DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 49
By James Smith

CENTRAL DISTRICT  2...

Kyneton lies in the midst of a plateau which stretches from Riddell’s Creek to Elphinstone, a distance of thirty-five miles, and in the centre of arable and pasture land of exceptional value, owing in part to the quality of the soil and in part to the fact that the average annual rainfall of the district is from thirty to forty inches. The place is sufficiently old and well-established to give it a general resemblance to an English country town in one of the midland shires. The public buildings, banks and principal hotels are solidly built, and wear an air of prosperity and respectability. Outside the shops in the high street, the carts, buggies and drays of rural folk who have come in shopping are drawn up, and are receiving parcels and packages of divers shapes and sizes. The yards of agricultural implement makers are occupied with ploughs, carts and waggons in various stages of manufacture or repair, and inside the wayfarer may

See the flaming forge
And hear the, billows roar,
And catch the turning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing floor.

There are capacious produce stores to receive, the grain grown on the surrounding farms, and although population seems to have ebbed away somewhat from the north-western corner of the town the commercial activity of the leading thoroughfare has probably been intensified by the movement. The general plan of Kyneton is ambitious; there are plenty of blank spaces available for building on, and at the east end of High Street the cornfields come close up to the footpath. There are green crofts and spacious church reserves, and, large gardens and orchards, within a stone’s throw of the shire hall; and these help to increase the pleasantness of the general aspect of the place, which is still further enhanced by the grand dimensions of some of the ornamental trees and shrubs encircling certain of the private residences. There is something substantial, restful and enduring about the look of Kyneton. The surrounding landscape is full of undulations, and its curved lines are repeated with greater emphasis in the embracing hills while the more imposing silhouette of Mount Macedon, with its shelving slope to the westward and its hump in the centre, shuts in the view to the south. Hedgerows divide many of the farms, and on breezy hills rural residences have been built overlooking a fair expanse of cornfield and pastureland. Sloping down to the deeply-cut channel of the Campaspe are the botanical gardens, where the natural advantages of the site have been improved upon by judicious planting, and an agreeable place of resort has been provided within a few minutes’ walk of the town. Six churches, most of them structures of solid blue stone, a shire hall, an unusually fine police station, and the government offices, are among, the most conspicuous of its buildings, and Kyneton forms the administrative centre of an extensive district. A weekly market, a monthly fair, and a yearly agricultural exhibition denote the importance of the place in connection with the pursuits of husbandry; while its manufacturing activity is attested by its flour mills, breweries, coachbuilding yards, and the agricultural implement manufactories already spoken of.

From Kyneton to Malmesbury the railway passes through an open and, undulating country, large areas of which are under tillage for green crops, with low and lightly timbered ranges to the west. At Malmesbury the line runs within a. short distance of the Coliban reservoir, previously referred to; this sheet of water with its grassy slopes and sylvan border being visible on the left, while the town expands on the right from the foot of the railway embankment. Farther on, the landscape rises and falls like the swell of the ocean after a heavy gale, and then sinks into the green hollow, upon two of the slopes of which the village of Taradale spreads itself out, with a fine background of heavily timbered ranges to the west. Half a dozen churches, as many hotels, a bank, a courthouse and a State school are among the most substantial structures of a place towards the prosperity of which milling and agriculture contribute in an equal degree. Beyond Taradale, a tract of wild bush land, with only an occasional clearance, is traversed, and then comes Elphinstone, where the country appears more park-like in its character. Elphinstone itself is a picturesquely situated village in the vicinity of the Coliban Falls, where the artist or the angler may pass an agreeable day. Chewton, which was better known in the early days as Forest Creek, is next reached. It lies in a hollow surrounded by rolling hills, and the creek, flowing through a broad channel of sludge bordered by mounds of tailings and of wash dirt, was once the centre of a populous encampment. At present, mining enterprise is concentrated on the quartz reefs of the district, and the tall chimney-stacks, with their long pennons of smoke, and the whirring of wheels in the poppet-heads, indicate that human beings are hard at work far below the surface.

