Postcards of Tooradin

These are a series of postcards from the 1940s or 1950s of Tooradin. Tooradin, has always had  a reputation as a 'Sportsman's Paradise' and by that they meant there was plenty of good fishing and hunting (ducks, quail and swans seemed to be the target). There is a first hand account of this sport in Around Tooradin : the Sportsman's Paradise by Hawkeye. It was published, in serial form, in late 1888 and early 1889 to promote the sale of land around Tooradin. Hawkeye described the journey to Tooradin by train, the fishing, local hospitality. Hawkeye's observations have been re-published in Tooradin: 125 years of Coastal History.

Tooradin township was first sub-divided in 1869 and cottages were built along Sawtell's Inlet. The Cranbourne Shire Historical Society manages one of the few remaining Cottages as a Museum. This Cottage was built circa 1873 and you can see it in the circa 1900 photograph, below. As you can also see, sailing and promenading were also popular past-times.

Sawtell's Inlet, Tooradin - circa 1900. The people in this photograph have been named as  (left to right) Ateyo girls, Edith Walker, Frederick Atyeo snr, Mr Lemme, Bob Basan, Vic Lemme, Larry Basan.*


The Foreshore, Tooradin.

Moored boats on the Foreshore - the c.1873 cottage, referred to above, can be seen just to the right of the yacht's mast.


Jetty and Anchorage, Tooradin.

Another view of Sawtell's Inlet. Sawtell's Inlet was named after Melbourne merchant Edwin Sawtell around 1840. Sawtell had  an early interest in the Tooradin run, which was taken over by Frederick and Charles Manton in 1840. Sawtell died at the age of 95 in 1892.  The fisherman's shop is visible on the left. A long time resident told me that this was where the fishermen stored their boxes and their catch until a larger boat came and collected it. Locals used to buy fish direct from the fishermen from there.

Camping Ground, Tooradin.

Causeway from Children's Pool, Tooradin

There were two pools in Tooradin - one near the old State School, on the inlet, opposite the Tooradin Public  Hall and the other was at the end of Bayview Road, near Isles View guest house. This appears to be taken from the Bayview Road pool. 

The Causeway, Tooradin. 

The photograph is looking towards the garage that was on the corner of the South Gippsland Highway and the Foreshore. the garage was built in 1920 by John Colvin. Behind the garage is Cova Cottage cafe. The original bridge over Sawtell's Inlet was built possibly 1858, as the State Government Gazette lists a contract being accepted for erecting three bridges over the Tooradin inlets at Western Port in the edition published April 23, 1858 (see below). The contract was let to Arbut Brown and the cost was two thousand, four hundred and twenty pounds.

State Government Gazette April 23, 1858

http://gazette.slv.vic.gov.au/

The Shire of Cranbourne advertised for tenders to repair the bridge, in The Argus of December 27, 1872. http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper

The Flood Gates, Tooradin

The Flood Gates over Sawtell's Inlet were constructed in 1904 with Turnbull Brothers being the Contractors. In an article in the South Bourke and Mornington Journal of October 26, 1904 (see below) it appears that the cost for the 'extensive work' would amount to 1000 pounds, double the contracted price. The purpose of the flood gates was to control the flow of water during the many floods on the surrounding Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp, however they have been unpopular with farmers who feel that they impede the flow of flood waters from their properties and a report in a newspaper from 1917 complains that the restricted flow of water has caused the inlet to be silted up. 

South Bourke and Mornington Journal of October 26, 1904
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper

This is the cover of the post card collection.

*The circa 1900 photograph of Sawtell's Inlet was reproduced in the book Tooradin: a history of a Sportsman's Paradise and the first 100 years of State School No. 1503 by David Mickle, published 1975. This book formed the basis of Tooradin: 125 years of coastal history.

