Shire of Cranbourne and the Shire of Berwick

In the last post I looked at the development of the Local Road Boards and this post continues the story of Local Government in the region. The Road Boards became Shires, in the case of Cranbourne on February 24th, 1868 and on May 12th 1868 for the Shire of Berwick. In 1868 Shire of Cranbourne covered the area which now includes the towns of Bayles, Caldermeade, Cardinia, Carrum Downs, Clyde, Cranbourne, Dalmore, Hampton Park, Koo-Wee-Rup, Langwarrin, Lyndhurst, Pearcedale, and Tooradin, and Warneet. The area around Lang Lang was added to Cranbourne in 1872. In 1893,  Heath Hill, Lang Lang East, Yannathan and the area that was to become Catani in the 1920s  were annexed to the Shire of Cranbourne, from the Shire of Buln Buln. The first Shire President was James Lecky and early meetings took place in the Cranbourne Inn, until the Shire Offices, Post Office and Court House were built in Sladen Street 1875. On April 22nd, 1994 the Shire of Cranbourne changed its name to the City of Cranbourne.

Cranbourne Shire Councillors  from 1909

The Shire of Berwick extended from Dandenong Creek to Bunyip and also took in the hill towns of Beaconsfield Upper, Pakenham Upper and Gembrook, Garfield North and Tonimbuk. South of the Railway line it covered the Swamp towns of Cora Lynn, Vervale and Iona. The Scoresby Ward of the Shire of Berwick, including Clematis, Emerald and Avonsleigh was severed from Berwick and was annexed to the Shire of Fern Tree Gully in 1889. The first Shire President of the Shire of Berwick was James Wilson. The Berwick Road Board met in the Border Hotel (Berwick Inn) , until new premised were built in High Street in 1865. The Shire of Berwick used these premises until 1902, when the Council moved to the Pakenham Mechanics’ Institute. New Shire offices were built in 1912, on the corner of Main Street and John Street in Pakenham. The City of Berwick and the Shire of Pakeham were formed on October 1st, 1973 when the Shire of Berwick split , with the Cardinia Creek being the boundary.

 

 Berwick Shire Councillors, probably from the 1890s.

1994 was the year of reform for Local government in Victoria. The Kennett Government reviewed all Local Councils in Victoria. The City of Casey was created from the western section of the City of Cranbourne and the entire City of Berwick. The Cardinia Shire was created from the Swamp towns of the City of Cranbourne and the Shire of Pakenham. Emerald, Clematis and Avonsleigh were annexed from the Shire of Sherbrooke and added to the Cardinia Shire. Langwarrin and Carrum Downs went to the City of Frankston. The City of Casey and the Cardinia Shire officially came into being on the December 15th, 1994 at 4.00pm.

This photograph shows the opening of the Shire of Berwick Offices, on the corner of Main Street and John Street in Pakenham, in 1912. The building has now been re-located to the intersection of Main Street, McGregor Road and the Princes Highway and is the headquarters of the Berwick Pakenham Historical Society

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Cranbourne Road Board and Berwick Road Board

The first form of local Government, in Victoria, were the Local Road Boards. These Boards had power to fix rates and levy tolls, and as the name suggests they were responsible for the maintenance of bridges and roads. The Cranbourne Road Board was proclaimed on June 19th, 1860 and Berwick Road Board on September 29th 1862.

The first members of the Cranbourne Road Board were Dr James Smith Adams, Chairman, who owned Balla Balla Estate; James Bruce, owner of Sherwood Park; Richard Burgh Chomley, owner of Tongola at Lyndhurst; James Lecky, Cranbourne land-owner who also owned the Cardinia Creek property; Edward Malloy, owner of Mayune property; Alexander Patterson (pictured), owner of St Germains Estate; Christopher Bond Peed, owner of Springmount; Patrick Thompson, owner of Oaklands and John Wedge, owner of Johnswood at Lyndhurst.