Ten minutes after leaving Chewton the train pulls up at Castlemaine, a quiet cleanly town lying in the lap of circumscribing hills of almost uniform elevation, wavy in outline, and for the most part but lightly timbered. At one time the place promised to become a provincial capital, and was spoken of as the "Centre" by the more hopeful of its inhabitants; but when its alluvial deposits of gold were exhausted and its mining population ebbed away, leaving nothing behind but many square miles of gravelly holes and hillocks which have remained bare of herbage, the prosperity of Castlemaine declined, and it now contains more closed hotels and shops, and tenantless cottages than its well-wishers could desire to see. On Saturdays, however, when the country people come in marketing, the town assumes all air of exceptional animation. All the streets are laid out at right angles, and the spacious market-place in the centre has been planted, like many of the streets, with eucalypti, which have already attained a considerable altitude. The post office, with its clock tower, the supreme court-house, the churches —built for the most part upon high ground —the two State schools, the gaol, the hospital and the benevolent asylum attest the importance of Castlemaine at the period of their erection. The last-named institution, planted on a green knoll over looking the public park, might be mistaken —with its triple gables, its mullioned windows, and its cloistered terrace —for an old Tudor mansion that had undergone renovation. The park itself, comprising seventy eight acres, contains ail ornamental sheet of water, a fountain, a pretty fern-grove, and a fine collection of exotic trees and shrubs, mingled with others of indigenous growth. A granite obelisk, crowning a hill at the eastern extremity of one of the principal streets, where it closes a vista of foliage, commemorates the heroic exploit of Burke, Wills and King in crossing the continent —the leader of the expedition had been a resident in Castlemaine before undertaking the command.

From Castlemaine to Harcourt the railway follows the course of Barker’s Creek through a narrow valley, upon which a succession of orchards and gardens bestow additional pleasantness. It is hemmed in on either side by low ranges covered with stunted timber, and above these, on the right, looms out the grander form of Mount Alexander. At Harcourt, masses of granite from the neighbouring quarry, which contains stone enough to rebuild the cities of the world, are awaiting transport to Melbourne. Beyond this station, and the village from which it derives its name, the valley widens somewhat, and the axe of the free-selector has been busy felling the dwarfish timber. The ranges recede to the right, the landscape opens out, and great slabs of granite, moist and glittering from the effects of a recent shower, inlay the park-like slopes which skirt the railway on either hand. Ravenswood lies in the midst of a lovely entourage, resembling some ducal domain in the mother country, minus the mansion and the deer; nor does the scenery change until a tunnel has been passed through. Emerging from this, the railway traverses a country the rocky soil of which, covered with a thin layer of gravel, affords but scanty support to a ragged investiture of scrub. At Kangaroo Flat, the site of some alluvial diggings which have been pretty well worked out, a mining city comes in view that proclaims the nature of its predominating industry from afar off; for some of the loftiest eminences serve as pedestals for towering chimney-stacks and lofty poppet-heads, while jets of steam and huge accumulations of tailings are the outward and visible signs of the ransacking process which is going on two thousand feet below the surface of the earth.

