanent reminders of this filming - Shute being named after the author and Kramer, after Stanley Kramer, the Producer. The filming in Berwick took place in January 1959 in very hot conditions - it was over 40 degrees. You can read more about Nevil Shute and the filming, here.  You can read about the making of the film in this account written by Philip Davey, here https://2015.acmi.net.au/acmi-channel/2009/film-essay-on-the-beach/  Philip Davey is the author of the book When Hollywood came to Melbourne : the story of the making of Stanley Kramer's On the beach, published in 2005.

Filming On the Beach at the Wilson property in Berwick, January 1959.

Image: donated to the Casey Cardinia Library Archive by the Wilson family.

N is for Florence Nightingale. We return to Early Days of Berwick for this link to Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910) - nursing pioneer who formalised nursing education and established standards of care for patients and standards of hygiene for hospitals. From Early Days of Berwick - Two Crimean War Veterans, Mr Drummond and Mr Adams, resided in High Street, Berwick. These two old gentlemen wearing their Crimean War medals, could often be observed sitting in the Boulevard, enjoying the sunshine. It was said that Mrs Drummond was contemporary with and associated with Florence Nightingale, nursing at the Crimea. A report in the South Bourke and Mornington Journal of August 10, 1911 said that Tom Drummond celebrated his golden wedding anniversary on Friday evening and Private Tom wears a couple of Crimean medals of which he is justly proud (see article here) So, now we know Mrs Drummond's husband was called Tom and according to the Electoral Roll, her name was Mary, however that is all I know about this couple - what interesting stories they would have to tell.

Have  a wonderful FESTIVE SEASON

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Footnotes for A is for Accouchement
(1) The Australian mortality decline: all-cause mortality 1788 - 1990 by Richard Taylor and Milton Lewis - Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Sydney and John Powles - Institute of Public Health, Department of Community Medicine, University of Cambridge, England. Published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health -  1998 Vol. 22 No. 1

(2) Australians: Historical Statistics edited by Wray Vamplew (Fairfax, Syme and Weldon, 1987) These are the Victorian figures. Interesting they vary quite  a bit within each decade - for instance the figures for Victoria for the 1890s are - 1890 - 117.4; 1891- 126.2; 1892 - 106.8; 1893 - 117.7; 1894 - 104.1; 1895 - 102.4; 1896 - 110.0; 1897 - 103.3; 1898 - 134.4; 1899 -114.2.  In 1959, the year I was born, the rate in Victoria was 21.2

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An Acrostic Seasonal history of the Casey Cardinia region - Holidays!

In this post we take an eclectic and acrostic look at some themes from our history and the first letter of letter of each theme spells Holidays! Last year we did Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

H is for Hunting. The most obvious example of hunting in the region is the Melbourne Hunt Club. The Club dates back to the 1840s and moved from Oakleigh to Cranbourne in 1929, to the corner of Thompsons and Narre Warren-Cranbourne Roads. Fox hunting needs both space and obliging land owners and Cranbourne provided both. The club moved to Pakenham in the 1990s and was replaced by a housing estate of the same name. The fox is an introduced species to Australia and they were imported to Australia by members of the Acclimatisation Society  - William Lyall (1821 - 1888) of Harewood in Tooradin was a member and he introduced deer, pheasants, partridges, hares onto his property for hunting purposes.

This is the Acclimatisation Society's medal - which shows some of the animals introduced to Victoria - deer, ostrich, pheasant, swan, rabbit and  hare.

State Library of Victoria Image IAN20/06/68/8   

O is for Oil and petrol used in cars and sold at Garages. In the 1910s cars were beginning to appear in towns. Lawson Poole opened the first garage in Cranbourne in 1919 and by the early 1920s garages that sold, leased and serviced motorcars were common in many towns - Koo Wee Rup had at least two garages in the town in that decade.

Advertisement for Glasheen Brothers garage of Tooradin,

Koo Wee Rup Sun August 14, 1924

L is for Land sales.  Land in this area was first leased to squatters from the 1830s and 1840s. During the 1850s townships, such as Cranbourne and Berwick were surveyed and the first land sales took place. For other towns  it was  a bit later - township lots in Garfield, for instance, were sold in 1887, Hampton Park allotments in 1920. Elaborate posters were developed to promote these land sales, you can see some of them here. Land sales were spurred on by the development of the railways, this advertisement for the Emerald Station blocks from 1905, were made possible by the establishment of the 'Puffing Billy' line which opened December 1900.