The first members of the Berwick Road Board were John Brisbane (Chairman), early Berwick landowner; Robert Bain, the owner of the Border Hotel (Berwick Inn) in Berwick; Francis Barr, a Berwick land owner; Michael Bourke, owner of the La Trobe Inn, later known as Bourke’s Hotel, at Pakenham; James Buchanan, owner of Ardblair, who later went on to be a Member of the Legislative Council; David Connor, licensee of the New Bunyip Hotel on the Bunyip River ; John Pitman, Pakenham landowner ; John Startup of Mount Ararat Station; John Troup, land owner at Narre Warren North and Gotlieb Wanke, a land owner at Harkaway.

There was no universal franchise and only males who owned property or were tenants and paid the rates on property, could vote. The Road Boards later became Shires.

This is a woodcut of Berwick in 1877. Robert Bain's Border Hotel (Berwick Inn) is in the foreground at the base of the hill. The Border Hotel was the meeting place of the Berwick Road Board until 1865 when new premises were built. The best source of information about early Berwick is The Early days of Berwick and its surrounding district, published by the Berwick Pakenham Historical Society. For Cranbourne it is The good country : Cranbourne Shire by Niel Gunson. Both are available at CCLC Libraries.

In the next post we will look at the development of the Shire of Cranbourne and the Shire of Berwick.

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The Year of the Potato

2008 is the United Nations Year of the Potato. Potatoes are a major component of U.N. strategies to provide nutritious food to the poor and the hungry. Potatoes can be grown world wide, they are nutritious, relatively quick to grow and an effective use of land as 85 per cent of the potato plant is edible. Potatoes have been grown in the Andes for over 8000 years and came to Europe via the Spaniards in the 16^th century and then spread throughout the world. 

They have been grown in the Casey Cardinia Region since the start of European settlement, particularly at Gembrook and on the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp. The earliest mention of potato growing I can find is at Berwick in the 1850s, where they were transported to the gold fields at Castlemaine and Bendigo. The Backhouse brothers, at Gembrook, were digging 5 tons of potatoes to the acre in 1877, only four years after European settlement began in Gembrook in 1873. The western end of the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp was said to have produced 3000 tons of potatoes in 1894, just one year after the blocks were allocated to settlers, after the major drainage works. 

Potatoes have also been instrumental in the establishment of local Railway lines. It was recognized from the start that potato traffic would be a mainstay of both the "Puffing Billy" line which reached Gembrook in 1900 and the Strezlecki line from Koo-Wee-Rup to Bayles, Catani and beyond which opened in 1922. Koo-Wee-Rup celebrated the potato at their annual Potato Festival, which ran from 1973 until 2000. Potatoes are still a valuable contributor to the local economy. In 2001 the gross economic value of potatoes to the Casey Cardinia Region was over $19.7 million , with the bulk of that, $18.5 million, coming from the traditional potato growing areas of Gembrook and the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp in the Cardinia Shire. Casey Cardinia settlers have known the value of the humble spud for over 150 years and it good to see that it has now been recognised by the United Nations. 

Frank Rouse grew potatoes on the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp at Cora Lynn for 57 years, until his retirement from the potato business in 2007. This photograph was taken in 1968 for a fertiliser company. Image: Rouse family collection.

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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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Lost and Almost Forgotten towns of Colonial Victoria.

Many people tracing their Family history, come across a town which cannot be located on a modern map. This may be because the town no longer exists or that it has changed its name. To help locate these "missing" towns you could consult Lost and almost forgotten towns of Colonial Victoria : a comprehensive analysis of Census results for Victoria, 1841-1901 by Angus B.Watson. Mr Watson has listed all the towns and villages , as defined by the Government Statist, for all Victorian censuses between 1841 and 1901. Perhaps your ancestor attended Tobin Yallock State School or Cannibal Creek State School or a family document lists Irishtown as an address. These won't be found on a modern map but this book will tell you that Tobin Yallock later became Lang Lang and Cannibal Creek State School was re-named Garfield and that the Emerald Gold field diggings were listed on the 1871 Census as Irishtown. The book also lists the population of the towns, so it is interesting to read that Berwick grew from a population of 60 people in 1861 with 14 dwellings to 452 in 1901 with 98 dwellings. This book is available for loan at our Pakenham and Cranbourne branches.