Sandhurst disputes with Ballarat the distinction of being the premier goldfield of Victoria. It is situated on the upper part of the Bendigo Creek and its tributaries, which, taking their rise in an offshoot of the Mount Alexander Ranges, afterwards assume the name of the Piccaninny Creek, and this disappears in a marsh about seven and twenty miles due north of the city. The area of the goldfield is not less than eleven hundred square miles, of which no more than an insignificant fraction is actually operated upon. In the early days many thousands of diggers found profitable occupation in surface mining, and some tons weight of quartz was extracted from the remarkably rich gullies. Long before these were partially exhausted, it was discovered that gold in large quantities was embedded in the rocks of the district, and these were so extensive that, in so far as their magnitude could be roughly calculated, they held out the prospect of affording remunerative returns for half a century to come. But even this forecast came to be regarded as inadequate, when it was ascertained that gold-bearing quartz could be found at a depth of two thousand feet below the surface; hence the permanence and stability of the gold-mining industry in Sandhurst, and the confidence felt by its citizens in its prosperous future. Up to the present time, only four thousand eight hundred acres of the auriferous area of the district are in process of exploitation, and two hundred and seventy-two well-defined reefs have been proved to he gold-bearing, the yield of these ranging from ten pennyweights to eighteen ounces per ton. Up to the 30th June, 1887, the total yield of this goldfield was fourteen million six hundred and fifty-one thousand six hundred and twenty-one ounces, of the value of fifty-eight million six hundred thousand pounds. The three principal lines of reefs have been traced for seven miles, running parallel with each other in a north-westerly direction, between eight and nine hundred yards apart, and there is every reason to believe that they extend for twenty miles. The greatest depths to which shafts have been sunk with remunerative results are these: —The Great Extended Hustlers, two thousand and twenty feet; Lansell’s, two thousand and forty feet; and the Victory and Pandora, on the Garden Gully line of reef, two thousand one hundred feet. What magnificent returns have rewarded the enterprise of many of those who have invested their capital with judgment and success in quartz-mining upon this goldfield will be seen by the following figures which come down to the end of 1885: —The New Chum United gold-mining company has a paid-up capital of one thousand four hundred and seventy-five pounds, and has declared dividends to the extent of sixty-four thousand nine hundred; the Garden Gully company, with a paid-up capital of twenty-one thousand six hundred and forty-six pounds, has disbursed eight hundred and eighty thousand two hundred and twenty-five in dividends; the North Shenandoah company, paid-up capital one thousand eight hundred pounds, dividends thirty-four thousand five hundred; New Chum Consol, paid-up eight thousand pounds, dividends ninety-three thousand; Belmont and Saxby United, paid-up two thousand two hundred and fifty, dividends one hundred and one thousand two hundred and fifty; United Hustlers and Redan, paid-up twelve thousand, dividends one hundred and eleven thousand; Frederick the Great tribute, paid-up two thousand six hundred, dividends one hundred and one thousand; Ellesmere, paid-up seven thousand eight hundred and sixteen, dividends eighty-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty; United Devonshire, paid-up six thousand eight hundred and eighty-three pounds, dividends two hundred and eleven thousand four hundred; Hercules and Energetic, paid-up five thousand two hundred and fifty, dividends forty-eight thousand three hundred and seventy-five; South St. Mungo, paid-up nine thousand three hundred and seventy-five, dividends forty-eight thousand three hundred and seventy-five; New Chum and Victoria, paid-up four thousand eight hundred, dividends one hundred and twelve thousand one hundred and twelve; and, finally, the Victory and Pandora gold mining company, which, with a paid-up capital of forty-three thousand three hundred and eighty-one pounds, has paid dividends to the extent of one hundred and seventy thousand pounds. Twenty-seven quartz mines in and around Sandhurst, with a paid-up capital of four hundred and thirty-seven thousand six hundred and thirty-one pounds, have returned three million one hundred and thirty-one thousand three hundred and fifty-five pounds to the shareholders, and the value of their property at the time this calculation was made, namely, on the 31st December, 1885, was estimated at two millions sterling. Such figures may be left to speak for themselves.

Five and thirty years ago, Bendigo —as it was then called from the name of the creek which flows through it —resembled a bit of Upper Egypt, and the blinding glare of the bare hills and the sandy soil was unrelieved by a glimpse of verdure in the summer months, for the indigenous timber had been sacrificed to the exigencies of a large population engaged in the search for gold; while the intense heat was so provocative of thirst that the place contained more licensed and unlicensed victuallers than perhaps any goldfield of its size in Victoria. Money was lightly gained and as lightly spent, and the bars were full from morning till night. To-day the city of Sandhurst is enveloped in greenery, and in point of sobriety it has nothing to reproach itself with. One hundred miles of streets have been planted with trees, mostly elms, and the material improvements which have been effected during the life-time of a single generation illustrate the advantages of local self-government, and are honourable to the public spirit and the liberality of the citizens.

Pall Mall, which is the core of Sandhurst, resembles its Westminster prototype as it was in the days of Strype, when it consisted of a "faire long street" adorned with gardens on one side containing raised mounds, from the summit of which a fine view was to be obtained. The beautifully planted gardens here cover an area of sixty acres, and have received the name of Rosalind Park. One portion of this park occupies all elevated plateau, in which an artificial lake has been formed. The lower section contains a large fernery, admirably laid out in a network of winding and umbrageous walks, and so thoroughly sylvan and sequestered that the visitor would scarcely feel surprised at meeting the daughter of the banished Duke, accompanied by Celia or Touchstone, in its green recesses. The public offices, in which all the government business will be transacted, occupy a central position in the north or garden side of the Mall, and constitute one of the handsomest edifices of the kind in the colony. Three of its facades present good examples of the Italian style as modified by French architects, and a lofty clock tower at the south western angle of the building lends dignity to the general effect. The town hall, somewhat similar in design, but more ornate in some of its details, occupies the centre of the market square, which is sufficiently spacious to afford accommodation for two large structures, the one open and the other enclosed, which are used for market purposes. The principal banks, the leading hotels, the mining exchange, and the largest shops either abut on the Mall or are to be found in its immediate neighbourhood. At its western extremity, a large open space has been ornamented by a statuary fountain, and a smaller one stands in the centre of a corresponding area at the east end. The masonic hall in View Street is remarkable for its well-proportioned classic portico, and a breezy hill close by over looking an extensive prospect has been selected as a site for some of the best private residences in Sandhurst, as also for that of three or four churches. Of these the city contains no less than thirty, besides six public halls, a theatre, a hospital, a skating-rink, a benevolent asylum, a Girton college, and ten State schools. One of the largest of these has been erected upon the high ground behind Rosalind Park, and from the platform in front of the school, which serves as the playground, a good view is commanded of the city and its environs. Sandhurst is lighted with gas, is supplied with water from the Malmesbury reservoir, contains four reading-rooms, and is exceptionally fortunate in the matter of public parks. Weeroona Lake, an artificial sheet of water covering sixteen acres, affords recreation to the members of two boating clubs, and is surrounded by pleasure grounds with an area of thirty acres. The botanical gardens are upwards of fifteen acres in extent, and a suitable reserve has been set apart for the formation of a zoological garden.