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Tooradin

Some of the earliest Europeans who passed through Tooradin were Samuel Rawson and Robert Jamieson. They took up the Yallock Run, at the northern end of Western Port, in November 1839. They over landed their cattle and goods to Tooradin from Melbourne and they were then blocked by the undrained Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp, so used Sawtell’s Inlet at Tooradin as their port and continued on by boat.  For the same reason, other land owners from further around Western Port Bay at Red Bluff, Grantville, Queensferry and Corinella also used Tooradin until the Western Port Road was built around 1860. There is a plaque in a picnic shelter on the South Gippsland Highway between Koo-Wee-Rup and Monomeith that marks the location of the Yallock site.

The Tooradin area was part of the Toorodan Run of 16,000 acres (6,475 hectares) taken up by Frederick and Charles Manton in 1840. Edwin Sawtell, a Melbourne merchant, had an interest in this run, before the Manton Brothers took it over. He is the source of the name of Sawtell’s Inlet. Sawtell died at the age of 95 in 1892. The town took its name from Manton’s Toorodan run  and is an Aboriginal word for  “swamp monster” or “bunyip”. 1851 saw the arrival of Mickle, Bakewell and Lyall in the area. John Mickle (1814-1885) and John Bakewell (1807-1888) were business partners in Melbourne from 1847 and they were soon joined by William Lyall (1821-1888) whose sister Margaret was married to John Mickle. They had numerous runs in the Western district and in 1851, they acquired the leases of the Yallock and Tobin Yallock and Red Bluff Stations; in 1852 Manton’s Toorodan run and in 1854 they acquired the Great Swamp run,  all in all about 27,000 acres, which they collectively called their Western Port runs.

After the partnership split up the land was divided between the three partners with  Lyall receiving part of Yallock Station. Lyall and his wife, Annabella, built Harewood house, just out of Tooradin, on this property.  The construction of Harewood started around 1857 and the property remained in the Lyall family until 1968. Harewood is of State significance and is on the Victorian Heritage Database. Mickle, Bakewell and Lyall and their descendants are remembered in Tooradin, Cranbourne and Koo-Wee-Rup where streets were named in their honour.

A map of an early land subdivision at Tooradin. Evans owned all of Allotment 5 and subdivided these fifteen blocks in 1887 or 1888. You can see Steer's property where the Bridge Hotel was located. The '1 chain road' is now Mickle Street

The Tooradin township was laid out in 1854, and this included a reserve for a bridge and wharf. Early land sales took place in 1869, but it wasn’t until the 1870s that the township took off. In January 1870, John Steer applied for a Beer Licence for his Bridge Inn. John Steer died in May 1876 and the Hotel was taken over by Matthew Evans in 1877. Later publicans included Larry Basan who took over the licence in 1888 and rebuilt the hotel in 1895. The hotel was demolished in 2016.  The other Tooradin Hotel, the Sherwood Hotel, which was closer towards Cranbourne, had opened in 1869.

A tender to construct the Tooradin State School was accepted in October 1874 and the School officially opened on April 12, 1875 with Mrs Adelaide Dredge as the teacher. John Woodfield Thrupp opened a store around 1875. The Post Office and a store  operated by Mr F.M  Woolley opened in August 1877. He only lasted a year and the Store was taken over by Mr G. Walker, and in 1898 by Frederick Atyeo. Two years later, his son George, took over and added a coffee palace.  To meet the spiritual needs of the residents, Anglican Church services were held from 1875, most likely in the School, and from 1883 in the Hall until the Christ Church was built in 1900. The Catholic Church, St Peters, was built in 1922, services also having been previously held in the Mechanics’ Institute. The Church is now part of St Peters College at Cranbourne.

Tooradin Mechanics' Institute

Photo from : Tooradin : a history of a Sportsman's Paradise, 1875-1975. Complied by D.J. Mickle.

The Tooradin Mechanics’ Institute (pictured above) had officially opened on Boxing Day, 1882. The current Hall was built in 1938, having replaced the original hall, which burnt down the previous year. Another boost to Tooradin was the construction of the Great Southern Railway, which reached Tooradin in October 1888. It was extended from Tooradin to Loch in November 1890. The Station was a few kilometres north of the town and the source of the road name Tooradin Station Road.