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Pakenham Consolidated School

In the 1940s and 1950s there was a movement to consolidate small rural schools into one larger school. This was partly a response to a shortage of teachers, due to many male teachers enlisting during the Second World War. The War also caused a shortage of materials and labour and many Schools fell into disrepair. The Education Department decided that Pakenham would be one of the first six Consolidated Schools to be established and that all schools within 8 kms or 5 miles would be closed and beyond that, the Schools would have an option.

The Pakenham Consolidated School was officially opened on May 29, 1951, on the site of the Pakenham State School, No.1359, in Main Street. The original Pakenham School had opened on a site near the Toomuc Creek in January 1875 and it moved to the Main Street site in 1891. The Pakenham Gazette of June 8, 1951 reported that on May 29th, four buses conveyed 130 children from surrounding districts to Pakenham Consolidated School. At present there are 258 pupils attending the School, and it is hoped that in September several other schools will be consolidated, raising the attendance to over 400 children.

The first Head Master was Charles Hicks. The School offered classes up to Year 10 (Form 4). The schools that formed the Consolidated School were Pakenham Upper No. 2155 (closed January 1952),  Pakenham South No. 3755 (closed September 1951), Toomuc Valley No. 3034 (closed September 1951), Army Road No. 3847 (closed April 1947), Mount Burnett No. 4506 (closed October 1949), Tynong No. 2854 (closed April 1951),  Tynong North No.4464 (closed December 1951),  Nar Nar Goon North No. 2914 (closed October 1951),  Nar Nar Goon South No. 4554 (closed May 1951), Rythdale No. 4231 (closed September 1951), Officedale No. 4242 (closed May 1951), Cora Lynn No. 3502 (closed May 1951) and Koo-Wee-Rup North (Five Mile) No. 3198 (closed November 1959). Some communities appreciated the opportunities that their children would get from a larger School whilst other parents felt the distance to be travelled by bus and the larger class sizes were a disadvantage.

The School consisted of new buildings, which at the time cost one hundred thousand pounds, and many of the old School buildings. Some towns did not realise that their School buildings would be removed from the sites and transferred to Pakenham, and thus the town would lose a community meeting place. By 1966, when the photograph below was taken, Pakenham Consolidated School had 550 primary students and 94 post-primary students. There must have been a space shortage, because my Grade 2 classes were all conducted down the street at the Anglican Church hall. Our teachers, that year, were Mrs Ring then Miss Ahern (who became Mrs Fitzgerald).


The Pakenham Consolidated School moved from its original location in Main Street to its current location in Rundell, Way in 1997.

There are photographs of the School from the 1950s and 1960s, from the Public Records Office of Victoria in posts here and here.

Much of the information for this piece comes from the paper written by Ron Smith, in 1974, Consolidation, with particular reference to Pakenham Consolidated School. Copy held in the CCLC Archive. Information also taken from Vision and Realisation : a centenary history of State Education in Victoria (Education Department of Victoria, 1973)

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Women's Suffrage Petition

2008 marks 100 years since Women gained the right to vote in Victoria. The other Australian states had already granted women the right to vote, South Australia being the leader, where women had the right to vote and stand for Parliament granted in 1894. New Zealand can claim to be the first country in the world where women were allowed to vote in a General election. This was in 1893. Australia was the second country, when women achieved the right to vote, in Federal elections, in 1902. New Zealand and Australia led the world in women's suffrage - the United States didn't allow women to vote until 1920 and the United Kingdom had introduced limited female suffrage in 1918 and extended the vote to all women in 1928.

In 1891 women in Victoria established a petition, presented to the Victorian Parliament, to agitate for the vote for women. http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/about/the-history-of-parliament/womens-suffrage-petition
This is an amazing resource of nearly 30,000 signatures. The signatures were collected by women

who went door to door all over Victoria. The Women's Suffrage petition has been digitised and is fully searchable by name or address. The indexing was undertaken by volunteers from the Genealogical Society of Victoria and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. If you are lucky you might find your Grandmother's name and signature. The image, left,  is of the original 260 metre long petition, which is made of paper pasted onto cotton.