One of the most important institutions in Sandhurst is the school of mines and industries, which was established in 1873 for the purpose of imparting practical instruction in mining, metallurgy, chemistry, mineralogy, mining engineering and all the related branches of knowledge. It numbers five hundred students and ten lecturers and teachers. A mechanics’ institute and free library, as well as an interesting museum, are comprised under the same roof, and steps are being taken by a committee of citizens to erect a fine art gallery. Sandhurst is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishopric, and its erection into a see of the Church of England cannot be much longer delayed.

The manufacturing industries of the city are numerous and diversified, embracing, as they do, iron foundries, breweries, coach and carriage factories, a pottery, a cordial factory, tanneries, brick and tile works, and others of minor importance. The soil and climate of the district are peculiarly, favourable to the cultivation of the vine, and at Strathfieldsaye, about six miles distant, there are six hundred and fifty-three acres under cultivation, yielding forty-one thousand seven hundred gallons of wine per annum, besides one hundred and twenty tons of table grapes. In point of quality, the white wines produced in the neighbourhood of Sandhurst bear a close resemblance to those of Xeres and Madeira. About three miles front the city is the mining town of Eaglehawk; it has nine churches, four banks, a mechanics’ institute, a well-planted public park, and a population of upwards of seven thousand.

After quitting the outskirts of Sandhurst, which for a mile or two convey the idea that the earth hereabouts had suffered from some eruption that had left its surface scarred and blistered, the railway passes the Bendigo potteries, and then enters upon a level plain with an equally level horizon on either side. Occasional patches of excellent arable and pasture land diversify the monotony of the bush, and between Bagshot and Goornong —both of them wayside villages —a good deal of agricultural settlement has taken place, and is still in progress. Next succeeds an extensive tract of chocolate-coloured soil, the fertile quality of which is shown by the number and dimensions of the stacks of corn and hay near the farm houses; while a new feature in the landscape is presented by the thatched roofs of the cart and cow sheds. Elmore, on the Campaspe, consists of two streets running parallel to the railway, with banks, hotels and produce stores of a solid and stable character; and, tell miles farther on, Rochester seems to have been laid out on the same lines and to possess the same characteristics. The surrounding country is as level as a bowling-green, and the devious course of the Campaspe, flowing through a deep depression, is everywhere defined by the luxuriant timber on its banks. The plain, divided into large sheep-paddocks, stretches to the Murray, which is reached at Echuca, a town of ambitious outlines covering an area sufficiently extensive to qualify it to take rank as a city when it shall have filled up its vacant spaces. The principal street —a broad thoroughfare about two miles long, and planted with trees —terminates in the public park, where a granite obelisk has been erected to the memory of Mr. Henry Hopwood, the founder of Echuca. A bridge one thousand nine hundred and five feet long, erected at a cost of an eighth of a million, crosses the Murray at this point; and the river, during the period of the spring freshets, submerges the low-lying land on either side, and assumes the volume of another Mississippi. Half a dozen paddle steamers, with their high deck-houses, and as many timber barges are lying alongside the railway wharf, while others are discharging cargo at the sawmills, around which are stacks of red gum sleepers and mounds of ruddy sawdust. The leading industries of Echuca are denoted by five of these mills, its brewery, tanyard, coach factories, sheep and cattle yards, its soap-boiling establishment, and its vineyards of two hundred acres. There is also a fair proportion of churches, schools, banks and hotels, with a social club and a good mechanics’ institute.