As the town developed community groups were established – in the 1920s a Country Women's Association; the Fire Brigade started in 1945;  the Infant Welfare Centre opened in 1949 and ten years later the Kindergarten; the Scout Group was established in 1964. The Tooradin Dalmore Football Club started in  in 1919 and the  Netball Club in 1954.  The Avenue of Honour to commemorate the World War One soldiers was planted in 1922, unusually it consists of flowering gums.

Matthew Evans (1836-1909) was an early resident of Tooradin. He had purchased land in 1869 and built Bay View house in the early 1870s. He also purchased other blocks in Tooradin, some of which he sub-divded and sold around 1887 or 1888 (see map above). Evans, as we saw before, was the owner of  the Bridge Inn for  a time was a Cranbourne Shire Councillor from 1879 to 1881, a trustee of the Mechanics Institute and donated the land for the Anglican Church. Evans built Isles View, which is on the City of Casey Heritage Scheme, in 1898 and it is thought that Bay View house was shifted to form part of this new house. The Isle to which the name refers to is French Island. Mr Evans is the source of the name of Evans Road. Matthew married Harriet Swalling in 1860 and she sadly died at the age of 21 in 1862. He then married Fanny Sweetnam in 1865 and they had ten children Arthur Ernest (b. 1865), Herbert Hill (1868), Lance Hill (1870), Frank Austin (1871), Walter Matthew (1875), Florence Fanny (1877), Nellie Banks (1879), Lena Bessie (1880), Rose Alice (1884) Leslie Rubin (1887). Fanny died in 1931, aged 87.

Isles View house, this photograph clearly shows the weatherboard section which is believed to be Matthew Evan's original 1869 house, Bay View.

A fleet of fishing boats were also based at the Tooradin and some of the earliest settlers were fishermen.David Mickle* writes that George Casey was the first fisherman and settler, followed by Jimmy Miles and  then in 1876 Henry Forman Kernot and his wife, Elizabeth (nee McNaughton)  came over from Hastings. The couple had married in 1861 and their children were Charles Edward (b. 1861, married Annie Collins), Henry William (1863, married Sarah Winchester), Clara Johanna (1865, married Gilbert Kerr), Amelia Eliza (1867, married Henry Alexander Mundy),  Caroline Jessie (1869, married Peter Peterson), Charlotte (1871, married William Mentiplay), Georgina Alice (1873, married Alexander Greive), Isabella Lucretia (1874, married Frederick Poole), Thomas James (1876, married Elsie May Lee), Maria Martha (1877, married Frederick Rawlings), Mary Adeline (1880, married Thomas Henderson) and George Robert (1881, married Mabel Robertson).  Caroline's husband, Peter Peterson, and Isabella's husband, George Poole, were half brothers - you can read about the family here.

 Isabella Kernot Poole 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 (son of Ted Johnstone and Hilda Kernot (the daughter of Henry and Sarah (nee Winchester) Kernot listed above), surrendered their licence in 1999. 

Fisherman's Cottage. This house is thought to have been built by Matthews Evans and some sources date it's construction to c. 1873 even though the land was part of the 1887 subdivision shown in the map above.

Tooradin attracted not only the professional fisherman but the sports fisherman as well. The fishing, plus quail shooting on Quail Island, deer shooting, cycling club and other typical pursuits of the time gave Tooradin a reputation as a 'Sportsman’s Paradise'. This reputation was fostered by the publication of the booklet Around Tooradin : the Sportsman's Paradise by Hawkeye. It was published, in serial form, in late 1888 and early 1889 to promote the sale of land in the area. Today Tooradin is still a haven for recreational fishing, is the service centre for the coastal towns of Cannons Creek, Warneet and Blind Bight. It’s natural landscape of tidal flats and mangroves are a haven for bird and marine life. When I was growing up at Cora Lynn (in the 1960s and 70s)  we always went to Tooradin to the beach - my parents used to water ski and we’ll have a swim or just go over and get fish and chips and eat them on the beach. In fact, Tooradin fish and chips seem to be fondly remembered by many people.

Tooradin was the birthplace of the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria in 1903, you can read about  this here.