Emerald Station blocks land sales, March 25, 1905

State Library of Victoria http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/169578

I is for Immigrants. Harkaway is a town settled by German Lutheran immigrants, who were connected not only by their faith but by intermarriage. You can read about these early German families, here. Another  area in the region predominately settled by migrants from the same country is Skye. Skye changed its name to Lyndhurst South in 1903 (although some sources list the date as 1894) after a murder brought unwelcome attention to the area. It changed back to Skye in 1964. Many of the early settlers had come from the Isle of Skye, an island off the north-west coast of Scotland. There was, of course, a large influx of migrants to this region after the Second World War, many from Italy and The Netherlands. A report of a Naturalisation ceremony held by the Shire of Cranbourne in 1960, gives some idea of the makeup of 'new Australians' in the region, read it here.

The Lutheran Church and bell tower at Harkaway.

Image:  Early Days of Berwick, 3rd revised edition, 1979.

D is for Dredges. The Koo Wee Rup Swamp was essentially drained between 1889 and 1893. This work was done by hand and it was't until 1913 that dredges were used on the Swamp. This was the year the Lubecker Steam dredge arrived from Germany.  It started work on the Lang Lang River - which was described as a wandering creek - and it turned that 'wandering creek' into a 'proper drain' to prevent flooding of the area. It moved to the Koo Wee Rup Swamp in 1916. Other photos of dredges used by the State River and Water Supply Commission can be seen here

Lubecker Steam Dredge

State Rivers & Water Supply Commission photographer, State Library of Victoria Image rwg/u873

A is for Airfields. The Casey Airfield at Berwick (now the site of Federation University and Nossal High School) was established by Colonel Rupert Ryan, who owned the Edrington property with his sister, Lady Casey. Ryan's brother-in law, Lord Casey owned a Perceval Gull monoplane and flew to and from Canberra, where he was a member of the House of Representatives. As Berwick developed it was considered unsafe to have planes landing and taking off over houses and it closed in 1994. There is another airfield in the region, at Tooradin, which is still used. This has the distinction of having a ship on the property. This is the Edwina May, owned by William Curtain and his son, Ray.  It was moored at Tooradin, so they could work on the boat, but sadly Ray was in a boat Darwin when Cyclone Tracy hit in December 1974 and the boat sank and he died. After that, Mr Curtain did not have the heart to finish off Edwina May, and she remains there today. The information about the Edwina May comes from the Australian National Shipwreck database.

The Edwina May at Tooradin airfield.

Image: http://www.environment.gov.au/shipwreck/public/wreck/wreck.do?key=3433

Y is for Yellow cheese and milk and other dairy industry products. The Dairy industry has been, until recently, a large part of the Casey Cardinia economy. Many small towns had milk or cheese factories - the one at Cora Lynn is still standing, the one at Bayles, built in 1966 replacing an earlier one, is also still standing, but now used for vegetable processing. Read about them here. The most prominent one in the area is the Old Cheese factory at Berwick - established in 1875, read about it here. Apart from the factories we also had George Hope's Model dairy at Cranbourne which supplied pure, unadulterated milk to the Lady Talbot Milk Institute, which in turn supplied  the pure milk to babies in Melbourne to help reduce infant deaths due to contaminated milk.

The c. 1875 Old Cheese Factory at Berwick  - built at a time when factories were built to be both useful and aesthetically pleasing.

S is for Settlements - Religious.  Maryknoll which  was established in 1949 by Father Wilfred Pooley (1912-1969)  as a Catholic community based on the principals of faith, family life and co-operative enterprise. 

HOLIDAYS!

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An Acrostic Seasonal history of the Casey Cardinia region - Happy New Year!

In this post we continue our eclectic look at some themes from our history and once again,  the first letter of each theme spells a seasonal greeting! In the last post we did an historic take on Merry Christmas.