From Echuca to Kerang, across the county of Gunbower, it is perfectly flat, except beyond the Terricks, where there is all eruption of granite hills. One of these so closely, resembles a pyramid that it has received that name. Kerang, which lies upon the Loddon, is the terminus of a railway line bisecting a fine stretch of agricultural country, most of which, unfortunately, is almost rainless; it will, however, be artificially irrigated from the Loddon when the government scheme is carried out. Pursuing the journey westward across country to Wycheproof, the terminus of another loop-line, there is but little change in the aspect of the landscape, except that the timber varies somewhat. The land has been everywhere taken tip, and needs only moisture to yield a splendid return to the labour of the husbandman. Even in this remote town there are two places of worship, the branches of three banks, four or five hotels and a mechanics’ institute.

Returning by train to Sandhurst, the Avoca is crossed at Charlton, a thriving town which serves as a sort of provincial capital for a district comprised within a radius of twenty, miles. Large supplies of grain are brought into the two steam flour mills, irrespective of what is exported; a cattle market is held fortnightly, and the place contains three churches, five banks, and several hotels, while the co-operative spirit of its inhabitants has displayed itself in the formation of all agricultural society, a turf and a cricket club, and in the institution of four lodges of a social and benevolent character. Twenty-three miles front Charlton, the train reaches the embryonic town of Korong Vale, where a loop-line branches off to Boort, eighteen miles distant, and the centre of a large area of well-grassed, but heavily timbered, pastoral country, upon which a good deal of settlement is now taking place. The railway continues in a south-easterly direction past Mount Korong to Inglewood, a mining centre of some importance, with a splendid water supply from two artificial reservoirs and a large belt of arable country in its immediate neighbourhood. Four places of worship, two banks, a hospital, a courthouse and a mechanics’ institute are among the more notable buildings of the town. The next station is Bridgewater, pleasantly situated on the Loddon in a good agricultural district providing wheat for its two flourmills. Fourteen miles farther on, Marong is reached, where milling, agriculture, and vine-growing are pursued with equal success, there being about twenty thousand acres under crop for wheat and one hundred and twenty-three for vines.

On the return journey by railway to Castlemaine, the flourishing mining town of Maldon can be reached by a branch line in half an hour. It lies under the shadow of Mount Tarrengower, from the summit of which a magnificent prospect is commanded. Maldon is a place of strong contrasts. The serenities and primitive beauties of nature are on the one side, on the other the unpicturesque, but beneficent, activities of human industry, as manifested in the disembowelling of the earth for the extraction of the golden treasure implicated in its quartz reefs. Of these there are nearly eighty in the immediate vicinity, employing upwards of forty crushing batteries, and between five hundred and six hundred miners. The main street, which is planted with trees, meanders about with a charming disregard of linear rectitude, and exhibits quite as pleasing an inequality of surface. The shire hall is embedded in foliage, and the place has an adequate water supply from a reservoir in which seventeen millions five hundred thousand gallons can be stored. A cottage hospital, four churches —one with an unusually pretty chancel —an athenĉm, a benevolent asylum, a courthouse, a State school, and two public halls combine to give Maldon the air of a country town, and the permanence of its prosperity, seems to be assured, not merely by the number and magnitude of its quartz reefs, but by the fact that the surrounding district is one which affords a remunerative return to the labour of the farmer the grazier, and the vine-grower. A good coach road of seven miles leads to Barringhup, a small agricultural town on the banks of the Loddon, with three State schools, three places of worship, and the same number of hotels; although, it may be necessary to remark, the word "hotel" does not convey the same meaning in a village that it does in a metropolitan city. Thence an almost straight road, which is only deflected when it reaches Mount Moolort, traverses a somewhat marshy country to Carisbrook, four miles from Maryborough and the centre of an agricultural district. It contains a steam flourmill, a tannery, and a brewery, and its four churches, courthouse, town hall, mechanics’ institute, market sheds, racecourse, botanical gardens, and public park denote it to be a place possessing plenty of vitality. Quitting Carisbrook by railway, in an easterly direction, and leaving Mount Moolort on the left, the line passes through a picturesque country to Newstead, which is situated on the river Loddon, and is the centre of a good agricultural district. The next station reached is Guildford, at the confluence of the last-named river and of Campbell’s Creek, both of which are liable to overflow their banks, so that while the husbandman is indebted to that circumstance for the richness of the alluvial soil he cultivates, it is also an occasional source of peril to his crops.

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