Kyneton Rotary Local History Walk
The 1.1km return Kyneton Rotary Local History Walk starts at the Kyneton Visitor Information Centre where there are toilets and follows the tree lined grassy strip eastwards. At regular intervals there are interesting plaques about the history of the area.
The plaques along this historic walk were erected in 2008 by the Rotary Club of Kyneton through a generous donation from long time local resident, the late Phil Jacobs.
These plaques include:
Historical Kyneton 1836 to 1850
1836: Major Mitchell crossed and named the Campaspe River
1837: The first squatter in the area was Charles Hotson Edbden
1840: William Ward built a station complex near "Rock House"
1843: The first permanent building was erected
1848: A slab Court House and Lockup was erected. Governor LaTrobe visited the area and called on Jeffrey's house where Mrs Jeffery named the area "KYNETON" after the English village of Kineton in Heresfordshire.
1850: KYNETON was gazetted: Sites for the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches were reserved.
A Brief History of Kyneton
Several of the early explorers passed through this area in the early 1800's. Major Mitchell passed through in 1836 and submitted a very favourable report.
The first pioneers of the district were Boynton, Beauchamp, Bonney, Brown, Ebden, Mitchell, Mollison, Piper, Simpson, Yaldwyn, Eyre, Dryden, Alexander, Mitchell, Darlington and Piper. Some of the town streets are named after these people.
When gold was discovered in Castlemaine and Bendigo, diggers passed through Kyneton. Businesses were set up and had a thriving living.
There were no trains, buses or motor vehicles back then. There were three means of transport... horse, bullock and foot.
Major Thomas Livingstone Mitchell 1792 - 1855
Thomas Livingstone Mitchell was born at Craigend, Stirlingshire, England on 15th June 1792. He was the son of a Scots Harbour Master. In 1827 he was appointed Deputy to Surveyor General, Oxley of the New South Wales Colony. When Oxley later died Mitchell took over that role and served in that position for 27 years.
Mitchell was dispatched by Governor Richard Bourke of the New South Wales Colony to explore and report on The Port Phillip District. After travelling south reached Expedition Pass, between Faraday and Chewton, on 29th September. While repairs were being made to the boat Mitchell and Tommy Came Last ascended Mount Alexander. Mitchell saw in the distance another high land mass which was Mount Macedon. The next day Mitchell and some of the party entered the areas surrounding Kyneton. On the way to Mount Macedon, the party passed through Kyneton on 30th September, crossing the Campaspe River not far from the Kyneton Scout Hall in Langley Street.
Edward Argyle 1817 - 1875
The Argyle family came from England in the 1830's. In the early 1840's Edward Argyle's-homestead was a four room weatherboard cottage and in 1858 it was replaced with a large two storey bluestone building on St. Agnes Hill and it was called "Rock House". "Rock House' was sold in 1923 offer being in the Argyle family for at least 80 years.
Argyle built several steam flour mills, one being on the west bank of the Campaspe River near the present racecourse, and they were regarded as second to none in the colony.
Edward Argyle, one of the earliest settlers in the district and father of the Premier Sir Stanley Argyle and Mr R.I. Argyle, who came to Victoria about 1839 died at "Rock House", St. Agnes, in 1875.
Caroline Chisholm (1808 - 1877)
Caroline Chisholm was born in England in 1808. At the age of 22 she married Archibald Chisholm and in 1832 the family moved to India and then to Australia in January 1839.
Mrs Chisholm arrived in Port Philip in 1854 and passed through Kyneton a few months later on her way to visit the goldfields of Castlemaine and Bendigo. She approached the Government and urged them to build ten shelters along the 100 mile route. They were built at Essendon, The Gap, Gisborne, Keilor Plains, The Black Forest, Woodend, Carlsruhe, Malmsbury and Elphinstone.
In November 1857 the family moved to Kyneton, where Archibald Chisholm, who had been promoted to major on the retired list in November 1854, sat on the magistrates' bench and their two elder sons ran the store.
John Furphy (1842 - 1920)
Engineering blacksmith, was born on 17 June 1842 at Kangaroo Ground, Victoria. He was educated first by his mother and then at government schools at Kangaroo Ground and Kyneton. He was later apprenticed to a Kyneton firm of blacksmiths and implement makers, Hutcheson & Walker, who were pioneers in the local manufacture of farm machinery. In 1864 he set up as a blacksmith in Kyneton and stayed there until 1873 when he moved to the newly surveyed township of Shepparton in the Goulburn valley, where he opened the first blacksmith's and wheelwright's shop.
Furphy's most distinctive product was a simple invention which he never patented: a watercart with a 180-gallon (818 litres) cylindrical iron tank, mounted horizontally on a horse-drawn wooden frame with cast-iron wheels. The name Furphy was painted in large capitals on both sides of the tank. These carts, generally known as furphies, and were used in large numbers by the Australian army in World War I.
William Degraves (1821-1883)
Flour-miller, merchant and station-owner, was born in England. He began work in his father's flour-mill and shipyard at Hobart Town. In 1849 he went to Melbourne and with his brother Charles as partner, sought a site for a steam flour-mill.
The main business of William Degraves & Co. was in Melbourne but branches spread to other centres and included flour-mills at Sandhurst (Bendigo), Malmsbury and Kyneton.