H is for Hospitals. From the 1860s, many towns local had small private hospitals run by experienced nurses and for anything more complicated (if you survived the journey)  you would have to attend one of the large public hospitals in Melbourne. Around 1909, the Bush Nursing Hospital movement developed - the local community had to raise the money to fund the cost of the nurse’s salary, board, uniform and a ‘means of locomotion’. The salary was set by the Bush Nursing Association at the rate of around £80.00 per annum, the rate of pay for a hospital nurse with five or six years experience. The first Victorian nurse was appointed to Beech Forest in March 1911 and the earliest example in this area was at  Koo-Wee-Rup when Nurse Homewood, started work in the bush nursing centre in July 1918; this hospital was later replaced by a Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital (and later still the Westernport Memorial Hospital)  The Pakenham Bush Nursing Hospital opened in February 1928 and the Berwick Bush Nursing Hospital in March 1940. The Shelley Memorial Hospital in Bunyip opened March 1966.

The official opening of the Pakenham and District Bush Nursing Hospital on Saturday, February 11, 1928. The Hospital was opened by the State Governor, Lord Somers. The local scouts formed a guard of honour. 

Photograph: North of the Line: a pictorial record compiled by the Berwick-Pakenham Historical Society.

A is for the Arts. The picturesque countryside around Emerald has attracted many writers over the years including Katharine Susannah Pritchard, Vance Palmer and Nettie Palmer. Jeannie (Mrs Aeneas) Gunn had a connection to the Hallam area and the  artist, Jessie Traill lived in Harkaway. The Boyd family, whose ranks include artists Emma Minnie (nee A'Beckett) Boyd, Arthur Merric Boyd and Arthur Boyd and the writer Martin Boyd all had  a connection to The Grange at Harkaway.

The Grange, Harkaway - rear view  by  William Gilbert a'Beckett (1864 - 1941) 

William was the sister of Emma Minnie Boyd, mentioned above.

State Library of Victoria Image H2008.111/10

P is for the Princes Highway and other roads. The Princes Highway was originally known as the Gippsland Road but its name was changed in 1920, after the visit of Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII, then the Duke of Windsor). The South Gippsland Highway was known as the Westernport Road (or sometimes the Grantville Road). The sketch map, created by William Thomas in 1840, (see below) shows how the roads developed, naturally coming from Melbourne and then on the left running down to the Mornington Peninsula and on the right through Dandenong and down to Ruffy Brothers run at Cranbourne (the start of the South Gippsland Highway). The  turnoff to the north of Ruffys that is the 'road to Mr Cloes [i.e. Clows] and onto Nerre Nerre Warren. Clow is the Reverend James Clow who took up the Tirhatuan run in 1838 - an area from Dandenong to modern day Heatherton Road which includes parts of Endeavour Hills. Nerre Nerre Warren is where the Corp of Native Police were established in 1837 (where the Police Paddocks are located)

William Thomas' sketch map form 1840

Image scanned from The Dandenong Police paddocks : early use as native police headquarters and aboriginal protectorate station, 1837-1853 by Marie Hansen Fels (Department of Conservation and Environment, 1990)

P is for Pubs. Some of the earliest establishments in all areas were Hotels - used for refreshment, accommodation and as coach stops where horses could be changed over and refreshed. One of the oldest buildings still standing in the region is the Border Hotel  also called the Berwick Inn in High Street in Berwick. The earliest part of the building was constructed in 1857 by Robert Bain. In 1850 the La Trobe Inn was established on the Toomuc Creek at Pakenham by Michael and Kitty Bourke. In 1855, David and Janet Bowman built the Gippsland Hotel on the Cardinia Creek at  Beaconsfield and in the same year  the Mornington Hotel on the corner of Narre Warren North Road and  the Gippsland Road (Princes Highway) was established by J. Gardiner and later taken over by John Payne and dismantled in the 1880s or 90s. Another Mornington Hotel was established in 1860 in Cranbourne by Thomas and Eliza Gooch and around the same time the Cranbourne Hotel was also established by Robert and Margaret Duff. The name Mornington came from the County of Mornington - for land administration purposes, the State of Victoria is divided into Counties and then Parishes, most of the Casey Cardinia region is in the County of Mornington. In the 1860s the Limerick Arms Hotel was built on the Gippsland Road at Nar Nar Goon by Daniel and Brigid O'Brien and from 1857 there were various hotels in Bunyip.