I have tried to find the names of every woman, from what is now the Casey Cardinia area, who signed the petition - there were 62 all up - 41 from Pakenham, 13 from Gembrook South, 3 from Officer and one each from Cranbourne, Nar Nar Goon, Beaconsfield, Berwick/Harkaway and one from Eumemmerring. It does appear that the petition needed a person in the town to act as a catalyst, such as what appears to have happened at Pakenham as otherwise I would have thought that there would be greater numbers from Berwick and Cranbourne. Dandenong, which would have been larger than Pakenham, Berwick and Cranbourne had only two people sign the petition.

Here are the names -
ABLETHORP, Emma - Gembrook South. You can read about the Ablethorpe farm
 at Gembrook here.
ALLEN,Jessie - Pakenham
BRUNTS, J - Cranbourne - this should be BRUNT.
Mrs Brunt may have been away on holidays when she signed as the other
women who signed the petition above and below her came from Kyabram.
CHURCH, Anna - Pakenham
CIBICK, Elizabeth -  Beaconsfield
CLANCY, Elizabeth - Pakenham
COLVIN, Cassie - Pakenham
COLWELL, Julia - Pakenham
DOWD, Emma -  Pakenham
DWYER, Mary - Pakenham
ELLIS, Emma - Pakenham
EYART, Margaret M.J. - Pakenham
FAHEY, Margaret - Pakenham
FERGUSON, Elizabeth - Pakenham 
GIBSON,  Margaret  - Pakenham
GILLMASTIN, Fanny - Pakenham
GOODALL, Bessie - Pakenham
HALLORAN, Joanna - Pakenham
HICKS, Elizabeth - Officer
HILLMAN, Adeline - Pakenham
HILLMAN,Eliza - Pakenham
HILLMAN, Julia A.- Pakenham
HITCHINS, Annie H. - Gembrook South
LEWIS, Amelia J. H. - Pakenham
LEWIS, Elizabeth - Gembrook South
MACKIE, Helen A. - Harkaway, Berwick. I am not sure if the Mackie
property was called Harkaway but I think more likely that they
lived at Harkaway and she added Berwick to help identify her
location. Helen was amongst women from Malvern and
Armadale on the petition, so was presumably visiting. 
MARGENGARK, Lizzie - Pakenham
MARTIN, Nye - Pakenham
MASON, Elizabeth - Pakenham
McGOWAN, Annie - Gembrook South
McGOWAN,  Henrietta C. - Gembrook South
McRAE, Mary - Pakenham
MURPHY, Ellen Agnes - Officer.
NEILSEN, Margaret - Pakenham
NUGENT , E - Pakenham
PATERNOSTER, Maisie - Pakenham; PEARSON, Agnes - Pakenham
REECE, Ellen Elizabeth - Officer
ROBERTS, Mary - Pakenham; ROBERTSON, Mary - Pakenham
SASKER, Mrs - Nar Nar Goon. Mrs Sasker was in Maryborough when she
signed the petition.
SHORT, Margaret - Eumemmerring. Margaret was amongst women
from Malvern and Windsor on the petition, so once again she must
have been visiting.
SMARTT, Bertha E - Gembrook South
SMITH, Elizabeth - Pakenham
SMITH, Ellen - Gembrook South
SMITH, Margaret - Pakenham
SMITH, Minnie - Gembrook South
STANFORD, Jessie -  Pakenham
SWANSON, Maria - Pakenham
UNWIN, Jane - Pakenham
URE, Jane,  Mrs  -  Gembrook South. You can read about the Ure family of
Gembrook, here.
WADSWORTH, Constance - Gembrook South
WADSWORTH, Flora - Gembrook South
WADSWORTH, J.L. - Gembrook South
WALTON,  Lily - Pakenham;
WARNER, Sarah -Gembrook South
WATERS, Jane - Pakenham
WATSON, A. M., Mrs - Pakenham
WATSON, Cecily E. - Pakenham
WATSON, Mary E. - Pakenham
WHUSTONE, Eugenie - Pakenham
WILSON, Emily - Pakenham.

This is page 368 from the petition and has some Pakenham and Gembrook South names.

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