Warwick Armstrong
Warwick Windridge Armstrong was born in Kyneton, Victoria on 22 May 1879. His father, a solicitor, was in partnership with the South Melbourne cricketer Albert Major, who played for Victoria against Lord Harris' England XI in 1879.
The Armstrongs moved to Melbourne in 1898 and Warwick played for South Melbourne in cricket and then in football. Right-hand batsman, leg-break, right-arm fast medium bowler TESTS - 50, 2863 runs at 38.68, 87 wickets at 33.59. FIRST CLASS - 269, 16158 runs at 46.83, 832 wickets at 19.71. He made his debut for Australia in the second Test in January 1902. He was picked for the great 1902 side which toured England where he made over a thousand runs and took 81 wickets. He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
Cobb & Co
The firm of Cobb & Co. was set up in Melbourne, Victoria in 1853 by a small group of immigrant Americans - Freeman Cobb, John Murray Peck, John B Lamber and James Swanton, and originally was called the American Telegraph Line of Coaches.
The company's first passenger coach left Melbourne for Forest Creek (now Castlemaine) and Bendigo on 30 January 1854; the list of routes was expanded shortly thereafter to link the newer goldfields and settlements with the Victorian capital. Soon, mail contracts were awarded to the business and the Cobb & Co operated a gold escort, passenger and mail service based on reliable and efficient schedules. The mining areas were badly served as regard to transport, and Cobb & Co's coaches soon returned a handsome profit.
Regular coach services stopped at the changing station in Kyneton where the tired horse teams were changed over three times a day.
Charles Hotson Ebden (1811 - 1867)
Pastoralist, businessman and politician, was born at the Cape of Good Hope. Ebden was educated in England and at Karlsruhe in Germany. He migrated to Sydney in 1832. In 1835 he became a stock breeder and pastoralist.
By August 1837 he had settled on the Campaspe River west of Mount Macedon in an area he named Carlsruhe which is situated 6 kilometres south of Kyneton on the old Calder Highway (Cobb & Co Road).
In the 1840's it was a small hamlet with an inn. A depot for the gold escort, consisting of barracks, stables and a lock-up, was established here in 1951.
John Helder Wedge (1793 - 1872)
Surveyor and explorer, second son of Charles Wedge of Shudy Camps, Cambridge, England, from whom he learned the rudiments of his profession.
Losses during the post-war depression in agriculture induced Wedge and his brother Edward to migrate to Van Diemen's Land, where they arrived in 1824 in the Heroine. Before leaving London he had obtained an appointment in the colony as assistant surveyor.
In 1846 he was sent to mark out a camping ground for teamsters travelling from Melbourne to Bendigo. He chose the site of Kyneton on Wedge Bros. Station, whose homestead was south of the racecourse. The teamsters called the area Campaspe Flat.
John Robertson Duigan (1882 - 1951)
On July 16,1910, John Robertson Duigan flew an aircraft (a seven metre hop), at his family's property 'Spring Plains' at Mia Mia, near Kyneton, Victoria, Australia. Duigan based his aircraft design on the French 'Farman' [bi]plane, and he prepared his own plans and specifications and in a large shed on the family property.
He constructed the frame of the plane from red pine and mountain ash. Duigan also made the wheels, propeller shaft, and the ball bearing races. He later cast his own water-pump and made his own radiator.
To fly the aircraft, it had to be moved from its shed, down a steep hill and across two creeks, over which special bridges were built. The dimensions of the take-off field were 1183 metres x 91 metres, which allowed for relatively straight flights only, and limited them to less than 800 metres.
Alexander Fullerton Mollison (1805 - 1885)
European settlement began with the arrival of Alexander Mollison in 1837.
He travelled overland from New South Wales together with stock including 5000 sheep, a herd of 640 cattle, 28 working bullocks and 22 horses. He also brought with him two overseers and 49 labourers. After travelling some 400 miles (644 km) he finally decided to settle on the area known as "Tarringower" on the Coliban between Mount Macedon and Mount Alexander.
Mollison settled at Malmsbury in 1837. His first headquarters consisted of two mia-mia's built from the rushes that grew on the banks of the Campaspe River.
In 1838 Alexander was joined by his brother William, and "Tarringower" was sub-divided and extended to Pyalong, which was occupied as a cattle station by the younger brother.
Alexander Stewart Burton VC (1893 - 1915)
Born on 20 January 1893 at Kyneton, Victoria, son of a grocer.
In 1911 he began his period of compulsory military service. He was a corporal in the 7th Battalion (Victoria), Australian Imperial Force during the First World War when the following took place for which he was awarded the VC.
On 9 August 1915, at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, Turkey, the enemy made a determined counterattack on the centre of the newly captured trench held by a lieutenant, two corporals and a few men. The enemy blew in the sand-bag barricade leaving only a foot standing, but the lieutenant and the two corporals repulsed the enemy and rebuilt the barricade. Twice more the enemy blew in the barricade and on each occasion they were repulsed and the barricade rebuilt, but Corporal Burton was killed while most gallantly building up the parapet under a hail of bombs.
Photos:
Location
127 High Street, Kyneton 3444 Map