Y is for Yachts, yawls and other boats that sailed in Western Port Bay - which brings us to the Fishing Industry. Some of the earliest settlers in Tooradin were fishermen. George Casey was the first fisherman and settler, followed by Jimmy Miles and  then in 1876 Henry and Elizabeth Kernot came over from Hastings. They had eleven children including Isabella Poole. Isabella owned the Fishermans Cottage  from 1910 to 1949. It is now the home of the Cranbourne Shire Historical Society.  The Cottage is one of the few remaining examples of the fishermen’s houses that originally dotted both sides of Sawtell’s Inlet in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The last of the professional fishermen, Henry Kernot and Arthur Johnstone (whose mother was a Kernot), surrendered their licence in 1999.

Pomp Colvin's Patrobus, 1915 - a Tooradin Fishing boat.

Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp Historical Society photo

N is for Nature. Not only was Western Port Bay an important for fishing, both amateur and commercial, but it is also an important nature conservation area. The Department of Environment website has to say about the importance of Western Port  In 1982, a large portion of Western Port was designated as a wetland of international importance under the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar Convention). The site occupies 59,297 ha and consists of large shallow intertidal areas dissected by deeper channels, and a narrow strip of adjacent coastal land in some areas. [See the full report here]  One of my favourite blog posts that I have done for this blog is one on Arcuate Ridges or curved sand ridges which are the remains of the walls of ancient lake beds. The town of Cardinia is on an arcuate ridge. Before we leave Nature we need to mention the world significant Royal Botanic Gardens at Cranbourne. There are acres of remnant bushland, plus the Australian Garden that showcases the  diversity of Australian flora from all climate environments - see more on their website www.rbg.vic.gov.au/visit-cranbourne

E is for Emergencies. Floods and bush fires have been part of the life of the community  since European settlement. The most devastating bush fire was that of Ash Wednesday fires on February 16 1983 when many lives were sadly lost and hundreds of houses and other buildings were destroyed in  Beaconsfield Upper, Cockatoo and neighbouring areas and throughout Victoria and South Australia. You can read the bald facts of this disaster here. The other emergencies we have in this region are floods, especially on the reclaimed Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp The most devasting flood took place in 1934 where up to 2 metres of water inundated the Swamp. There was also major flooding in other parts of Victoria.

Rossiter Road in Koo-Wee-Rup in the 1934 flood

Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp Historical Society photo

W is for Weekly newspapers.  This area is fortunate that it's  social life and history has been recorded in local newspapers since the 1860s. The South Bourke and Mornington Journal was published from 1865 to 1927 when it became the Dandenong Journal. We are lucky that you can access this on Trove from  1872 to 1954. This paper covered the Counties of Mornington and the southern portion of the County of Bourke (where Melbourne is located)  Other significant newspapers include the Pakenham Gazette, published by the Thomas Family since 1909. The Koo-Wee-Rup Sun and it's predecessor the Lang Lang Guardian and it's successor, The Cranbourne Sun was published from 1889 to the 1980s. Some editions of these papers are also on Trove.

The South Bourke and Mornington Journal masthead - it circulated in Dandenong, Berwick, Pakenham, Cranbourne, Brandy Creek, Grantville, Hastings, Oakleigh and Templestowe amongst other places

Y is for Yallock Creek and other waterways. The first European settlement in the area took place on creeks, for the obvious reason that water was required for 'man and beast' In 1837 Captain Robert Gardiner took up a pastoral lease at Berwick on the Cardinia Creek. In 1839  Samuel Rawson and Robert Jamieson settled on the Yallock Creek and in the same year the 14 square mile (3,600 hectares)  Eumemmerring Run, based on the Eumemmerring creek, was taken up by Dr Farquhar McCrae.

Bridge over the Cardinia Creek, 1887.

Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria photograph album, 

State Library of Victoria Image  H2012.114/1

E is for Eternal Rest or Cemeteries. We have eight cemeteries in the area - Berwick, Bunyip, Cranbourne, Gembrook, Harkaway, Lang Lang, Nangana (also called Emerald and Macclesfield) and Pakenham. You can read about them here.  Naturally in the early days people were buried quickly for health reasons and so often selected the closest burial ground and thus you can see generations of local families in the same cemetery.  With the establishment of a crematorium at the Necropolis in Springvale, this provided another option for 'eternal rest' and so if you can't find your relative in the local cemetery then they may well be at Springvale. My own grandfather, Joe Rouse from Cora Lynn, who died in 1954 was cremated at Springvale and had  a niche there, in spite of the fact that his father and daughter were at Bunyip as well as his parents-in-law - but it seemed to have been the modern way of thinking at the time.

A is for Architecture and significant buildings. Both Cardinia and Casey have undertaken Heritage Conservation Studies. The original City of Berwick Study was done in 1993 and has been updated since and the earliest Cardinia Shire one was in 1996 with updates in 1999 to cover the areas that were previously part of the Shires of Sherbrooke and Cranbourne. What would be the oldest building in Casey Cardinia? Good question - possibly the Berwick Inn (Border Hotel) - the original section was built in 1857. I'd be happy to hear of any other contenders. What is the most significant building? Possibly Edrington, the former home of Lord and Lady Casey. Lord Casey was the Governor General of Australia from September 1965 to April 1969 and apart from being a grand mansion it is this Vice Regal connection that adds to the significance. Once again, I'd be pleased to hear of any other contenders.

Edrington, Berwick, photographed in 1978.

R is for Retail or shopping. Unless you are under 35 then I don't need to tell you how shopping has changed over the years. From the mid 1850s when our towns began to develop the shops sprung up along the High Street or the Main Street - a general store, a blacksmith, a baker, a butcher  would be some of the earliest stores. Later  on there would be a boot maker, green grocer, hairdresser, perhaps a confectionary shop (I know it sounds fanciful but both Garfield and Bunyip both had one in the 1910s) maybe a tobacconist, and later on Banks, dress shops, specific grocery stores rather than a general store were established. This strip shopping was how people shopped until the development of the big shopping centres - Centro Shopping Centre in Cranbourne  and the Endeavour Hills Shopping Centre both opened in 1979 and Fountain Gate Shopping Centre in 1980 and the first major shops off Main Street in Pakenham opened with the new Safeways in 1984.

Shops in Main Street, Pakenham, c. early 1980s. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

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An Acrostic Seasonal history of the Casey Cardinia region - Merry Christmas

This is an eclectic look at some themes from our history and the first letter of each theme spells a seasonal greeting! In our next post we will present an historical take on Happy New Year.

M is for Mechanics Institutes. Our earliest Library in the area is the Berwick Mechanics' Institute and Free Library which started in 1862 and is still going strong. There were once over 1,000 Mechanics' Institutes in  Victoria, many still exist as public halls, but there are now only six that still lend books, including the Berwick one. It is a remarkable achievement and there would be very  few other institutions that have played a continuous role in the history and social life our our community for over 150 years.

Berwick Mechanics' Institute 1970s

E is for Education. The earliest schools in the area opened in 1854 - there was a  school on Captain Robert Gardiner's property at Berwick - this was the fore-runner of the existing Berwick Primary School. In 1869 it was re-located to a new building on the corner of Lyall Road and Peel Street  and later moved to Lyall Road. Also in 1854 a Church of England School opened in Lyndhurst, the first teacher being Robert Davies. There were 12 boys and 10 girls at the school and they paid 2 pence per day to attend.  Free education in Victoria did not come in until 1872 when the Education Act made the Government responsible for 'free, secular and compulsory' education. Students who wished to continue their studies past Grade 8, the level at which State schools originally finished,  would have had to have gone onto a private school until State High Schools were established. Depending on where you lived in the region you could have gone to Warragul High (opened 1911) or Dandenong High (opened  1919) or Upwey High (opened 1937 as a Higher Elementary  and became a High School in 1944). Koo-Wee-Rup (opened in 1953 as a Higher Elementary and in 1957 as a High School) and the 1960s saw Doveton High open in 1960, Monbulk High  in 1963, Pakenham High in 1967 all providing local familes with closer options for continued education.