• The photographs of Isles View and the Fishermans Cottage are from the Heritage of the City of Casey : Historic sites in the former City of Casey, by Graeme Butler and Associates, 1995.
• Photo of Matthew Evans is from Tooradin : a history of a Sportsman's Paradise, 1875-1975. Complied by D.J. Mickle.

*Tooradin : a history of a Sportsman's Paradise, 1875-1975 . Complied by D.J. Mickle. (published in 1975 by the Tooradin 'Back to' Committee)

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Place names and their meanings from the Casey Cardinia Region.

On our website, you will now find a list of Place names and their meanings from the Casey Cardinia Region. Most Place names fall into five categories. Many place names come from Aboriginal words. Some of these are Bunyip, Cardinia, Lang Lang, Narre Warren and Eumemmerring. In the early days of settlement, many places were named to honour "important" Government officials, either Australian or British. Beaconsfield, Lyndhurst and Gippsland fall into this second category. The third common source of names comes from the names of local European settlers, examples of these include Bayles, Cannons Creek, Catani, Doveton, Hallam, Officer and Pearcedale. Fourthly, some towns were named by the European settlers after British or Irish towns or places that featured in their lives before they migrated to Australia or because landscape features reminded them of home. Examples of these reminiscent names are Belgrave, Clyde, Iona and Skye. The final group of names are descriptive such as Blind Bight, Bald Hill (an early name for Lyndhurst), Five Ways, Heath Hill, and Mount Misery. To access the list of place names from the Casey Cardinia Region either click on this link http://www.cclc.vic.gov.au/placenames on our website homepage go to Local History then Topics.

If you have an interest in place names then it is worth chasing up Place names of Victoria by Les Blake (published by Rigby in 1976). It is out of print, but may be available in second hand books shops or through Public Libraries. Another fantastic source for Victorian place names is the following site by Eric Bird called Place names on the coast of Victoria at http://www.bcs.asn.au/vic_coast.pdf
Eric has researched all the coastal place names from the South Australian border to the New South Wales border including Port Phillip Bay and Western Port Bay.

The 1845 map, above, shows some of the early place names in the region, such as Baungan Waterhole, from which Bangholme took its name, Dandenong and Eumemmerring. It is taken from Call back yesterday : Eumemmerring Parish by Jean Uhl.

The photograph, below, shows the Sportman's Rest cottage on the foreshore at Tooradin, circa 1900. Tooradin, on Western Port Bay, is one of the many place names described by Eric Bird on his web site.

The people in this photograph have been named as  (left to right) Ateyo girls, Edith Walker, Frederick Atyeo snr, Mr Lemme, Bob Basan, Vic Lemme, Larry Basan. The circa 1900 photograph of Sawtell's Inlet was reproduced in the book Tooradin: a history of a Sportsman's Paradise and the first 100 years of State School No. 1503 by David Mickle, published 1975. This book formed the basis of Tooradin: 125 years of coastal history.

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Welcome to our blog

Welcome to the Casey Cardinia Library Corporation history blog. This blog plans to keep you up to date with Heritage happenings in the Region and state wide, and also, to present snippets of historical information from the area. Over the next blog posts we will look at some of the Historical Societies in the Region that were established to collect the history of particular areas. We will start with the Cranbourne Shire Historical Society. This Society was formed in 1968, its primary aim at the time was to save the "Sportsman Rest" fisherman's cottage,built c. 1873, on the Foreshore at Tooradin, from demolition (pictured above). A group of concerned citizens convinced the Shire of Cranbourne to purchase the property, on the proviso that the "group" will repay half the $6,000 purchase price. The Cottage is now a Museum and is furnished with household items donated by local families. It is still managed by the Society and is open to the public on the weekends. In 2005 the old Tooradin North Primary School (pictured below) was re-located to the site and this is now used as an education centre. The School building was originally the Monomeith State School. Monomeith School had started in 1920 and moved into this building in 1924. The School closed in 1933 and the building was re-located to Tooradin North in 1935, where it was used until 1970, when Tooradin North State School was closed. The Cranbourne Shire Historical Society meets on the fourth Thursday of the month at the Old Shire Offices in Cranbourne.
For more information ring 03 5998 3643.

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