R is for Religion.  When towns were first surveyed the Government set aside sites for Churches. The earliest purpose built  Church in the area was, I believe, Scots Presbyterian Church in Cranbourne built in 1860, although before this services would have been held in private homes. This building no longer exists so the oldest church building in the area is St Johns Anglican Church in Cranbourne erected in 1865 and still in use today.   Other nineteenth century Churches in the area that are still in use for their original purpose include St Andrews Presbyterian (now Uniting) Church at Berwick built from 1879, the Avonsleigh Church of Christ built 1887 and the Koo-Wee-Rup Presbyterian Church built in 1888 as a Wesleyan Church in Cranbourne and then shifted to Koo-Wee-Rup in 1896.

Scots Presbyterian Church, Cranbourne, built in 1860 and replaced in 1953 by the existing Church.

R is for Recreation  The earliest record I can find of  any organized sport in the area is this advertisement (below) from 1860 of the Cranbourne Cricket Club's Annual dinner at the Schnapper Point Hotel. Schnapper Point is now known as Mornington. The Berwick Recreation Reserve was gazetted on July 14, 1863, five years before land was set aside in Cranbourne for 'public recreation and racecourse purposes' on August 3, 1868.

The Argus April 7, 1860 

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5680160

Y is for Yuletide. 1839 is the earliest account I can find of Christmas being celebrated by European settlers with a connection to this area.  Robert Jamieson and Samuel Rawson had taken up land on the Yallock Creek and began to move cattle to the Station from November 13 1839. On their way back from Yallock they went to  Edward William Hobson’s Kangerong run at Arthurs Seat where they arrived on Christmas Eve  where  they were wassailed or toasted with a bowl of hot toddy ( a drink made from spirits, usually whiskey, hot water, sugar and lemon juice).
Christmas was celebrated in Old English style with champagne and Rawson wrote we were a merry party that evening sitting in a hut, which a beggar in England would hardly live in, the walls full of holes, the roof covered with bark through the crevices of which a person might have crept with the greatest ease, the floor the natural earth and situated in the middle of the eternal forest whence 18 months before a white man had never trod.

C is for Councils. The first form of local government in the area were the Road Boards - the Cranbourne Road Board was proclaimed June 19, 1860 and the Berwick Road Board on September 29, 1862. These Road Boards became Shire Councils in 1868 - Cranbourne on February 24 and Berwick on May 5.

Shire of Berwick Councillors, c. 1890s. 

They are photographed in front of the (now demolished)  Council Chambers, built in High Street Berwick in 1865.

H is for Holes in the ground - quarries and other extractive industries. The most  well known quarry in the area would be Wilsons Quarry at Berwick which began in 1859 and was owned by the Wilson family until 1978. It is now Wilson Botanic Park. There are other quarries in the area - the granite quarry at Tynong where the stone for the  Shrine of Remembrance was sourced is a well known example and of course there have been (and still are) sand mines at Cranbourne and Lang Lang.

 Quarry the granite for the Shrine of Remembrance at Tynong.

The caption reads (in part) Beautiful silver-grey granite of an eminently suitable kind is available at Tynong, in Gippsland, and workmen are shown in the photograph hewing the blocks of granite from the hillside. Inset:-A fine heap of granite blocks ready for dressing. They measure from six cubic foot upwards

 The Argus of November 14, 1928 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3968930

R is for railways. Railways have been pivotal in the development of the Casey Cardinia Region. The Railways have always been used for personal travel - to go to work, to go into Dandenong or Melbourne for reasons such as shopping or to access medical services - but they have also influenced the location and growth of towns, transported produce to markets and tourists to holiday destinations. We have had four railway lines traversing the region and three are still operating. The earliest line is the Gippsland line to Sale which was opened from Oakleigh to Bunyip in October 1877 and fully opened in 1879. The Great Southern line commenced construction in 1887 and was fully operational from Dandenong to Korumburra by June 1891. It was later extended to Port Albert. It now only goes as far as Cranbourne. The famous Puffing Billy line, officially called the Fern Tree Gully to Gembrook line, opened in December 1900. Finally the Strzelecki line from Koo-Wee-Rup to Strzelecki opened on June 29, 1922 and closed in stages until it was completely closed in February 1959.

I is for Industry.  The 'Big Three' were established at Dandenong in the 1950s  - International Harverster in February 1952, Heinz in 1955 and General Motors Holden in 1956. Between the three of them they employed thousands of people  and they had an immediate impact on the area.  The factories required workers and even though a Railway Station was built for GMH and opened in the October or November of 1956, it was good if there was a pool of workers living close by, thus Doveton was established  as a suburb in 1954 by the Victorian Housing Commission to house these workers. The factories also accelerated the housing development in Hallam, Hampton Park and Cranbourne  from where people could drive to work and park - GMH alone  had a 1000 space car park.

International Harvester Factory, 1980s.

S is for Space. This area is notable for the Cranbourne Meteorites. So far thirteen meteorites have been discovered in the area in virtually a straight line from Officer to Clyde to Devon Meadows to Pearcedale from 1853 to 2008. You can visit the Cranbourne No. 13 meteorite at the Casey RACE Swimming pool in Cranbourne.

Cranbourne meteorite  with the chain which was employed to pull it from its position for transport to the Melbourne Museum, 21 February 1862. Photographer: Richard Daintree.

State Library of Victoria Image H36595

T is for Timber Industry. The Gippsland Railway line encouraged the growth of the timber industry by providing a source of transport to cart the timber to Melbourne where it was used to build houses, fences etc and as  a fuel supply. Officer and Garfield both owe their existence to the timber industry and the towns developed around the railway sidings used by the timber industry.

Carting timber at Gembrook

State Library of Victoria Image H32492/2163

M is for Market Town - that is Dandenong. The history of our area is historically linked to Dandenong as it was a service town to the surrounding area.  For instance, Dandenong had a large public hospital with specialists. It was also where the local children went to High School until local schools were built from the 1950s onwards.  Dandenong was also the major shopping area for people from the surrounding area  and a trip to the Dandenong market to buy clothes and other goods was a ritual for many. The Dandenong Market was also the major livestock market for the area. In the late 1940s and the 1950s my father used to drive his parents from Cora Lynn to the Dandenong market where they sold their eggs, chooks and calves (all carried on the back of the ute) and they were just one of the many thousands of small farmers who did the same. The Dandenong Market originally located on the corner of Lonsdale and McCrae Streets and opened in 1866, 150 years ago.  It moved to its present location on Clow Street around 1926 and in 1958 the stockyards moved to Cheltenham Road.  The Dandenong Stock Market was the last municipal owned and operated facility in Victoria, and closed on December 22, 1998. It is now a housing estate.

A is for Agriculture and farming.  Small family farms, were the main stay of the rural economy of this area from around the 1880s to the 1970s. These farms were dairy farms, poultry farms, pig farms, potato farms and market gardens.  The first settlers in the area were the squatters and large (often absentee)  landowners but from the 1850s the big squatting runs were broken up, Government land sales took place and other farmers moved in. Later on these farms were subdivided again (basically 1880s onwards)  and this gave small farmers the opportunity to purchase land - this was historically the pattern of settlement for most of our region. It was also encouraged by government schemes such as the drainage of the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp and the Soldier Settlement Scheme after the Great War. We still have family farms in the area, but the nature of agriculture has changed and farmers need to get bigger to survive, plus there are land use competition pressures from  the ever expanding Urban Growth boundaries.

My grandma, Eva Rouse (nee Weatherhead) and my aunty, Nancy Rouse, on their small family farm at Cora Lynn, c. 1927.

S is for Swamp.  The Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp originally covered about 40,000 hectares or 96,000 acres and is part of the Western Port sunkland. The Swamp area is basically contained in  the Cardinia Shire which is about 128,000 hectares, so if you imagine that if it was left undrained, then one third of the Shire would be a Swamp.  The Chief Engineer of the Public Works Department, William Thwaites (1853 - 1907) surveyed the Swamp in 1887 and his report recommended the construction of the Bunyip Main Drain from where it entered the Swamp, in the north, to Western Port Bay and a number of smaller side drains. A tender was advertised in 1889. In spite of strikes, floods and bad weather by March 1893, the private contractors had constructed the 16 miles of the drain from the Bay to the south of Bunyip and the Public Works Department considered the Swamp was now dry enough for settlement. At one time over 500 men were employed and all the work was done by hand, using axes, shovels, mattocks and wheel barrows. By 1904, over 2,000 people including 1,400 children lived on the Swamp. Many more drains have been added over the years.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

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